Super Mario Kart is Actually Garbage

 

I remember as a child seeing  Super Mario Kart on TV screens around electronic stores and thinking it looked like the coolest shit in the world but for some reason my parents never got it for me.  None of my friends who also owned a SNES at the time had it either so while I enjoyed Mario Kart on the GBA, DS, Gamecube and Wii throughout the years, the original outing had completely passed me by until recently.

Well, I really should thank my parents for never buying me this one because holy shit is this game a piece of fucking garbage.  I'm actually surprised at just how popular Mario Kart is in the modern day because if I had played this one when it was new, I sure as shit wouldn't have been so willing to give the later entries a try.

As far as the core game is concerned its pretty similar to what you might be used to if you too have only played the newer games.  Drive around the track, collect items to pelt at the other racers, try to come first.  The big difference with this game, however, is that it's worse in pretty much every way.  Most notably the handling of the karts is complete ass.  Just steering left and right feels like pulling teeth and the drifting?  fucking forget it.  You jump and do drifts in basically the same way but the drift sends you flying super wide around corners if you try to hold it for anything more than a nanosecond and the AI that is constantly cheating will just take it tight without so much as a jump and just overtake you anyway.

Not only does the AI cheat with its driving but it LOVES to cheat with the items too.  On 50cc its not so noticable but on 100 is when you really start to feel it.  Most tracks only have a single section on them where there is a collection of item boxes.  But the AI racers don't give a fuck about that, if you are in first the second place racer will CONSTANTLY be pelting you with shit to try and make you screw up.  Even if you aren't in first place the AI fucking cheats with the items.  After I managed to pull a win on the 100cc special cup, I decided to check out the 150cc mode because that's usually the most fun in these games.  I was in like, 6th or something and the Luigi in front of me popped a star, ok fine.  But then, right after that star ran out, he just fucking popped another one.  We hadn't crossed the item boxes, his inventory should have been empty, but nope, fuck the rules he's just invincible forever I guess.  Even when you get items sometimes they just wont work.  At one point I had a red shell which I fired at the first place racer who then proceeded to just fucking jump over it.  Not like, the little hop that you do when you press L or R, a big ass fucking jump as if they had the feather item but, once again, there's no way in hell they should have had that shit because earlier in the lap they were pelting me with mushrooms, so what the fuck?!  Playing Super Mario Kart is like playing with a shitty little kid who just starts making stuff up when they start losing.  "Nuh-uh, you can't overtake me because my car suddenly has giant rocket boosters", fuck off kid, how about I boost you into a wood chipper.

Not to mention that a single error can basically cost you an entire race even if that error is made on like, lap 2 of 5.  In the later games the AI also cheats a bit there too but you can outskill them.  You can race so well and be so far ahead in those games that even if you get smashed with back to back blue shells, in most situations a human player will be so far in the lead it won't matter.  In Super Mario Kart you can be in first for a whole race, playing perfectly and then clip the dirt for a nano-second and suddenly you're in 7th holding nothing but a banana peel and a bucket of salty tears.  If the course has bits that you can fall off and you happen to go off track then fucking forget it, just restart because you aren't climbing the positions fast enough for a decent result.

I'm sure there's some massively sweaty bellend who's really good at Mario Kart who can play all the tracks perfectly and get world record times who would disagree with everything I've said about the game but to you, hypothetical person in my mind, I say that you can fuck right off and fellate an exhaust pipe.  Mastering a shit game doesn't change the fact that it's a shit game, go away.

Thankfully, unlike the later entries the game rolls credits at the end of 100cc special cup so after trying 150 and seeing the bullshit dial turned to fucking 15 I put the game down.  No, I refuse to sit here and roll the item dice for hours on end until I get a gold cup, it's not worth it, not even for Retro Achievements.  The later games are fun as fuck but this first game belongs in the pits of hell next to Shaq-Fu and fucking Hong Kong 97.  Piece of actual garbage