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

Mario Kart 8 is Pretty Good

I don't own a WiiU but thanks to my friend very kindly bringing his over this weekend I managed to have a good toot on Mario Kart 8 and it's an absolute ton of fun.

If you have ever played a Mario Kart game before which I'm going to assume you have at this point, it's basically more of the same.  They have added some kind of anti gravity thing which means that a lot of the games original courses are pretty crazy and fun to play.  There are a good selection of new items too but the game seems to be a lot stingier with it's toys this time round so I've not had too much of a chance to play around with them.

The multiplayer is also a ton of fun and supports both split screen and online play.  If you have only two players then you have the option of jumping into the online mode and playing against the denizens of the internet together.  The online mode is also very fast and very simple, if you just wanted a quick race or two then it's extremely easy to just jump on and have a few races with some randoms and it has features to allow you to play with your friends but I've not been able to test the functionality of that.

The simplicity of the game is what makes it so damn good though.  You buy most modern games and it has to do DLC checks and then pesters you to buy a map or a character or some such total bullshit.  Mario Kart just lets me pop in the game and fucking play it, which is great and more games need to adopt this approach rather than trying to spend all their time on every menu screen trying to squeeze more money out of me.

Also a lot of people rag on the WiiU for not being as graphically advanced as the PS4 and the Xbox One but Mario Kart 8 is an extremely pretty game.  The courses look great and are quite varied and it runs silky smooth even during split screen multiplayer.

I'm going to have the chance to play the game a bit more over the coming week, so if I find any bullshit I'll be sure to rant about it somewhere but for now, Mario Kart 8 might just be the game that convinces me to go pick up my own WiiU

Speed Run Races! A surprisingly fun past time

If you have been paying any attention to the stream, you may have noticed that a great deal of my free time has been taken up by speed running various games.  However only very recently have I taken up racing these games and I've found it to be rather enjoyable so today I thought I'd just share my first experiences with racing.

The site used for racing is called Speed Runs Live and through the magic of an IRC chat room players from all over come together to discuss games and perform speed run races.  Now going in I was extremely apprehensive because the majority of video game communities are complete trash.

Take DotA for example, if you suck at that game, people rage at you and throw all manner of insults which doesn't exactly do much to make you want to learn how to play and get good.  Even when you play the Vs Bot mode, which is designed for new players to learn the game, people STILL rage at you, it's a load of shit.

Now with speed running it's something different.  Now mainly I've been speed running Hotline Miami and They Bleed Pixels, and while I don't hold any records I've gotten pretty good at those games.  However, the game I started to race with was Megaman X, a game I started running a week ago.

Now I suck at Megaman X, it's a tough game to run and there is so much going on and so much to remember that I find it rather difficult.  So I hop on Speed Runs Live with my buddy, set up a race and start racing. 

Now I'm getting SMASHED, and people are more than welcome to come and see the suckage happen live on my twitch channel but none of the aforementioned shit slinging went down.  In fact, the opposite, people don't care if you suck, it's just not a big deal.  If you suck, then people will help you out, give you tips and offer advice.  I had people from the IRC in my chat room laughing along with me and telling me not to give up when I fucked up a skip and lost a bunch of time.  Racing Megaman X, despite my suckage was a truly enjoyable experience.

So to anyone out there looking to get into speed running but are afraid of "not being good enough" or whatever, it doesn't matter.  Just pick a game, get some splits and join the fun and the community will be there to help you and enhance the fun rather than berate you for your lack of skill or knowledge of the game.

Seriously, come race me at Megaman X sometime, you're guaranteed to win.