"Surely it shouldn't be too hard to just win all the 100cc cups in this game, right?" - Guy Who Doesn't Know That He's About To Have A Really Miserable Time
I thought that Super Mario Kart might be fun to give a try just for the novelty of seeing where the series started, but like, holy shit. This game SUCKS. As an old SNES game without too much content, it seems like something you could pick up and probably finish in a day if you wanted. I didn't find that to be the case, though, and I have a whole laundry list of reasons why.
The most immediately obvious issue here is that the controls are really, really bad. I did get mostly used to them towards the end, but that doesn't make them not awful. It takes an unbelievably small amount of input to accidentally hit a wall or catapult yourself off the track, whether you're drifting or just driving normally. And for a game where turning is so difficult, it sure loves 90 degree angles. Based on what character you're playing the handling changes, but let's be honest, it doesn't matter. I tried every character at one point or another and the difference was barely notable when you consider how little control you have anyway. It's an instant barrier to entry, and if you do manage to get past it, what's on the other end still isn't even worth the effort.
The CPUs in this game are Billy Mitchell level cheaters. They do not play by the same rules as you whatsoever. They have infinite items that they can throw at you as much as they like. They completely bypass most obstacles. They have the ability to just do a fucking 10-foot vertical leap over bananas and shells lying around, or even ones you are in the process of throwing at them. It's seriously relentless and not fun at all to deal with.
Graphically the game looks nice enough, but it's a racing game on the SNES and so it's really hard to see what's in front of you at times. Which is not helped by the map taking up the entire bottom half of the screen. The track designs are also generally really bland and reused over and over. There are 20, but it ends up feeling like way less due to how similar they all are. There are also walls and obstacles on some tracks that are for some reason part of the floor, so it looks like you'd be able to drive over them, but no, they're barriers. The ice blocks in the Vanilla Lake levels even blend in with the floor just to make things that much more annoying.
Some of the mechanics are also just insane to me. There are coins you can pick up to give yourself a small speed boost, but you lose one literally EVERY time someone bumps into you. And if you get bumped into when you have no coins, you spin out. It's horrible. And every kind of "recovery" period in this game after spinning out or falling in a hole takes so long that it's basically a death sentence. Getting punished pretty hard for getting hit is something standard for Mario Kart to this day, but it's just completely unreasonable in this one. All these issues compounded made beating the Star and Special cups in particular feel like torture.
I really don't have much of anything good to say about Super Mario Kart, other than that the music is good. That's it. It's probably more fun with a friend, but like, just play a good Mario Kart game instead at that point. I put 17 single-player hours into this (because I'm really stubborn), which is probably an amount you should never reach unless you're a speedrunner or were actually playing it in the '90s with your little brother or something. I can appreciate it for building the foundation of the series, but there's essentially no reason to play it today.
I thought that Super Mario Kart might be fun to give a try just for the novelty of seeing where the series started, but like, holy shit. This game SUCKS. As an old SNES game without too much content, it seems like something you could pick up and probably finish in a day if you wanted. I didn't find that to be the case, though, and I have a whole laundry list of reasons why.
The most immediately obvious issue here is that the controls are really, really bad. I did get mostly used to them towards the end, but that doesn't make them not awful. It takes an unbelievably small amount of input to accidentally hit a wall or catapult yourself off the track, whether you're drifting or just driving normally. And for a game where turning is so difficult, it sure loves 90 degree angles. Based on what character you're playing the handling changes, but let's be honest, it doesn't matter. I tried every character at one point or another and the difference was barely notable when you consider how little control you have anyway. It's an instant barrier to entry, and if you do manage to get past it, what's on the other end still isn't even worth the effort.
The CPUs in this game are Billy Mitchell level cheaters. They do not play by the same rules as you whatsoever. They have infinite items that they can throw at you as much as they like. They completely bypass most obstacles. They have the ability to just do a fucking 10-foot vertical leap over bananas and shells lying around, or even ones you are in the process of throwing at them. It's seriously relentless and not fun at all to deal with.
Graphically the game looks nice enough, but it's a racing game on the SNES and so it's really hard to see what's in front of you at times. Which is not helped by the map taking up the entire bottom half of the screen. The track designs are also generally really bland and reused over and over. There are 20, but it ends up feeling like way less due to how similar they all are. There are also walls and obstacles on some tracks that are for some reason part of the floor, so it looks like you'd be able to drive over them, but no, they're barriers. The ice blocks in the Vanilla Lake levels even blend in with the floor just to make things that much more annoying.
Some of the mechanics are also just insane to me. There are coins you can pick up to give yourself a small speed boost, but you lose one literally EVERY time someone bumps into you. And if you get bumped into when you have no coins, you spin out. It's horrible. And every kind of "recovery" period in this game after spinning out or falling in a hole takes so long that it's basically a death sentence. Getting punished pretty hard for getting hit is something standard for Mario Kart to this day, but it's just completely unreasonable in this one. All these issues compounded made beating the Star and Special cups in particular feel like torture.
I really don't have much of anything good to say about Super Mario Kart, other than that the music is good. That's it. It's probably more fun with a friend, but like, just play a good Mario Kart game instead at that point. I put 17 single-player hours into this (because I'm really stubborn), which is probably an amount you should never reach unless you're a speedrunner or were actually playing it in the '90s with your little brother or something. I can appreciate it for building the foundation of the series, but there's essentially no reason to play it today.