Gaming opinions, reviews, news, and impressions. Plus thoughts on other cool stuff.
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Mario Kart
Consider this your official reminder that McDonald's is currently offering a most excellent set of Happy Meal toys: Mario Kart has taken over the "golden arches" with a lineup of seven racers in karts and bikes (and a...plastic visor?). It's been a long while since McDonald's has had a set of toys that really caught my eye, but I have fond memories of traveling from store to store, especially on vacations, trying to complete a particularly interesting collection. And so begins my quest anew.
Mario Kart 8 has a neat new feature called "Mario Kart Television" that is a surprisingly big deal in the game. These auto-generated clips are one of the best new additions to the series, allowing you to quickly relive the best moments of your race. The smartest thing of all, though, is that Nintendo allows these to be shared outside of the game with a direct YouTube upload integration. With all of that mind, I wanted to share a few of my first videos with the game.
I've got to confess that when I started this retrospective series, I thought, "this will be a great opportunity to go back and play all of the Mario Kart games to really get ready for Mario Kart 8." What I've really been playing all month is a whole lot of Mario Kart 7 on 3DS. Where the DS iteration laid the groundwork for getting a console-quality kart racer on the go, MK7 takes it up several notches and delivers a beautiful—and very portable—racing experience.
This is a big one. Mario Kart Wii debuted on Nintendo's wildly popular Wii console in 2008 and went on to become the best-selling racing game of all-time and the fifth best-selling game. Ever. Plus, it introduced me to the world of Drinking Mario Kart (rules inside!), which earns it a special rank. This is the last home console Mario Kart game before Mario Kart 8, so don't miss it!
Just in time for the holiday season of 2005, Nintendo released Mario Kart DS for the Nintendo DS handheld console. As the second portable iteration in the series, it introduced a surprising number of advancements packed into a tiny cartridge: online play, additional characters to unlock, newly-remastered retro courses, and the new mission mode. It was a major step up from the GBA's Mario Kart Super Circuit visually, as well, featuring fully 3D levels and characters. Read on to find out why this game rocked.
With the launch of the GameCube in September 2001, Nintendo finally broke away from the once-mighty cartridge and caught up to the rest of world with a disc-based console. Of course, the discs were half the normal size and the system lacked DVD playback, a major selling point of its competitors, but the GameCube was certainly not lacking in the karting department. Mario Kart Double Dash!! released in November of 2003 and brought the Mario Kart into the new generation.
Mario Kart Super Circuit gave Nintendo fans their first taste of on-the-go karting when it released on the Game Boy Advance (GBA) in the summer of 2001. That tiny cartridge was a free pass to race anywhere, anytime, and it was a big deal. Read on for my retrospective on this diminutive game that made a big splash!
Mario Kart 64 ushered Nintendo's flagship racer into the third dimension on the Nintendo 64, a console that allowed four players to go head-to-head-to-head-to-head. It represents the biggest advancement between any two Mario Kart games and is a classic example of why the Nintendo 64 was the first really great party console.
In my first Mario Kart May post, I revisit Super Mario Kart on SNES, the breakout game that gave birth to the Kart Racing genre. I explore its use of Mode 7 graphics, items, characters, and multiplayer modes and catalog a few of the ways in which it changed the racing genre forever. A seminal game on the SNES and in Nintendo's history, it shaped the 16-bit generation in remarkable ways. Read the full post for the whole story!
Later this month on May 30, Mario Kart 8 releases on Wii U. This is a major deal, folks. For the rest of May, leading up to the launch of Mario Kart 8, I plan on writing retrospectives on each of the Nintendo home and portable console releases of Mario Kart. Bookmark this post for links to each of the articles as they release throughout the month!
