By Anthony Seamarks
I first played Super Mario Kart in 1995. The classic Super Mario characters, funky music and fun playability made it an instant hit for me. I enjoyed racing through the number of cups in an attempt to win the gold trophy. I still to this day play this retro game and still enjoy it as much now as I did back then.
The only difference is that now I am more critical of the game, how it works, how it looks, sounds and plays.
My only complaint or fault with this game is that when you are racing in the different cups, depending on which character you are the racers always finish in the same order. For instance if you raced as Kooper then Luigi would be the fastest, followed by Yoshi, Princess then Mario.
The graphics are quite good for the Super Nintendo, this game does not use the FX chip or additional features which would bump the game up to a 32 bit like games such as Donkey Kong Country. Tis game simply maximises the SNES’s features.
The music is quick catchy and funky but can get quite annoying after a while. When I play it now and if I win all the races it gets annoying as the same victory tune for that character will play. Other than the repition of the music its still pretty good.
Playability I would say is around average. The controls are easy which makes the game attractive to play, but on the downside the game gets pretty easy quite quickly which means that boardom kicks in and that the game then gets left on a shelf to collect dust. There are however other ways to get interest levels up in this game….
The fist way is to play with a friend in multiplayer, this can make the races interesting
The second way is to play battle mode with a friend. This can get addictive very quickly and is alot of fun.
The third and final way is a bit of a cheat code even though it doesnt assist you in anyway, it only makes the game harder and more fun to play. On the character select screen if you press the Y and A buttons together it will make your character small (as if you had driven over a mushroom in the normal game)
This means that your Kart will be slower and if another racer drivers into you, you will then be squashed!!
Very enjoyable, especially in multiplayer.
All in all Super Mario Kart is a great game for the SNES and is a definate for collecters. Even now fully boxed the game can fetch around £14 on the net.
In my opinion I would rate this game as follows:
Graphics – 8/10
Sound – 6/10
Playability – 7/10
Overall I would rate this game as 92% (please note that this is my opinion only – I expect others to have conflicting thoughts on this!)
I would not say that this is the best game available for the Super Nintendo as there are many great titles. I shall be reviewing some very soon so please look out for these!