Later this month on May 30, Mario Kart 8 releases on Wii U. This is a major deal, folks. The Wii U is in desperate need of more software that will sell systems, and Mario Kart is a franchise that does just that.

In case you need a reminder, the last home console entry in the series, Mario Kart Wii, sold 35.26 million copies at the time of this writing. It is, according to Guinness, the best selling racing video game of all time. So, despite the Wii U's flagging sales, there's got to be some hope for Mario Kart 8 to get some people hyped about Nintendo's latest console.

But enough about sales figures and console wars--this is about racing. For the rest of May, leading up to the launch of Mario Kart 8, I plan on writing retrospectives on each of the home and portable console releases of Mario Kart.

Each of them might take a slightly different shape, depending on my affinity with the title and what I feel suits the game best, so that should keep things interesting. While I'll post each of them as a separate blog post, I will update this blog post periodically throughout the month with links the newer posts, so feel free to bookmark this page and check back each week.

TITLE: Super Mario Kart
PLATFORM: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
YEAR: 1992
ARTICLE: http://www.theindygamerblog.com/blog/2014/5/11/mario-kart-may-1-super-mario-kart-snes

TITLE: Mario Kart 64
PLATFORM: Nintendo 64
YEAR: 1996
ARTICLE: http://www.theindygamerblog.com/blog/2014/5/14/mario-kart-may-2-mario-kart-64-n64

TITLE: Mario Kart Super Circuit
PLATFORM: Game Boy Advance
YEAR: 2001
ARTICLE: http://www.theindygamerblog.com/blog/2014/5/17/mario-kart-may-3-mario-kart-super-circuit-gba

TITLE: Mario Kart Double Dash!!
PLATFORM: Nintendo GameCube
YEAR: 2003
ARTICLE: http://www.theindygamerblog.com/blog/2014/5/20/mario-kart-may-4-mario-kart-double-dash-gcn

TITLE: Mario Kart DS
PLATFORM: Nintendo DS
YEAR: 2005
ARTICLE: http://www.theindygamerblog.com/blog/2014/5/27/mario-kart-may-5-mario-kart-ds-nintendo-ds

TITLE: Mario Kart 7
PLATFORM: Nintendo 3DS
YEAR: 2011
ARTICLE: http://www.theindygamerblog.com/blog/2014/6/1/mario-kart-may-7-mario-kart-7-3ds

TITLE: Mario Kart 8
PLATFORM: Wii U
YEAR: 2014