Super Mario Kart
I can't even remember if it was part of the garage sale haul, or if I bought it on my own afterwards, but Super Mario Kart was my staple SNES game. I played it on my own, sure, but I loved setting up the FC-16's TV mode and playing with friends. There was one curling tournament in high school where we just left Super Mario Kart up in one of the side rooms all day, and it was awesome. I don't think I ever thought it was all that amazing of a game either, it was just neat playing the first game in a series that practically everyone enjoys, and I really liked sharing that experience with friends and family.
Super Mario Kart is, obviously, the smallest and simplest mainline game in the franchise. Due to hardware limitations, the courses are all entirely flat, and they are short enough that you usually needed to race five laps instead of the modern standard of three. There are also only four cups of five races each, with the Special Cup completely inaccessible at 50cc. Taking even more away from the content variety is the fact that most of the races were just rehashed locations with updated layouts (i.e. Mario Circuit 1-4). None of this really bothered me though, as it was so cool playing a pseudo-3D racer on a console that I was only used to cut-and-dry 2D from. Plus, while the racing is well-designed, that's not where the real fun of Mario Kart lies.
What truly set Super Mario Kart apart and made the way for the franchise was the items. Running over a question mark block on the track (similar to the ones Mario can get coins and mushrooms from in the main series) will start a roulette in the top-right corner of your screen. That roulette will eventually stop on an item that can be used either to assist you or to hinder an opponent. The items you find in this game will be familiar if you've played later games in the series but with a few key differences.
First, items probably won't be responsible for any upsets; the major recovery items the series is known for don't appear here, other than lightning and the super star, so if you're in dead last, you probably won't be getting up to the top cut by luck alone. Next, item blocks don't respawn; once a block is claimed, it's disabled for the rest of the race, and you'll need to look for a new one next time around the track. There's plenty scattered about though, especially since the NPC racers don't even use them. That's our final major difference; non-human opponents will periodically get items to use, but they won't be from mystery boxes, and they won't be random. Each character has an assigned item, which can sometimes be exclusive (i.e. NPC Yoshi throws eggs), that they get automatically and use throughout the race, regardless of the presence of item boxes. This also means they won't have access to the few recovery items that are available, so if you made it to the front of the pack, you'll likely lap one or two opponents by the end of the race.
Despite all of its differences from the rest of the series that make it feel pretty dated, Super Mario Kart remains one of my favorite SNES games to go back to. The racetracks and battle arenas might not be as fleshed out or interesting as those in the later games, but there's a certain magic to playing 3D games on a 16-bit console that you won't find in many other places. Even beyond its novelty status though, the game just plays well in general and has a lot of fun to offer, especially when playing multiplayer. With it being available on Switch at no extra cost for every NSO subscriber, it's more accessible than ever, so next time you need something to play with a friend, consider the very first Mario Kart.
