Super Mario Kart

Super Mario Kart (スーパーマリオカート, Sūpā Mario Kāto^?) is a karting racing video game developed by Nintendo EAD for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It is the first game in the Mario Kart saga and was released in Japan on August 27, 1992, in the United States and Canada on September 1, 1992, in Mexico on September 6, 1992, and in Europe on January 21, 1993. Selling eight million copies, it was the third best-selling game for the SNES. Super Mario Kart was re-released for the Wii Virtual Console in Japan on June 9, 2009, in North America on November 23, 2009 and in Europe on April 2, 2010.

In Super Mario Kart the player takes control of one of eight characters from the Mario series, each with different abilities. In single player mode, the user can run against characters controlled by the console in different cups and races of three levels of difficulty. During the races, you can use objects and all kinds of tricks to get there first. Alternatively, players can try to set a time alone in a time trial mode. In multiplayer mode, two players can compete simultaneously on the game's courses or they can race against each other in a versus race. In a third mode – Battle Mode – The objective is to defeat opponents by throwing items at them, thus popping the balloons surrounding each kart.

Super Mario Kart received positive reviews that focused on its presentation, innovation, and use of Mode 7 graphics. Various publications including Edge, IGN, The Age, and GameSpot have ranked it as one of the best games ever, while the Guinness Book of Records rated it as one of the best home console games. It is often credited with creating the kart racing subgenre in video games, prompting other developers to try to repeat the success. This game is also given the merit of having taken the Mario saga beyond platform games, where the main objective in a video game of this type falls on a hero who has to rescue the damsel in a hurry; this diversity has resulted in it becoming the best-selling game franchise of all time. A large number of sequels to Super Mario Kart have been released on the market, for home consoles, portable and in arcades, each of which has been critically and commercially successful. While some elements have been developed throughout the series, the original essence of Super Mario Kart has remained intact.

Game Mode

Cartridge Super Mario Kart installed in Super Nintendo.

Super Mario Kart is a kart racing game that includes various game modes. The player must choose a character from a selection of several from the Mario series, and then race in karts on tracks set in the style of that series. During a race, the player's camera is positioned behind their kart. The object of the game is to finish ahead of the other racers, which are controlled by the console and other players, or to complete a course in the fastest time possible. There is also a battle mode where you have to attack the other karts with objects to eliminate them.

Scattered around the track are cubes with a question mark on them; they give special abilities (items) if the kart passes over them. The items, which can be, for example, shells or banana peels, allow players to throw them at their opponents and thus make them lose control temporarily. A kart that grabs a star from a cube gains the ability to be invulnerable for a short time. Console-controlled players have different special powers associated with each character, which they can use over the course of the race. On the floor of the track are lines with coins, accessible in single player and multiplayer modes. As you run over them, the kart picks them up and allows you to increase your top speed. Having a certain amount of coins also helps players when their kart is hit by another: instead of spinning and losing control, it loses only one coin. Coins can also be lost when karts are hit by others under the influence of items or when they go outside the limits of the tracks.

The game features advanced maneuvers such as drifting and jumping. Drifts allow the kart to maintain its speed while turning a corner, although executing the maneuver for too long tends to cause the kart to spin. Jumps help the kart to execute tighter turns: the kart gives a little jump, causing it to go out at a normal speed when it hits the turn. Good reviews for Super Mario Kart focused on its gameplay, describing the battle mode as "addictive" and the single player mode as "amazing". IGN stated that the gameplay defined the genre.

Modes

Super Mario Kart has two single player modes, Mario Kart GP and Time Trial. In Mario Kart GP a player competes against seven opponents controlled by the machine in a series of five races called cups. Initially there are three cups available – the Mushroom Cup, Flower Cup and the Star Cup.) – in two levels of difficulty, 50cc and 100cc. Winning all three cups at the 100cc level unlocks a fourth cup – the Special cup –. Winning all four cups at the 100cc level unlocks a new displacement, 150cc. Each cup consists of five-lap races, which each have a place on different tracks. To participate in the next cup race, you must reach the finish line in the previous minimum quarter. If a player finishes fifth or eighth they are eliminated and have to race again for which they can use one of a limited number of lives - until they manage to get at least fourth, in order to move on to the next race. Depending on the finish position is awarded a number of points; from first to fourth place nine, six, three and one point are awarded, respectively. The rider with the highest number of points at the end of all five races is the winner of the cup. In the Time Trial mode – which can be translated as Time Trial Mode – players race against the clock, through the same circuits as in Mario Kart GP mode. >, while trying to make the best time possible.

Super Mario Kart also has three multiplayer modes; Mario Kart GP, Match Race and Battle Mode. Multiplayer mode supports up to two players, with the second person using the bottom half of the screen, which is used as a map in single player mode. Mario Kart GP is the same mode as compared to the single player mode of the same name; the only difference is that there are now two human and six console-controlled characters. Match Race allows two players to compete against each other without any console-controlled characters. In Battle Mode The two players compete against each other again, but this time in only four stages available for this mode. Each player starts with three balloons around their kart. If a kart is hit by an item, he loses a balloon. The first player to lose all three of their balloons loses the game.

Characters

Super Mario Kart includes eight playable characters from the Mario series – Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Bowser, Donkey Kong Jr., Koopa Troopa and Toad. Each character's kart has different capabilities and different top speeds, acceleration, and handling. During races, characters controlled by the machine have special items or special powers. These powers are specific to each character; for example, Yoshi throws eggs so that when he crashes the character will trip and lose coins, while Donkey Kong Jr. throws bananas. In addition, it should be noted that the characters vary their speed and the frequency of throwing objects depending on the situation of the career. Thus, in situations where characters are close to the first position and as long as this position is held by the manually controlled character, their speeds will increase, as well as the frequency of dropping items.

The characters are drawn as sprites, portrayed from sixteen different angles. The sprites were described as "detailed" by the Nintendo Magazine System when they first reviewed the game and stated that they contributed to the "spectacularity" of its game graphics. game as a whole. However, Nintendojo opined that the sprites "aren't that pretty" when viewed from a distance, and IGN criticized the game's "dated" style. Super Mario Kart was the first game to feature playable characters from the Mario saga that did not appear in a platform game and the different attributes of the characters are considered one of the strengths of the game; IGN called it a well-balanced "all-star cast". to be replaced by Wario in Mario Kart 64. The Donkey Kong character in later Mario Kart games is considered the adult version of Donkey Kong Jr. from Super Mario Kart.

Circuits

The tracks in Super Mario Kart, except for the Rainbow Road in the Special Cup, are based on stages from Super Mario World, such as the track Donut Plains. Each of the four cups contains five tracks, for a total of twenty tracks, not counting the four special tracks in Battle Mode. The limits of the circuits are marked by invisible barriers and have a variety of curves ranging from hairpins to wide curves that players can take advantage of to slide. There are a large number of obstacles taken from the Mario such as, the Thwomps on Bowser's castle tracks, the Cheep Cheeps from Super Mario World on Koopa Beach, and pipe-shaped barriers found on related tracks with Mario. Other features include off-track sections that slow down the karts, such as mud on the Choco Island tracks. Each single-player track is littered with coins and brick blocks. items, as well as shuttles that propel the karts and jumps that launch the vehicles into the air.

The tracks have received generally positive reviews: GameSpy described them as "beautifully designed" and IGN described them as "perfect". On the list of the greatest Mario Kart tracks of all time In 2008, 1UP.com ranked Battle Mode Course 4 at number three, and Rainbow Road – along with its later iterations in the series – at number one. The melodies of the tracks in Super Mario Kart influenced later installments of the saga; Recurring themes that first appeared in Super Mario Kart include Haunted Tracks, Bowser's Castle, and Rainbow Road. Some of the tracks from Super Mario Kart have been subsequently duplicated. All twenty original tracks are unlockable in the Game Boy Advance sequel Mario Kart: Super Circuit. Various tracks have been remakes for appearance in later games, such as Mario Circuit 1, Donut Plains 1, Koopa Beach 2 and Choco Island 2 that appeared in Mario Kart DS, Ghost Valley 2, Mario Circuit 3 and Battle Course 4, which were included in Mario Kart Wii, Mario Circuit 2 and Rainbow Road featured in Mario Kart 7 and Donut Plains 3 and Rainbow Road that appears in Mario Kart 8 although the latter is only available through downloadable content.

Names in Spanish of cups and circuits

Development

Shigeru Miyamoto, the producer of Super Mario Kart, has been involved in the development of each delivery Mario Kart.

Super Mario Kart was produced by Shigeru Miyamoto and directed by Tadashi Sugiyama and Hideki Konno. In an interview, Miyamoto said that the development team originally set out to produce a game capable of showcasing two players at the same time. In the same interview, Konno stated that development began with a desire to create a racing game for up to two players in contrast to the single player SNES game F-Zero. Computer and Video Games suggests that this initial emphasis on creating a two-player experience is the reason why the screen appears split in single-player modes.

The intent to create the game's racing modes had been present since the beginning of the project and Battle Mode was developed out of the desire to create a single player versus player game mode where victory was not determined, simply because of the position in a ranking. However, the game did not start as a game from the Mario saga, as the first prototype showed a generic character riding a kart dressed in overalls; the team decided that it would be better to create characters that were no more than three heads tall, as they would better suit the design of the karts. They did not decide to incorporate characters from the Mario saga until two or three months after the start of the project. The decision was made after the team, seeing how one kart overtook and got ahead of another, decided to see what the prototype would look like if Mario were placed in the kart. In doing so, they observed that the idea having Mario in the kart looked better than the previous designs, so it was approved to use characters from the series.

One thing to note in the development of Super Mario Kart was the use of Mode 7 graphics. First seen in F-Zero, Mode 7 is a graphics rendering system available on the SNES that allows a texture to be freely rotated and scaled, creating a slight 3D perspective. This technique, at the time of the game's release, was credited by 1UP.com as creating beautiful graphics " Awesome". A retrospective reflection on this mode was mixed with criticism from IGN, which said that the new technology now looked "raw and flickering" while Video Game Bible described it as "beautiful". Super Mario Kart included a DSP chip (Digital Signal Processor –Digital Signal Processor–), a chip that was used in more SNES games as it allowed floating point to be more easily calculated to help the game programming. The DSP-1 chip that was used in Super Mario Kart became the most popular DSP chip used in SNES games. was created by composer Soyo Oka.

Reception

Reception
Reviews Evaluator Rating GameRankings 95% Criticism scores Publication Rating AllGame Electronic Gaming Monthly 8.5/10 GamePro 5/5 Nintendo Magazine System 92/100 Nintendojo 9.5/10 HonestGamers 10/10 Thunderbolt 10/10 Cubed3 9/10

Super Mario Kart was a critical and sales success; received Player's Choice distinction after selling one million copies. It ultimately sold a total of eight million games, making it the third best-selling game for the SNES. Review compilation sites GameRankings and MobyGames gave it a score of over 90% while GameStats and TopTenReviews gave it a average above 80%. Critics praised the graphics in Mode 7; in 1992 Nintendo Magazine System described them as "excellent", as well as describing them as some of the best graphics ever seen on the SNES. Another well-praised section of the game was its gameplay; the Thunderbolt website described it as "the deepest [and] most addictive... to be found on the SNES". Nintendo Magazine System showed a preference for the modes multiplayer of the game and stated that while the "single player mode gets boring quickly" the "two player mode will not lose its appeal". Various retrospective reviews of the game have achieved perfect marks, such as the Thunderbolt and HonestGamers websites. The use of the style of characters from the Mario franchise was also praised, as were the character traits. Mean Machines described the game as having "minted gold" in a way that no no other game – not even its sequels – has matched it, and GameSpot rated the game one of the best of all time for its innovation, gameplay, and graphic style.

Since it was released Super Mario Kart has been ranked several times as one of the best games ever. IGN ranked it the 15th best game in 2005, describing it as "the original kart masterpiece" and 23rd.er best game in 2007, while citing its originality at the time of release. in 2007 Edge ranked Super Mario Kart 14th on its list of the 100 Greatest Games, noting the influence it gave to video game design. The game also is included in Yahoo Games UK's Top 100 Games list which praised the characters and items. 1UP.com also included it in a list called the Essential 50, which cited the fifty most important video games.

It was ranked 13th in a list by Official Nintendo Magazine of the 100 best Nintendo games. Guinness World Records ranked it first in a list of the top 50 video games based on their reception and legacy.

Legacy

Although Super Mario Kart is not the first Kart racing game (Power Drift) video game, it was the first to popularize the kart genre thanks to the integration of combat power ups. Super Mario Kart has been described as the video game that extended the subgenre of "kart racing" and that in a short time different developers tried to launch their own brands with their own mascots to match the success. In 1994, less than two years after the release of Super Mario Kart, Sega released Sonic Drift; a kart game that included characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog saga. Also in 1994 Ubisoft released Street Racer, a kart game for the SNES and Mega Drive that included a mode for four players not available in Super Mario Kart. Future games that would follow in the wake of Super Mario Kart include South Park Rally, Konami Krazy Racers, Diddy Kong Racing, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and multiple games in the Crash Bandicoot saga. Criticism of these games has been mixed; GameSpot stated that they "tend to be bad" while 1UP.com states that countless developers have tried to improve on the original Mario Kart formula, to no avail. Super Mario Kart has also been called the first non-platform game to contain characters from the Mario series. As well as various sequels, Nintendo has released games sports and non-sports within the Mario saga since Super Mario Kart; a trend, in part, accepted by the commercial and critical success of the game. The characters of the Mario saga have appeared in various sports games including those related to basketball, baseball, golf, tennis and soccer. Non-sports game series have also been created that include characters from the Mario saga, including the Super Smash Bros. fighting saga or the Mario Party saga of board games and minigames. Some characters from the Mario saga have also made cameos in games from other series such as SSX on Tour or NBA Street V3, both published by EA Sports. The genre-spanning character of the Mario series that was sparked by the success of Super Mario Kart has been described as a key point for the success and longevity of the franchise, and has managed to keep fans interested despite the influence of Mario platform games. Thanks to this model, the Mario saga has become the best-selling video game saga of all time with 193 million units sold as of January 2007, nearly 40 million units ahead of the second-ranked franchise (Pokémon, also from Nintendo).

Super Mario Kart was re-released for the Japanese Virtual Console on June 9, 2009, in North America on November 23, 2009, and in Europe on April 2, 2010. Previously, when it was called one of the most anticipated games for the platform in November 2008, Eurogamer said that problems with emulating graphics in Mode 7 were responsible for its absence.

Aftermath

Since the original release of Super Mario Kart, there have been several sequels for future Nintendo consoles, all with critical and sales success. The first of them, Mario Kart 64 was released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64 and was the first Mario Kart game to feature fully three-dimensional graphics. to its predecessor, they praised the four-player multiplayer mode – a first for the Nintendo 64 –. The second sequel Mario Kart: Super Circuit was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2001. It was described by GameSpot as a remake of Super Mario Kart rather than a sequel to Mario Kart 64, as the game reverted to the original graphics system. The game includes new tracks and the ability to unlock those featured in the SNES game if various requirements are met. The next game, Mario Kart: Double Dash!, was released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2003, and was quite unlike any other Mario Kart released earlier as each kart was driven by two players, allowing for a new form of cooperative multiplayer where one player controls the kart and the other throws the items. Mario Kart DS, released for the Nintendo DS in 2005, was the first Mario Kart game to feature online play via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. best-selling handheld racing games, selling 7.83 million units. The subsequent installment – Mario Kart Wii – was released for the Wii in 2008 and features motion-based controls. As Mario Kart DS includes online play, MKWii allows players to race with their Miis (after unlocking the corresponding character) as well as characters from the Mario saga and the inclusion of the Wii Wheel peripheral. Mario Kart Wii was the best-selling game of 2008 ahead of other Nintendo games – such as Wii Fit – and the critically acclaimed and best-selling Grand Theft Auto IV. Two Mario Kart games have also been released in arcade format, Mario Kart Arcade GP in 2005 and Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 in 2007. Both were developed by Nintendo and Namco and feature classic Namco characters such as Pac-Man and Blinky. The installment in the series, Mario Kart 7, was released in 2011 for the Nintendo 3DS and includes the ability to drive underwater and glide in the air thanks to a hang glider, as well as the inclusion of the three stereoscopic dimensions. In 2014 Nintendo released the successor to Mario Kart 7, Mario Kart 8. This game came out for the Wii U on June 30, 2014. This game included a great novelty: antigravity. It also has 9 new characters: the Koopalings (Lemmy, Larry, Wendy, Roy, Morton, Ludwig and Iggy), rose gold Peach and Baby Wake. As the series has progressed many aspects of Super Mario Kart have evolved. The item boxes, which in Super Mario Kart were nothing more than cubes embedded in the ground due to the technical limitations of the SNES, became floating boxes in later games. growing to include various Nintendo characters such as some that were not created at the launch of Super Mario Kart – such as Rosalina/Estela from Super Mario Galaxy who appeared in Mario Kart Wii.– The multiplayer mode has become a key point in the saga and has grown from the two players who could face off in Super Mario Kart; up to the four available in Mario Kart 64 and even up to twelve in the online mode of Mario Kart Wii. Many of the tracks that appeared in the series have remained as the saga has progressed, such as the Rainbow Road track – the final track of the Special Cup – which has appeared in all installments of the saga. Others elements that were in Super Mario Kart have disappeared throughout the series. This includes the "super powers" of the characters controlled by the machine or the "Feather" object that allowed the player to jump and have a certain number of lives. At the moment, the only games in the Mario Kart to include the currencies from the original game are Mario Kart: Super Circuit. and Mario Kart 7. These aspects of the style and gameplay of Super Mario Kart have been maintained throughout the series, leading Nintendo to face criticism due to a lack of originality. However, the franchise is still considered one of the best by many, mainly due to its well-known gameplay. Despite the technical innovations that have taken place since the beginning of the saga, many still consider Super Mario Kart as the mbest game in the series.