Nintendo recently released the first game in the Mario Kart series to its Virtual Console download service for the Wii. Super Mario Kart fills one of the last holes in the SNES Virtual Console marketplace leaving only the likes of Starfox and Earthbound being demanded by old school SNES fans. While Super Mario Kart was one of the great games for the SNES, it did not age nearly as well as games like Super Mario World, Super Metroid, or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Super Mario Kart laid much of the ground work for what you see in the more recent Mario Kart titles. Many of the features that you see in the Wii version are all here. You race a series of 5 tracks and earn points depending on where you place in each race to find out if you have what it takes to win each Cup title. The difficulty is broken up into 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc races over 20 total tracks. All the usual suspects are here including Mario, Luigi, Bowser and a Nintendo newcomer at the time, Yoshi. You will also find all the traditional items like red shells, green shells, and banana peels to help get the competitive edge. There is a great multiplayer element here with the Balloon Battles and head to head racing. All in all this game is what you would come to expect from a good Mario Kart title. But is it worth your hard earned cash?
The answer is no. Put your nostalgia aside, you won’t get much more than a couple of hours of play time out of this game. This was the first game in the series after all and there have been many improvements of the years that have made more recent titles much more enjoyable. The first thing that you will notice when you fire this one up is the game play. It almost feels as if you are spinning the game environment around a fixed character rather than navigating the tracks. The tracks are also very short. Even with doing 5 laps on each race, you won’t spend more than two and a half minutes on the longest of tracks if you expect to win. While it is commendable for Nintendo to stay true to its roots and release 100% original titles on the Virtual Console, some games could benefit greatly from online multiplayer and leader boards. You might be able to find out who the best Super Mario Kart player is in your neighborhood but things get much more competitive when you compare to a bigger audience.
There are a couple of bright spots in this game that could be brought back to make current games more enjoyable however. On the top of this list is the ability to jump over banana peels and incoming shells. Being able to avoid the dreaded red shell should not be under estimated. Then there is the feather power up. This item allows you to jump over walls and over gaps on certain tracks to make up much needed ground or stretch your lead. The cheapness factor was also not ramped up in this game yet. There are NO blue shells to haunt you in your sleep from this title.
My final say on this one is to skip it on the Virtual Console and to go pick up a SNES and a copy of Super Mario Kart from your local pawn shop or thrift store. If you absolutely must have this game, spend the extra cash for the SNES and the cartridge. You will thank me in a couple of years when you have the cartridge sitting on your shelf instead of a digital download on the Wii that you traded in for the next generation console.