Where Mario Kart Went Wrong

Suffocate Peon wrote: I dislike most 3D I guess, i find them ugly.

you and me both, pal

Pedz wrote:

Suffocate Peon wrote:Can people elaborate on why Toad's Turnpike is gooseberry fool.

Very basic, but a short reason.

I think back to the N64 version of this and thinking I used to like it, am I thinking of a different track? Have they changed something? Or was I just wrong? The track is uninspiring, and the traffic is pointless. It very rarely hinders how you play, so it's just there. You'd think the traffic would make you think on your feet to weave in and out of it to get to the top, but the track doesn't do that, cars and trucks are basically scenery.

Also, Turds Subway is gooseberry fool too.

Yeah Subway is gooseberry fool. Well, for sure now Toad's Turnpike is easy. I didn't think so when I first played it though, and then mirrored racing against the traffic. Just generally, when I've replayed it casually i don't find it easy enough to just breeze through it when hitting a bus.

I actually think I remember that Donkey Racing Racing video !

Trelliz wrote:

Jezo wrote:But anyway, as people have said before, this isn't a fighting game, it's a racing game, where the end goal is set regardless of player interaction. Your goal isn't to defeat your opponent as such, but to reach this set goal post as fast as possible. So the game in its purest form is essentially just time trial. If you assume every player knows the optimal combination and path for every course then only a random factor will actually mix it up to make it even remotely challenging or entertaining.

Paging other gr racers to the thread as I can't rebutt this on my own.

What you're describing is Trackmania, but that is far from representative and missing a lot about what makes racing so much more, regardless of how bad I might be at them, in the same way that saying Zelda is a walking simulator.

Also Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed is better than MK.

Time trialing is an entirely seperate discipline of racing. There is no purity about it.

Also, Mario Kart is a bad game because it rewards luck and randomness rather than skill.

False wrote:...Also, Mario Kart is a bad game because it rewards luck and randomness rather than skill.

I agree to a certain extent, Falsey - but, then again, folk like TWA and Jazzem consistently finish top of the GRcade tournaments each week. There *is* a degree of luck and randomness... but these guys know the best ways of approaching and dealing with this in order to win.

Mario Kart is best enjoyed with friends

False wrote:

Trelliz wrote:

Jezo wrote:But anyway, as people have said before, this isn't a fighting game, it's a racing game, where the end goal is set regardless of player interaction. Your goal isn't to defeat your opponent as such, but to reach this set goal post as fast as possible. So the game in its purest form is essentially just time trial. If you assume every player knows the optimal combination and path for every course then only a random factor will actually mix it up to make it even remotely challenging or entertaining.

Paging other gr racers to the thread as I can't rebutt this on my own.

What you're describing is Trackmania, but that is far from representative and missing a lot about what makes racing so much more, regardless of how bad I might be at them, in the same way that saying Zelda is a walking simulator.

Also Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed is better than MK.

Time trialing is an entirely seperate discipline of racing. There is no purity about it.

Also, Mario Kart is a bad game because it rewards luck and randomness rather than skill.

Okay... care to expand on that at all? Doesn't quite seem like you read my post.

I agree with that last statement though.

I like using the wheel when I play mario kart it makes it feel like a real car

it sounds brilliant, tbh. Damn. It carries the elegance that Diddy Kong Racing had. Racing on animals sounds a bit much but ties in with Donkey Kong Country, and an open jungle styled like the early levels of Donkey Kong Country works as well, having to find the quickest route and briefly crossing paths with other racers in chaotic ways, and riding a swordfish in true underwater courses (as opposed to pointless underwater sections that don't commit to anything and just are an example of ADD design) or riding a wasp like a take on Star Wars or Panzer Dragoon sound fantastic. It's different but ambitious, and the ambition seems like it would carry the changes through as it'd retain the spirit of Donkey Kong Country, be probably visually so impressive, and feel new.

All those ideas wouldn't work for Mario Kart, but i think just that video, with the guy filling in the details, shows Rare taking the best ideas of Donkey Kong Country and expanding them that retains the spirit of the original in a way I think Mario Kart has failed to do.

Been playing CTR Crash Team Racing properly for the first time, and...it's not great. I actually like the ..low fi robust crudeness? of Crash's aesthetic, the desert levels being Wile E. Coyote-like, the industrial tracks having those green hued tunnels found in so many ps1 games. Though it does make Mario Kart 64 and DKR seem almost majestic in their grander executions, especially with the wider range of tone, going eerie and chilling, as emphasized by the music, as opposed to sticking to the repetitive, skittish music that CTR only employs throughout the whole game. Crash is small scale and more basic, the speed burst pads are heinous, the boss battles samey and lame, the speed lacking, the race light count down is bland, the weapons the worst of any kart racer.

But it made me realise what the early 3D games had, which was the spirit of anarchy. Like the difference between concept art and radical graphic design, one is a detailed, elegant, beautiful, realistic, well defined, proportionally perfect painting, that sits neatly from you from afar, untouchable. The other is flat shapes, space, movement, negative space, contrast, all within a flat area, but overlapping to creates conflicting layers. The early 3D didn't have enough power and memory to sculpt dense environments, they had to pick the boldest visual ideas and reduce them to their most striking shapes, and it becomes like graphic design in a 3D space. It creates much more angular jarring compositions. It adds to the dynamism of their feel really. When you watch other early 3d cgi tv shows like Re Boot, it's full of jarring visual design that you just wouldn't get now. I love it.

Yeah..but anarchy, you wouldn't want to smooth out punk bands with their live sessions, first recordings of songs which capture their energy, their rage. You wouldn't want to smother the essence of their excited youthfulness by overdoing it with the studio effects. Wouldn't want to smooth down the edges of who they are, because who they are jolts you.

I never get any anarchic spirit from games, doesn't seem the creative medium to thrash something out, it's slow, technical and laborious. When track environments are so constructed you don't get individual pieces stabbing you in your eyes as you race around, so it's like the difference between a dozen bold objects carving up your eyes along the way or one entire grand painting you pleasantly view from afar. There is a thrill in harsh graphicness, it's not just garish eyesores, it also captures more of the spirit of surrealism, of Dali.

If you think CTR has the worst weapons of any kart racer you need to play more kart racers.

It was my go-to kart racer at uni, I absolutely love it. It's up alongside Mario Kart 8 and Sonic Racing Transformed in my favourite kart racers.

OrangeRakoon wrote:If you think CTR has the worst weapons of any kart racer you need to play more kart racers.

It was my go-to kart racer at uni, I absolutely love it. It's up alongside Mario Kart 8 and Sonic Racing Transformed in my favourite kart racers.

Well, what other kart racers are you thinking of? What examples of rubbish weapons can you think of? It's true; i haven't had a need in the past to play the worst kart racers, it's quite possible there are more lame and naff weapons out there. CTR just ticks the boxes of what to expect, the land mine or oil slick or bananas, now a red or green potion; lame. Missiles become ..missiles or bombs. Doesn't have the richness of Mario Kart with the 3 shells providing protection and being able to fire them off walls (i don't think CTR's projectiles did that..did they?). DKR had the leveling up, homing or 10 missiles, which was fun. The invincibility is the same elsewhere, hardly inspired. Obviously, I realise CTR feeds off the Crash style, but they hardly tried.

CTR continued.... Snowboards Kids is so overlooked really, basically no one played it for it to become more rated among the other kart games. Really excelled with its weapons as well, firing off snowballs that turn characters into snowmen unable to turn as they ride into the track edge, the pan smacking you flat out of nowhere. CTR's version of the pan and MK64's lightning bolt is the orb of electricity that haunts racers and mysteriously slows them down or something. It lacks the satisfaction of crushing everyone or squeezing them down to miniature size. CTR's stationary mine that litters the track as a rogue bomb crate you unintentionally hit, which then hangs above you counting down before it explodes. It's so rubbish.

Snowboards kids had the speed fan which actually worked, and wasn't some tame near invisible brief speed burst. It had the parachute projectiles. All so effective. All the games have the same types of weapons and items...what more could they do ? Has there been one where you can shoot a hole in the track? I'd like to fire it and look back as karts comically fall in. Obviously that would count as track hazard. I always lay them and don't think i've ever got the sense someone has hit them. You throw them in front, behind, before a speed burst, before a jump, after a jump, before a corner, and suppose presumably if they're not there the next lap someone has collided with them.

CTR's most satisfying one is the Aku Aku invincibility whirlwind that propels you at high speed as you jump from 6th to 2nd aiming for anyone ahead. I did like the items being inside crates as opposed to shiny question mark diamonds though. And also really liked the karts, and just the solid simplicity of them, they nailed the jumping and wheelie-ing speed bursts as you land. It copies so much from DKR but gets no where near the quality. The 3 lap tasks as you try to hit the 38 crates that each take off 1-2-3 seconds off as you're asked to hit a certain time aren't nearly as good as the silver coin challenge. I don't like in races hitting a crate to give you 5 apples, 10 maximum for increased speed I take it? DKR's pick-up able bananas throughout is more elegant. Can't get Sonic R working properly, went through it a little, reminded me of it's coins you collect to allow you to open doors for short cuts. See? It's not radical, but it's something, from 21 years ago.

'Arcadey' games are probably what I respond to most, just an instant hit of ideas. What is the Beastie Boys equivalent in a game? I don't want heavy emo death rock or classical music, just something trashy and irreverent. The kart genre is dead isn't it? If you propose Mario Kart is all there is and it's hit a dead end. Often think 90% of games are basically due to developers obsession with Blade Runner, Star Wars or Tolkien. I suppose in short it's wanting more games like experimental music videos rather than like dour overly serious films.

Snowboard Kids is an excellent game, I won't argue against that! It did a really good job of taking the theme and stylings of snowboarding and translating them into a kart racer that makes the game feel unique and consistent in design.

The reason CTR doesn't have the same immediacy of knowing what weapons do is the same reason Mario Kart doesn't either - it takes elements from the franchise and reapplies them in a kart racing context. They make more sense when you think of them in that context, where they are taken from the original platforming games. TNT boxes and potions might seem a peculiar choice and not particularly intuitive, but if you are a Crash fan you will appreciate them for being Crash items, and will probably immediately understand them better.

What I enjoy about the weapons in CTR is their balance. Yes they basically clone the weapons from Mario Kart, so no points for originality, but they work. You can counter most offensive weapons by playing defensively, like well timed dropping of potions, and that's an element of kart racing I enjoy. I also like how having 10 apples will upgrade all the weapons to be more effective variants. It's a much better reward than maxing out coins in Mario Kart for example.

When I said there are plenty of worse examples, I am thinking of the numerous cheap karting games that don't have anywhere near the same level of polish or balance that you can find nowadays mostly on mobile.

Also I wouldn't say the Kart Racing genre is dead, it's just dominated by Mario Kart. Last generation had one of the best kart racers ever made in Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed, and it also had the "Play Create Share" take on kart racing with ModNation Racers and Little Big Planet Karting. I enjoyed LBPK a lot and the track creation makes the two games stand out from the crowd.

Modnation Racers was fantastic, if they can make Knack 2 they can surely make a sequel (as well as a motorstorm hd collection).

Growing up, I liked Mario Kart 64, and I liked Double Dash a lot. In hindsight, Double Dash wasn't that amazing but I still like it a fair bit. It seems to be either a person's highlight of the series (and they'll always mention Bob-Omb Blast) or their least favourite game. I just think it's okay. The double-kart thing is a complete gimmick but it's harmless. The game functions decently and graphically it was pretty lush - it's aged decently as well, like a lot of Mario spin-off games in the GC era.

MKDS was the first Mario Kart game I really liked. It seemed to have everything, content-wise. It looked good and played well. Mechanically, it was more fun than the other games for me. It introduced online play, which I enjoyed a lot. It was limited to 4 players, but for me that was way more enjoyable than the chaotic 12 player online races in later games.

I kind of hated Mario Kart Wii for a few reasons. It didn't feel like a substantial step forward in the series and I found the design of the levels to be tacky. I didn't like the inclusion of bikes because it was Mario Kart and not Mario Kart & Bikes, or Mario Racing or w/e, but more importantly I also didn't like wheelies. Seemed dumb to me. There was usually no reason not to wheelie on a straight and bikes just seemed flat out better than karts, making them redundant.

Nowadays, I think Mario Kart Wii is alright, and that I may have judged it too harshly because MKDS had me expecting a different direction for the series.

MK7 I felt pretty nothing about. I 3 star'd all the cups twice, once on my friend's cartridge when I first borrowed the game from him, and then on my own copy later on. But the game didn't feel like anything special despite some noticeable changes like the addition of gliders and underwater segments. I was like, eh, this is kind of what I expected. A polished and safe Mario Kart.

MK8 I felt similarly about. Like it was just a bigger MK7. Quite gorgeous, but yeah. For the first time in the series, I felt a bit of disappointment with the character roster, but I could live with that. If you really like the Koopa kids then I guess you'd love it. However, the addition of 200cc which came somewhat late into the game's life (for free) made a huge difference. 150cc in the game felt too tame, but on 200cc many of the courses don't feel like they were built for the speed. It's great. It's some raw fun. And braking becomes a relevant feature again as you'll need it for some corners. Honestly, that alone makes it my favourite game in the series since MKDS. The extra course/character DLC is good too though.

I've played the other Mario Karts too - Super Mario Kart and Super Circuit (but not the arcade ones) - and they're alright I guess. Super Circuit is impressive content-wise.

Now I haven't played MK8 Deluxe but the changes seem fairly agreeable to me.

Overall, a decent series which continues to be okay in my opinion.