Super Mario Kart (SNES) Playthrough
1,465A playthrough of Nintendo's 1992 mascot cart-racing game for the Super Nintendo, Super Mario Kart.
This playthrough goes through each circuit in the 100cc and 150cc modes:
100cc
Mushroom Cup (Mario) 0:39
Flower Cup (Bowser) 11:56
Star Cup (Koopa Trooper) 24:19
Special Cup (Toadstool) 36:14
150cc
Mushroom Cup (Donkey Kong) 49:41
Flower Cup (Toad) 1:00:54
Star Cup (Yoshi) 1:12:46
Special Cup (Luigi) 1:24:03
As I think most people are already aware, this classic not only kicked off the mega-popular series that's still going strong to this day, but it also established the kart racing genre itself.
(And remember Sega's TV commercials that made fun of Super Mario Kart for being so slow? *oof* Hindsight, eh, Sega?)
Super Mario Kart took the ideas behind F-Zero, a smooth Mode 7-based racer with explosions, and turned it into a family-friendly multi-player racing game that emphasizes combat. It was a pretty ingenious twist to the formula that resulted in SMK's becoming one of the must-buy titles of 1992, right alongside A Link to the Past, Street Fighter II, and Sonic 2.
There are twenty tracks split between four cups to race on, and they're mainly based on stage themes from Super Mario World, though Rainbow Road also gets its start here as the last course of the hidden Special Cup.
You can race as one of the eight members of the ensemble cast that includes not just heroes Mario and Luigi, but also villains Donkey Kong and Bowser, the henchman Koopa Troopa, random supporting characters Yoshi and Toad, and Princess Toadstool. Apparently they caught her on a day when she wasn't already busy being kidnapped.
Each of the characters handle differently. Bowser and DK are slow to accelerate but they can bash their way through other racers, while Princess is light and speedy but spins out easily. Mario and Luigi are the bearers of balance, as you might expect.
The races are brief and circuits rarely last more than ten minutes or so, so things tend to stay pretty fresh over the course of the game. No two races ever turn out quite alike thanks to the unpredictability introduced by the item system. Banana peels, koopa shells, speed-burst mushrooms, invincibility stars, and coin caches are all useful in stomping your way up the leaderboard. Of course, they can knock you down it just as quick if you aren't careful.
(Thankfully, the blue shell does not exist in this game!)
It's all light and breezy fun with some unexpected depth hidden beneath the cartoony surface. The single-player modes have a good bit of substance to them, the split-screen multi-player modes are a blast (my sister and I always loved the battle mode!), and the impressively fluid pseudo-3D graphics and the fantastic soundtrack provide it the level of polish that Nintendo was always famous for.
No matter how the later installments might sway your opinion of the series, the original Super Mario Kart was a landmark game for both Nintendo and for the 16-bit generation.
And it just goes to show that Mortal Kombat isn't the only game that can get away with changing Cs into Ks in order to be kool. I mean, nobody plays Super Mario Cart, do they? (That looks really weird.)
I thought that this would be perfect for New Year's Day - fresh beginnings and all that - so this is a brand new recording at far higher quality than my original video.
Happy New Year!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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