![]() ![]() Character debuts – Daisy, Birdo, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Koopa Paratroopa, Diddy Kong, Bowser Jr, Waluigi, Toadette, Petey Piranha, King Boo.It was a proper “wow” moment, and the unlocking of retro tracks has become a Mario Kart tradition ever since. Most impressive, though, was the ability to unlock every Super Mario Kart track, doubling the number of courses from 20 to 40. Instead of a straight SNES port, Super Circuit looked more like a halfway point between Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64, with rotating tracks imitating the Mode 7 trickery of the SNES game, but the character models and features of the N64 one (like four-player multiplayer and blue shells). While many assumed the GBA was essentially a handheld SNES, Mario Kart: Super Circuit showed it actually had more power. Originally announced as Mario Kart Advance, this was one of the first games Nintendo revealed to show off the power of its new Game Boy Advance handheld. Gimmicks – First handheld Mario Kart, retro courses.Most notable though was the introduction of the notorious blue shell, the most dreaded weapon in Mario Kart history and the ‘great leveller’ which ensured nobody could ever get too good at the game. ![]() By waggling the stick while drifting, for example, you could build up a speed boost, a concept that remains to this day (minus the waggle, thankfully). Mario Kart 64 also introduced a number of new ideas that quickly became series mainstays. The characters, meanwhile, were pre-rendered CG sprites (similar to Donkey Kong Country), which changed depending on which direction you viewed them from, to give the illusion that they were proper 3D. Mario Kart R, which would replace the SNES’s Mode 7 courses with fully polygonal ones, ultimately wasn’t ready in time for day one, but when it finally released as Mario Kart 64 it proved to be more than worth the wait.Ĭompletely replacing the SNES game’s engine, Mario Kart 64 used a trick that was common in early 3D games – because the N64 could only handle a certain number of polygons, only the environments were polygonal. When Nintendo first publicly showed off the Nintendo 64 at the Shoshinkai Software Exhibition show in Japan in 1995, it also revealed some of the games planned for the console’s launch. Gimmicks – Four-player multiplayer, blue shell, drift boost.That Nintendo got so much right in its first attempt maybe explains why Super Mario Kart wasn’t just a one-and-done spin-off like Wario’s Woods or Yoshi’s Safari, and ended up spawning one of the industry’s most popular genres. The fact that a green shell goes straight, a red one homes in, a Star makes you invincible and increases your speed, a Mushroom gives you a speed boost.Īnd, of course, the fact that smacking your pal in the backside with a shell in Battle Mode is hugely satisfying. The Grand Prix setup with its series of races and points totals. The 50cc, 100cc and 150cc speed settings, which double as AI difficulty levels. It speaks volumes that many of the core elements of Super Mario Kart remain in the series 30 years later. Gimmicks – The whole concept of an ensemble kart racing game.Character debuts – Mario, Luigi, ‘Princess’, Yoshi, Bowser, Donkey Kong Jr, Koopa Troopa, Toad.Watch on YouTube Subscribe to VGC on YouTube
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