Cfrock
Keep it strong
My least favourite is Mario Kart: Super Circuit. It's a great game, one of the GBA's best, but the slipperiness of the handling combined with some of the course designs made it a frustrating game to play on the higher engines classes. It has some great courses in it (like Cheese Land and Ribbon Road, both of which I wanted back in Mario Kart 8) but it's the least satisfying game in the series for me.
Super Mario Kart, another great game, is barely better. In fact, it isn't, but it was one of the first video games I ever played and there's a lot of nostalgia there. I can barely play it today though because turning corners feels like digging a spoon out of a bowl full of old toffee.
Mario Kart 64 is great but it's also a slippery mess. The courses are too wide and long, too much of the music is repeated, it looks terrible, even by 1996 standards, and it has the worst Rainbow Road of all time (no falling, four-minute laps, no obstacles). Its saving grace was the multiplayer, which pales in comparison to every Mario Kart except the '2D' ones.
I feel bad for putting this so low on my list, but Mario Kart: Double Dash's main failing is that it isn't any of the Mario Kart games from Mario Kart DS onwards. Double Dash is brilliant. It has amazing courses (including my favourite, Wario Colosseum), great music, and the tag-team mechanic made for an excellent multiplayer that has been bested only by the online play of successive games. Not being able to hop makes it a difficult one to go back to, and the drift has a looseness to it that makes it unsatisfying, but Double Dash is fantastic otherwise.
I wasn't convinced by Mario Kart Wii at first. The bikes weren't very good, and the whole game had this cheap feeling to it, like it was an off-brand Mario Kart. It's hard to describe, but the game seemed like it wasn't a real Mario Kart, almost like it was a game made by fans and not by Nintendo. The items were completely unbalanced, too, with no adaptations made for the four extra racers and all of the new items being particularly aggressive ones. It has some brilliant courses, though, and once I took it online it really grew on me. I still get a touch of that 'fakeness' when I play it again today, but it's not so distracting anymore. The drift system was worked out properly in this one which made it, and the games that follow it, much more satisfying and fun to play.
A lot of people put Mario Kart 64 at the top of their lists because of their experiences playing its multiplayer, and that's the main reason why I love Mario Kart DS so much. Yes, it had missions, yes, it had online, and yes, it had some of the best course design in the entire series, but it came out when I had recently started 6th Form, so every day there'd be a crowd of us all sat together during free lessons playing it. They were great times and I have nothing but good memories of Mario Kart DS. It also had snaking, which I did and enjoyed when I did it, but I'm very happy they changed the power boost system afterwards. Snaking is bad. Bad, I say.
Mario Kart 7 kind of has a whiff of that 'fakeness' I got from Mario Kart Wii, mostly because it doesn't have a VS Mode, but the game is just so fantastic that I can forgive that. It's beautiful to look at, the courses are all excellent (except for Cheep Cheep Cape and Alpine Pass), the retro track choices were superb (barring N64 Luigi Circuit, of course), and the drifting was perfected. The kart customisation was also a nice touch, mainly because it allowed every character to use every vehicle, instead of limiting them by weight class. Online was also solid, and the Streetpass functions were a nice little extra.
Far and away the best Mario Kart game, though, is Mario Kart 8. Utterly beautiful, the best music in the entire series, not a single dud course (even Dry Dry Desert is decent now), a seamless re-incorporation of bikes, robust online, and a re-working of the item system that improves the game tremendously make it, without doubt, the pinnacle of the series. Anti-gravity allows for some of the most interesting and exciting course designs in the series, the retro courses have been re-designed to make them fit more with Mario Kart 8 (as opposed to the flat recreations that made SNES and GBA courses boring in previous games), and the DLC expands the game with sixteen more excellent courses and multi-coloured Shy Guys. Mario Kart 8 gets my vote, without question.
Super Mario Kart, another great game, is barely better. In fact, it isn't, but it was one of the first video games I ever played and there's a lot of nostalgia there. I can barely play it today though because turning corners feels like digging a spoon out of a bowl full of old toffee.
Mario Kart 64 is great but it's also a slippery mess. The courses are too wide and long, too much of the music is repeated, it looks terrible, even by 1996 standards, and it has the worst Rainbow Road of all time (no falling, four-minute laps, no obstacles). Its saving grace was the multiplayer, which pales in comparison to every Mario Kart except the '2D' ones.
I feel bad for putting this so low on my list, but Mario Kart: Double Dash's main failing is that it isn't any of the Mario Kart games from Mario Kart DS onwards. Double Dash is brilliant. It has amazing courses (including my favourite, Wario Colosseum), great music, and the tag-team mechanic made for an excellent multiplayer that has been bested only by the online play of successive games. Not being able to hop makes it a difficult one to go back to, and the drift has a looseness to it that makes it unsatisfying, but Double Dash is fantastic otherwise.
I wasn't convinced by Mario Kart Wii at first. The bikes weren't very good, and the whole game had this cheap feeling to it, like it was an off-brand Mario Kart. It's hard to describe, but the game seemed like it wasn't a real Mario Kart, almost like it was a game made by fans and not by Nintendo. The items were completely unbalanced, too, with no adaptations made for the four extra racers and all of the new items being particularly aggressive ones. It has some brilliant courses, though, and once I took it online it really grew on me. I still get a touch of that 'fakeness' when I play it again today, but it's not so distracting anymore. The drift system was worked out properly in this one which made it, and the games that follow it, much more satisfying and fun to play.
A lot of people put Mario Kart 64 at the top of their lists because of their experiences playing its multiplayer, and that's the main reason why I love Mario Kart DS so much. Yes, it had missions, yes, it had online, and yes, it had some of the best course design in the entire series, but it came out when I had recently started 6th Form, so every day there'd be a crowd of us all sat together during free lessons playing it. They were great times and I have nothing but good memories of Mario Kart DS. It also had snaking, which I did and enjoyed when I did it, but I'm very happy they changed the power boost system afterwards. Snaking is bad. Bad, I say.
Mario Kart 7 kind of has a whiff of that 'fakeness' I got from Mario Kart Wii, mostly because it doesn't have a VS Mode, but the game is just so fantastic that I can forgive that. It's beautiful to look at, the courses are all excellent (except for Cheep Cheep Cape and Alpine Pass), the retro track choices were superb (barring N64 Luigi Circuit, of course), and the drifting was perfected. The kart customisation was also a nice touch, mainly because it allowed every character to use every vehicle, instead of limiting them by weight class. Online was also solid, and the Streetpass functions were a nice little extra.
Far and away the best Mario Kart game, though, is Mario Kart 8. Utterly beautiful, the best music in the entire series, not a single dud course (even Dry Dry Desert is decent now), a seamless re-incorporation of bikes, robust online, and a re-working of the item system that improves the game tremendously make it, without doubt, the pinnacle of the series. Anti-gravity allows for some of the most interesting and exciting course designs in the series, the retro courses have been re-designed to make them fit more with Mario Kart 8 (as opposed to the flat recreations that made SNES and GBA courses boring in previous games), and the DLC expands the game with sixteen more excellent courses and multi-coloured Shy Guys. Mario Kart 8 gets my vote, without question.
