6/11/2007 - Super Mario Kart 2 player match

One of the biggest things that Nintendo has over its rivals is its use of its mascots, particularly the Mario license. For example, if it weren't for Mario being in Super Mario Kart, a lot of us probably wouldn't have discovered the game and it would have been a lost gem, or an interesting experiment or something. I mean, would you play it if it didn't have the Mario characters and was called Super Buster Kart or something?

Well, it's a good thing they didn't do that because Super Mario Kart deserves its status as one of the greatest games of all time. At the time of its release, of course, Mode-7 racers were nothing new. F-Zero came out at the launch of the Super NES, and it was pretty darn good. It wasn't designed to be a realistic racer, but without a true 3-D engine for the Super NES no racer could really be.

So when Nintendo did their next racer, they said "to hell with realism" and created a racing game where you really do battle against other players and this time with WEAPONS! And really, that is the big hook of the Mario Kart series is being able to derail your opponents with shells or bananas and other items. The best weapon, of course, would be the red shell. If you could get the timing down to select the red shell when you hit the Question Mark, you would be a god. And that's what we have in this video:



This is the famous Battle Mode of Super Mario Kart (which I believe is still the best version out there) and the Mario player here can amazing choose the red shell at will! Not only that, he fires it in a way that it doesn't hit Bowser, rather it merely circles around Bowser. Playing Mario Kart battle mode hundreds of times, I can attest as to how rare this occurs, so to see it done consistently is pretty darn spectacular.