One of my favourite franchises of all time, but I really don’t like its debut game.

Thanks to the flat tracks, and extreme lack of track variety (every single theme except Rainbow Road shows up multiple times) The levels have no identity. They all just kind of blend together into one big, boring track.

The lack of interesting tracks has gone on to pollute the newer games too thanks to retro tracks. Even Mario Kart 8 with its extra effort into updating retro tracks can’t save generic Mario Circuit track #50

The AI blatantly cheat too. I don't just mean typical rubber banding; I've seen AI just straight up drive through a wall of Whomps like they weren't even there. They will magically jump over any items in their path, almost as if using a feather, however they're definitely not using a feather, and I know that for two reasons: One is that I've seen them do it while holding another item at the time, but also because each AI can only use 1 item each.

Speaking of which, the item system is super wack in this game. AI don't need item boxes, they can just spawn items randomly, but as I said they are limited to one per character. Some of them have unique items, like Toad has poison mushrooms, Bowser has fire balls and Yoshi has a Yoshi Egg, but then some of them just get generic items, like Donkey Kong gets a banana. The inconsistency is just weird, but regardless, having the characters spam items at you, or get infinite star power is annoying.

A huge part of the screen is taken up by a map of the track, or a rear view mirror depending on your choice. It's like someone in Nintendo went back in time and thought they were working on a DS game. It makes the actual racing screen look squashed and it's just distracting.

Controls are too slippery. I found drifting is next to useless except on super wide turns with a lot of space thanks to how they handle.

The game sucks. Boring tracks, terrible physics, cheating AI, weird item balance... It looks kind of nice, but that's about it.

Mechanically, it's one of the weakest in the entire series and most of everything it introduced has been done better - far better - in future games, but this is the one game that genuinely feels like you're racing across the Mario world - Super Mario World, to be precise.

I like to imagine this is what Mario, Peach and his friends do after Mario saves Peach and goes on vacation at the end of Super Mario World. Lots of SMW key locales are faithfully depicted, with designer Hideki Konno and composer Soyo Oka's own signature twists on them - perhaps Rainbow Road was their take on the Star Road and Special World, even.

It's one of the worst Mario Kart games, to be sure, but it's easily the best companion game to Super Mario World - and that's why I love it, aside from its great soundtrack.

Easily one of the worst games I've ever played. This is your typically Mario Kart experience, except computers cannot pick up items and get to use a singular item which they can use whenever at will. The track selection is mediocre at best and awful at worst. The controls also feel incredibly slippery. I'm sure this was the best game ever when it came out, but time hasn't done this justice. Play another Mario Kart (besides Super Circuit unless you like this game in which case you'll love Super Circuit) instead of this one, you'll thank me later.