In the early nineties, it was just not cool not to have this gaming console. Looking back with a, X-Box or Playstation 3 in hand, most consumers might snicker at how primitive that technology was. The joke's on them, for their contempt is cruelly misguided.
Today it appears that most games aim for amazing graphics (that being a relative and short-lived term these days) and seem to think of game-play and durability as a last resort. Yet in 1992, there came a game that rocked the video-gaming world for all the right reasons.
Reprising all the key characters of the Mario Bros platform saga, Mario Kart equipped them with karts, variable strengths and weaknesses, and threw an array of racing tracks and cups at them. The key element here lies not only in the superbly inventive tracks (standard Mario Circuits, slippery Vanilla Lake, eerie Ghost World and ludicrous Rainbow Road) nor the likable characters, but in the ability to blast one another to bits in a variety of ways.
Beyond the 20 racing tracks (arranged in 4 cups, each playable in 3 widely different levels of difficulty) playable as championships, time trials or duels, it also boasts a delirious battle mode, where each player has his kart fitted with 3 balloons his enemy must pop in order to win. What makes the game so enduring is that a relative amount of precision is required for attacks to succeed (the polar opposite of the "upgraded" Mario Kart for Nintendo 64), so there are always new strategies and cray stunts to discover.
A testament to this game's greatness is that you could play it for days on end, where you would have run out of patience ages ago with any given Wii game. Unsurprisingly, the Nintendo 64 version proved to be massive visual overkill, unable to surpass, let alone equal the original.
A pure classic!
