Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [52]
Well, if it was a Mario game then some changes had to be made. The oil can weapon used for Spy Hunter-style spinouts would become a banana peel. The weapons that would shoot forward from the karts could be turtle shells, which ricocheted around in Mario’s world. A power star, as in every other game, made whoever grabbed it temporarily invulnerable. A mushroom would parley a burst of speed. A feather would hop you up in the air. Best of all was the lightning: it shrunk everyone save for you. The tracks became Mario-centric as well: one was inside Bowser’s castle, and another aped the Donut Plains from Super Mario Land.
As for the racers? Mario himself was a given, naturally. But the original idea was that each racer would have different abilities, like in Super Mario Bros. 2. That roster—Mario, Luigi, Toad, and the Princess—would be four racers right there. Yoshi, the breakout character from the last Mario game, was a fifth. Bowser the villain would be sixth. A welcome throwback was Donkey Kong Jr. And lacking a better eighth, a Koopa Troopa was given the last spot. (In future installments he was replaced by Mario’s evil twin Wario.)
The characters were all drawn from multiple angles, since otherwise they’d always be facing the camera (as in games like Doom) and thus would always look like they were racing you backwards. This was a revolutionary idea for 1992, if you’ll pardon the pun, despite also giving them a distinctly underrendered look. Single-player gamers were given an aerial view of the whole map, with all eight characters ratcheting for pole position. Kōji Kondō even wrote music that sped up in the final lap.
Between the one-person computer races, the cup races, and the two-person options, players had a nearly endless combination of races to try. Miyamoto and company were cognizant enough to realize the real challenge lay not from the weapons, but the buddy sitting next to you. He (or very often she—Super Mario Kart is famously popular with women) is out to get you in ways you’ll never guess. The Guinness World Records lists Super Mario Kart as the most influential title in gaming history, beating Tetris and Grand Theft Auto. (There are five other Mario games on the list, and another seven Miyamoto-associated titles.) Over fifty kart-racing titles have come out since then, for everything from Nicktoons to South Park.
Super Mario Kart, combined with Dr. Mario, showed that Mario was able to exist as a character beyond Jumpman. The clever idea of having the Mario crew be racing rivals served to further deflate Bowser: who could be scared of this guy squatting in a little putt-putt ride? It helped free later Mario games from having any real semblance of danger. You never want to lose, but aren’t scared that Mario will get hurt. By who, his impotent go-kart buddy over there?
Nintendo at this point was in the odd position of being America’s most favorite and least favorite company. Most everyone loved their products, and it was clear that the NES and Game Boy games had some extra advantage to them that Sega and NEC lacked. Nintendo had made gaming a lifestyle, a community, not just something the friendless did. This was parodied in Gary Larson’s Far Side comic: proud parents watching their son play the NES dream of a newspaper want-ad section (from the future of September 2, 2005). “Looking for good Mario Brothers players. $100,000 plus your own car.” “Can you save the princess? We need skilled men and women. $75,000 + retirement.” “So you laugh in the face of killer goombas? Call us.”
On the other hand were more problems than even a Power Glove could hold. First of all, Nintendo was a Japanese company, when Japan