Super Mario Kart

Honest and Unpopular Reviews No. 12 Super Mario Kart (SNES) Mario Kart peaked in 1992. You press start and you're racing. No opening movie, no tutorial, no drivers to unlock, no menu asking what kind of experience you want. Pick a character, pick a cup, go. This is the only Mario Kart where driving decides the race. No drift boost, no assist steering, no rails on the track. You learn Ghost Valley or you fall off it. Rainbow Road has nothing on either side of you. Driving matters. The coins are the part everybody forgot. Coins make you faster and getting hit takes them away. Speed is something you hold onto instead of something an item box hands you. No blue shell. Nothing in this game exists to punish you for being in first. That got added later because Nintendo decided last place needed to be able to win, and people who grew up on that think this game is unfair. Battle mode is the other half of it. Three balloons, a flat square, and whatever the item box gives you. Thirty four years of bigger arenas and better graphics and none of it improved on battle mode. Double Dash is the second best one and it's not close. Two characters, the item swap, a co-op idea nobody has touched since. Mario Kart 64 gets called the best by people who played it four at a time on a sleepover and never touched it alone. My wife and I still use Super Mario Kart to settle our disputes. Whatever we can't agree on, we run it and that's the end of it. I rate this one a 4 out of 5.