List Item: Play 100 of the greatest computer games
Progress: 44/100
Title: Super Mario Kart
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: SNES
Year: 1992
Position: #24
So here we are again. It has been an awful while since I went into a video game. I blame Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Dragon Age: Origins for taking up a lot of my gaming time so that I have not been able to move towards one of the list games.
It’s strange to go back to Super Mario Kart if you are someone who first really got to know the Mario Kart franchise via the really underrated Mario Kart: Double Dash on the Gamecube. Add to this the fact that I am also an avid player of Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 8 then you see how the move back multiple generations into a game that was ‘2.5D’was incredibly weird.
It was really interesting seeing where a lot of the things in Mario Kart started from. The fact that instead of having the floating boxes of power ups that we all know and love you had glowing floor squares was a bit of a puzzler on my first go around.
The amazing part about Super Mario Kart, however, was just how much of the newer games really trace back to this original formula. Sure, now there more gimmicks, better graphics and more characters, but the fundamentals stand.
Obviously one big improvement is that the feel of the driving is a lot smoother. It’s easy to get used to though; you just have to come up with a different strategy for the ridiculously tight corners. A lot of the tracks have also been upcycled for the newer games anyway so, again, it’s not like you need a lot to get used to them. Apart from the Bowser Castle levels. I still suck at those.
Just another one of those games that forces you to admit that it is sometimes really worthwhile to look backwards.
Before I Kick 