Super Mario Kart

Super Mario Kart is yet another Nintendo classic which became a huge, cultural(?) SNES hit in the early 1990's. Despite of being just a mere racing game, it offered new, fresh Mario action packed gaming moments plus the player could use a " realistic three dimensional" view to move sideways like a real car. Yeah, the tracks are simply flat but the effect was revolutional those days. Mario and his friends can use items to either move faster, hit the opponent off the track or simply cheat to race to first place. There are many challenging racing tracks, two different difficulty modes, eight familiar Mario characters and the two player mode. Battle Mode is probably the best mode because two players can use items to wipe each others out. The first one who bursts three balloons is the winner.

Played the game many times before i discovered "Mario Kart 64" and "Diddy Kong Racing" were far more enjoyable. I don't like the way that you earn only one item per a lap. It gives more challenge but it works better in the other Mario Kart releases because the players can pick up multiple items per a lap. It's just an opinion, but still. One another thing is that the racer doesn't get any special items if (s)he already is in the first position, but the opponent on the other hand keeps throwing their individual items every time they reach the player. That's often, by the way. How many times have you hit the mushroom or the banana peel? Some of the special items are so rare that i think i've never gotten the lightning item...

The soundtrack of Super Mario Kart is marvellous. Even though it isn't written by the main Mario musician 近藤浩治 [Koji Kondo], it still very nice to see that Soyo Oka and Taro Bando have created something very melodic and brisky. Typical Nintendo music but as enjoyable as always. The best of all, the soundtrack has aged quite well even though it feels rather tacky. Heh, even some of the game over tunes sound happy! They even reused Bowser's theme from "Super Mario World"!

...But then the music gets frustrating when the race gets harder...