Famicom Grand Prix (series)

The Famicom Grand Prix series is a short Japan-only racing game series of the Super Mario franchise released solely on the Family Computer Disk System. It spans two games, both of which are quite different from each other in gameplay and content despite the shared genre and branding. Both games were subject to a tournament shortly after release. The two games may be based on a previous, much more basic racing game on the Family Computer, ' by HAL Laboratory, which had no relation to Super Mario until its Game Boy port added cameos of several characters, as well as ' from the same development team.

Legacy
The two games would provide the backbone for later vehicular racing games produced in-house at Nintendo. Two notable examples were on the Disk System's successor, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (or Super Famicom) through use of its "Mode 7" graphics layer. The first, , was inspired by complaints from Nintendo of America that the cars in 3D Hot Rally looked too "cute," so the game was given a space-themed aesthetic to appeal to mature audiences. The gameplay is a mixture of the two games, having the circuits and limited resources (in this case, antigravity power) of the former game and the camera angle and physics of the latter. Another successor on the same system, this one within the Super Mario franchise, is Super Mario Kart. This one has a similar mix of traits, but it instead plays up the levity by removing the limited resources and changing the vehicles to go-karts, with a cast entirely of Super Mario characters racing each other with the help of comedic items. Both of these games would go on to spawn their own respective series. While the Famicom Grand Prix series itself has ended in favor of the Mario Kart series, the Monster vehicle from the second game makes sporadic appearances in the franchise, such as a miniaturized version called the Tiny Titan appearing in Mario Kart Wii.