What the hell is this shit? Mario and Bowser aren’t FRIENDS! Princess Peach isn’t just gonna go ahead and race alongside Bowser and Donkey Kong after basically being assaulted by them her whole life, Yoshi and the Koopas aren’t going to put aside their differences after the latter nearly genocided yoshi’s whole race. “Good race Yoshi, and also sorry about that business from before, I was just following orders.” This isn’t the Olympics, there’s no settling your disputes with sport here. These guys are mortal enemies, hopelessly entangled in a vendetta in which its redoubtable knots can only be loosened by blood.

I don’t know, the whole premise is just far too absurd for me. I don’t think this series has much of a future, to be honest

OK so I might be preaching to the choir just a tiny bit here but yeah, Super Mario Kart does not hold up very well at all. While I do like some of the track designs on paper, the terrible controls make racing on these tracks a complete chore. Turning should not be this tedious but here we are. Also the AI is just… the worst. Don’t get me wrong, I can see myself possibly giving this another shot, kinda like the first Super Mario Bros., but just like that game it’s not something I want to give another shot to because it’s simply just not fun to play. Play literally any other Mario Kart game and you’ll probably have a more fun experience. My respect for this game is there, but just because you’re the first of its kind doesn’t make you great nowadays.

I wanted to like this game, seeing as it's the start of one of my favorite genres, and has a lot going for it in terms of charm. I love the soundtrack in this game and its unique sound (its version of Rainbow Road is my favorite), as well as the sprite work and general presentation of the game. I even kind of like the look of the Mode 7-as-hell tracks, for the most part. But man, this game is aggressive in how off-putting it is to anyone who's played a kart racer released after this one.

For one thing, driving is just really hard to get a handle of. I never felt like I fully understood my character's speed or turning ability or anything that would allow me to handle better. I tried different characters, but even after finishing several cups I could never really say I fully "got" this game's feel, which is totally different from any other kart racer I've played.

When I started playing at 150CC after unlocking it, I actually ended up getting a better handle of the driving though. The problem there is that most of these courses seem to be designed in such a way to be as abrasive and hard to read as possible. The way this game looks resulted in a lot of instances of not being able to see the walls on the ground and just bumping into them for three seconds straight. This game also really likes square-ass corners, which are almost always no fun for me. The latter half of the cups in general feature courses that demand so much out of controls that just aren't up to the task.

I'm not against the idea of a kart racer having difficult courses, some of my favorite ones involve really demanding courses near the end of the game that require both good adaptability to obstacles and some memorization for future laps. But where this game really falls apart is the A.I. This is the game that supports every argument about kart racer single player being bad because of cheating A.I, it's actually unhinged in this game. If you're racing against Mario and Luigi, they can just activate a star whenever they want, meaning if they're in first you won't be getting past them. In fact, every A.I has a special item they can just use whenever, and they will use it frequently on you specifically. They will almost never hit each other, in fact they can jump over nearly every thrown item on the course, which you can't do. I'm pretty sure I've seen them just go through some pipes on the course, though that just may be another byproduct of these Mode 7-ass courses. And of course, they rubberband like hell, especially the characters that have been chosen to be your "rival" for each cup, they will never not be right on your ass (and God help you if you picked a character that's Mario or Luigi's rival).

I could imagine multiplayer grand prix alleviating some of this, since you could share the suffering with someone else, but then I have to ask why play this game instead of any other. Unless you grew up with it, there really is no reason. Everything this game does has been greatly improved upon, and no kart racer since has reached this level of straight up bullshit. I don't want to outright say its a bad game because it is important and I'm sure people have fond memories of it, but man I was not ready for this to be as unpleasant as it is. If you want a kart racer similar to this in mechanics and style, I would recommend Konami Krazy Racers on the GBA as a much better alternative.

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.

Its trash.
> The AI is obviously cheating
> The controls are garbage
> The balancing feels awful (tbf it was the first game so its ok im just a hater)

Aside from that, i really like the art style, the minimap on the bottom feels a bit too big but its ok