(Originally published to Glitchwave on 6/24/2024)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Super Mario Kart
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre(s): Kart-Racer
Platforms: SNES
Release Date: August 27, 1992
One appeal of the kart racer genre that Super Mario Kart pioneered is the tendency to incorporate notable figures from the property the game is showcasing as playable characters. Super Mario Kart was released early enough in the Italian plumber’s career where the potential character pull had to be relatively restrained, and the game probably reflects how relatively modest his franchise still was at the time with only eight to choose from. Still, all eight characters on display remain integral faces in the Mario series to this day, and their notability is probably maintained through their continual presence in Mario Kart’s lineups. Mario makes his appearance as contractually obligated by the game’s namesake, and we can all readily assume that Luigi is his plus one as always. I’d be weary if I was Mario, for both Peach and her chronic kidnapper Bowser are both racing combatants here. I can’t explain it, but everyone trusts Bowser to restrain himself from snatching Peach up like a sack of potatoes and I’ll be damned if he isn’t a good boy who behaves himself. I’m sure the golden opportunity this presents is making his eyes bloodshot and strained with temptation. If Mario gets sidetracked on the off chance Bowser decides to fulfill everyone’s expectations of him, there is at least one Toad who can (ideally) protect Peach as part of his job description. Or, maybe the one Koopa Troopa on the track will prove to be too formidable on the side of the reptilian antagonists and Super Mario Kart will become another Mario title with the same damn conflict. I’m not sure where Yoshi fits into the mix, but fans would be outraged if he wasn’t included due to his rampant popularity from the then-newly released Super Mario World. The one true outlier here whose inclusion astounds me is Donkey Kong Jr., who we hadn’t seen Mario interact with since 1982 when Mario was still a lower-paid adjunct working his way up the ladder (literally) to video game glory in Donkey Kong’s shadow. What his presence here reminds me of is that this game was released in that dim period of DK’s career when the burly, tie-wearing version of Donkey Kong who is now the exclusive version of that character did not exist yet. A younger version of his dad that wears a tank top dates the game extraordinarily, but the modern DK’s overshadowing of the ape’s early history has at least made DK Jr.’s inclusion here unique to this title alone. Overall, the character selection here is purely cosmetic as there are no distinct racing attributes between any of them. A player’s character choice here will be predicated entirely on their arbitrary affinity for them from Mario’s mainline series.
Super Mario Kart establishes how racing is organized right from the main menu. The primary method of playing any Mario Kart game, or at least solo, is to enter in a grand prix that consists of four races each on different courses. Super Mario Kart also introduces the three difficulty levels that coincide with the rate of acceleration they allow. 50cc is as unenergetic as a Sunday stroll, 100cc cranks up the engine significantly, and 150cc sees the player driving at calamitous speeds that are bound to burn some rubber. Three grand prix cups are offered each with four tracks, and the order of mushroom, flower, star, and then the unlockable “special” cup represented by a crown are the difficulty sequence that all future Mario Kart games abide by. Depending on the player’s placements in the races, first to eighth, their performances will be tallied up on a scoreboard. The player who receives the highest number of points by the end of the grand prix becomes the recipient of a gold trophy during an awards ceremony, where the shiny prize is ejected from the blowhole of a blimp in the shape of a Cheep Cheep. The grand prix format is a sensible and manageable way to calculate a player’s overall standing, which is probably why it has persisted as the series' sense of progression since this first entry. What strikes me as a peculiarity of this title is that if the player fails to surpass all the other racers or plummets off the course, they have the option to retry a total of three times. As arcady as this feature is, including this as a finite safety net in a single-player setting is weirdly sensible. It’s not as if the CPUs will call shenanigans on you if you thwart their victory with an unprompted rematch.
But playing as recognizable characters isn’t the sole appeal that Super Mario Kart’s formula introduces to the racing game subgenre. Nintendo wisely figured that a Mario racing game shouldn’t hold lofty expectations for the player’s driving skill like a glorified license test. Therefore, the developer’s method of ensuring a smooth first place finishing for their broad audience of gamers is one of the series most idiosyncratic properties. Whenever the player zooms over a box with a question mark scattered on the ground of the track, an item will appear in the character’s hand after it is shuffled around in the indicator box. The player will most likely recognize these handy tools, for they are all familiar properties from the mainline Mario series. However, their utility here has been transferred into something appropriately functional for the racing genre. Instead of enlarging one’s body at the rate of a hormonal teenager, the mushroom will grant the player a brief speed boost. The detached shells of both green and red koopas are flung at the other racers as an offensive projectile, with the green shells having a straightforward trajectory while the red shells have heat seeking properties that target the racer ahead of the user. Donkey Kong Jr.’s contribution as the one guest in the lineup are the inclusion of banana peels, whose typical use as comical fodder will cause a colliding kart to spin out of control and lose their placement. If the player is struggling to keep up, a few items with more potent properties will pull them out of their drastic situation. A lightning bolt will strike down every racer except for the summoner, leaving them as the size of staticky mice slowly roaming around the track while the user can boastfully bulldoze them. The item with the smoothest transition from its mainline series functionality is the star, which naturally gives the player a transitory window of invulnerability accompanied by a significant boost in speed. Serious gamers who have never played Mario Kart will likely be skeptical if these items could be abused by any player to simply carry them to the finish line with little to no resistance. Fortunately, the items can only facilitate a player’s victory to a certain extent. For those who wish to survive the harsher difficulty levels, they’ll have to practice using the hopping mechanic that will engage the drift function, helping racers swerve around the tight corners of the courses. Hone this mechanic and there won’t be an item quick or accurate enough to slight you off your winning position.
Frankly, what I’ve been describing is essentially the properties of every Mario Kart game of which Super Mario Kart pioneered that are still applicable to every Mario Kart afterwards. Super Mario Kart is still a distinctive title compared to its offspring, but in all of the least alluring ways the series has seen. To achieve the ideal scope of eight identifiable combatants racing at the same time in the same general space, a 3D graphical rendering is the only viable means of depicting this perspective. Of course, the SNES was one generation before the third dimension became the standard for video game graphics, so Super Mario Kart has to rely on the SNES’s beta, quasi-3D “Mode 7” projection to depict a kart racer competently. Nintendo’s temporary tool in earnestly trying to advance the capabilities of video game graphics are functional enough to the point where the player shouldn’t have trouble finding themselves in relation to the other racers. Still, the aesthetic of every track is anything but appealing. Mario’s vibrant world has been flattened in the name of graphical compromise. Sure, the backgrounds are right as rain, but the foregrounds of the racetracks, besides the actual pavement, look like Mario’s foregrounds from the askew perspective of lying down drunk in the dirt with one’s neck from an uncomfortably cricked angle. In addition to the ugly slurry of pixels, the design of each track is flat as a pancake in both a literal design sense and their level of intrigue. There is no elevation to speak of across any of these courses, and the themes are all monochromatic. Track hazards that impede a racer’s acceleration may look different depending on the topographical conditions of the area’s theme, but their function is identical. Whether it be the mud of Choco Island, the snow and ice of Vanilla Lake, to the pools of water washed up on the sands of Koopa Beach, all they do is slog the racer’s rate of quickness. The engaging elements of a few tracks are a matter of if the player is titillated by curves and chasms in between the courses. The most pleasant example in my opinion are the Ghost Valley courses where the blank, dark background that signifies the night works wonders with the mysterious gorges in the track. On the other hand, every version of Bowser’s castle features forks in the road so jarringly bent that most players are likely to careen into a thwomp or a pit of lava no matter how swiftly the player anticipates them. Notice how I said “each version” of Bowser’s castle? If the player is selecting each cup in their intended difficulty order, they will experience each track again with slightly harsher track terrain to tackle. Maybe one pit will be harder to leap over in one version over the other, which isn’t exactly my definition of diversity that retains my attention. Still, the penultimate track of Rainbow Road, a racing track in the stars so mesmerizing that it’s probably what Judy Garland sang about back in the 1930s, is a gorgeous track with the strictest error margins pertaining to the course design. While the kart racer equivalent of a “final boss” should be exemplary, perhaps all of the positive aspects of the game’s aesthetic and track design should not have been allocated entirely to it.
That pang of guilt is creeping up on me as I scathingly critique Super Mario Kart. I know I should still venerate this primordial kart racer because it is the template for all other kart racers to follow, and that’s not just including its children of the same series. Still, I cannot deny that I garner little to no joy from playing Super Mario Kart. The kart racer genre simply just wasn’t ready for prime time before 3D graphics were a prevalent and practical norm for the industry. The “mode 7” mechanic is not sustainable enough to properly produce the product that was intended. Then again, F-Zero, a fellow racing game on the SNES that practically advertised the “mode 7” feature, felt much more at home on the SNES than Super Mario Kart. If I had to wager a guess, it’s because F-Zero’s minimal track design was compensated for with its high-speed initiative, therefore making for a thrilling experience despite its other primitive qualities due to the restrained system. For a game like Super Mario Kart, however, where graphical vibrancy is key to the accessible experience, all of the sparseness on display greatly hinders the fun factor, and that's a bonafide crime for a Mario title.
No comments:
Post a Comment