Super Mario Kart

Super Mario Kart is a racing game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System released in 1992 and re-released in 1996 as the Player's Choice. It is also released in Japan on June 9, 2009, in United States on November 23, 2009 and on April 2, 2010 in Europe and Australia as a Virtual Console. It was the first game in the Mario Kart series, and the game that popularized the kart racing style of video game.

Characters
As well as the eight playable drivers, various other Mario series characters appear in Super Mario Kart. Thwomps, Piranha Plants, Monty Moles and Cheep-cheeps are enemies that serve as obstacles in certain tracks, and Boos appear in the background of other tracks, as well as serving as a usable item.

As stated in the Super Mario Kart manual, Lakitu is the owner of the Super Mario Kart Race Track, and as such, he oversees all races. He holds up the starting signal and various other signs, and for the price of two Coins, he uses his fishing rod to lift any fallen drivers back onto the racetrack.

Drivers
Super Mario Kart has eight available drivers, divided into statistically identical pairs of two. These four categories have no official name, but are referred in the manual as different classes. Later Mario Kart titles categorize characters into weight classes to organize their stats.


 * Character attributes

Mushroom Cup

 * Mario Circuit 1
 * Donut Plains 1
 * Ghost Valley 1
 * Bowser Castle 1
 * Mario Circuit 2

Flower Cup

 * Choco Island 1
 * Ghost Valley 2
 * Donut Plains 2
 * Bowser Castle 2
 * Mario Circuit 3

Star Cup

 * Koopa Beach 1
 * Choco Island 2
 * Vanilla Lake 1
 * Bowser Castle 3
 * Mario Circuit 4

Special Cup
Only available in 100cc and 150cc
 * Donut Plains 3
 * Koopa Beach 2
 * Ghost Valley 3
 * Vanilla Lake 2
 * Rainbow Road

Rivals
Super Mario Kart has a different rival system from the rest of the series; the rivals contain one very fast driver, one fast driver, one medium driver, one slower driver and three very slow drivers. It is notable that when one of the three slower drivers gets hit, that kart will keep its place while when one of the faster cars gets shot, it will usually resume its previous place very quickly unless unable to catch up fast enough before the race ends. For this reason, the drivers (except the human racer) will (if unaffected) always finish in the exact same order. Also if the player tries to hit an opponent a majority of the time, they jump over the item.

The rivals for each driver is always the same, the list will be in the order the line up for the first race. It is possible to change the order if the rivals can't recover their place at the end, (Eg. If someone is playing as Luigi and Yoshi finishes last, Yoshi will then become one of the three slower drivers while everybody takes the next position up)

The rivals are determined by the current points standing, meaning that if Yoshi was still only second to the player, he will boost back to first position from the start.

References to Other Games

 * Donkey Kong Jr.- Donkey Kong Jr. makes his first proper appearance in some time.
 * Super Mario World- Yoshi returns, several sound effects from this game are reused, the music in the Bowser's Castle levels is the same music from the final boss in this game and Boos are identical in appearance to as they were in this game.

Trivia

 * In the manual, the picture for Mario Circuit 1 is upside down.
 * All 20 of the courses appeared in Mario Kart: Super Circuit, but all of their track hazards have been removed, Item Boxes are at different places than where ? Panels laid, and some tracks changed a little. The music for all tracks were remixed to make the music sound exactly the same.
 * The game was placed 32nd in the 100th issue of Nintendo Power's "100 best Nintendo games of all time" in 1997.
 * In the book, Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition for 2009, Super Mario Kart was placed as the #1 best console game.
 * The game placed 33rd in the 200th issue of GameInformer's "Top 200 Games of all Time" in December 2009.
 * Super Mario Kart is the only Mario Kart game in the series where each Cup has 5 races to complete, all future installments have only four races per cup except for the All-Star cup which requires the player to race across all race courses.