Review: Super Mario Kart - 01/05/2008 by Andrew
Racing
Released in 1992, Super Mario Kart was the third best selling game on the SNES (over 8 million sales) for a very good reason – it was brilliant. It's been noted in numerous 'top 100 games of all time' listings and is easily in the top 5 SNES games of all time. No SNES collection would be complete without this game.
Boasting multiple play modes (Time Trial, Grand Prix, Match Race and Battle Mode) and three kart classes (50cc, 100cc and 150cc), Super Mario Kart had huge replay value to match the great gameplay. The 150cc class required you to get gold in all of the cups with a 100cc kart, though that's it as far as unlocking goes. There are 8 characters to choose from, each having some sort of trade off between top speed, handing, strength and acceleration.
If you've never played Super Mario Kart but you have played the successors (such as Mario Kart DS, Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart Double Dash or Mario Kart Wii) then you'll notice that drifting doesn't give you that mini turbo boost and that there's not a huge amount of tracks. What you will notice is that the tracks look very familiar and this is because they've been remade in all of the newer versions of the game. This should mean that you should post some pretty competitive times straight away and there's a good chance you'll whip through the whole game in an afternoon.
With the buzz that Mario Kart Wii has created over the last couple of months, I think we all owe it to the ourselves to take some time out and give the original a once over.
95/100