POV: Ah, the Glory Days Before Dawn of the Blue Shell!
On my way back home this weekend I was strolling past a CeX (Computer Exchange) shop when I caught a glimpse of something in the corner of my eye. For the decent price of £25, I happened upon a fully complete in box version of Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Given my love for retro games and that this was the last Mario Kart game I needed to complete my collection: I knew I had to make the purchase.
After thoroughly cleaning the cartridge, I popped it into my SNES and started up the game. As is true with all retro games, I was able to jump straight into the action: 1 player, 100cc, Mushroom Cup. I chose Donkey Kong Jr. (a character we don’t often see nowadays) and got to racing. The first thing I noticed was how strange the track looked. Old 16-bit systems did not have the power to run full 3-D games, polygons and all, so instead they cleverly designed 2-D images to look 3-D (similar to the original DOOM). This was very clear in the way that various barriers looked completely flat and how objects such as pipes and thwomps seemed to slowly creep towards you in increments of frames rather than smoothly increase in size as you get closer.
Other than the look of the track, the driving was initially jarring too. Coming from playing a lot of Mario Kart 8, getting used to this older drifting system was quite the challenge. There are no boosts from drifting and your drift is not held if you press the other direction; instead you just fling off to side, frequently going off-road and losing a lot of speed. This meant that I had to work hard at mastering the use of hopping back into a straight position after a turn.
The soundtrack is where this game truly shines! Each type of track (e.g. Mario Circuit, Bowser’s Castle e.t.c.) has its own song. The soundtrack absolutely bops and remains a classic to this day. While I am writing this article the title theme is playing in the background, (much to the dismay of my fellow editors)!
With all its positives, Super Mario Kart clearly shows a lack of polish the more recent iterations in the franchise have been blessed with. Spinning out after hitting an obstacle can be very disorientating, people prone to motion sickness beware! Not only that but when you get hit by an obstacle or fall off the stage, it takes so long to recover that your race is basically over. With all of that said I still had an amazing time with the game. I don’t think that I have played for long enough to consider myself any good at it but I am definitely going to play more so that I can improve. I imagine the 2-player mode is very hectic; sadly I haven’t found anyone willing to play it with me yet!
I hope everyone has had a great week and be sure to check out some games coming out this month!
