Hey there, everyone! Today, I’m going to share my ranking of the mainline Mario Kart games, spanning from the very first installment to 8 Deluxe. I’ll be arranging them from what I consider the least enjoyable to the ones I liked best. I’ll delve into why certain entries stood out to me, whether positively or negatively. Hope you enjoy the ride through my ranking of Mario Kart!
9 : Super Mario Kart
The one that started it all, the one that has Donkey Kong Jr., the one that also has creatively named tracks like “Donut Plains 1”, “Vanilla Lake 2”, and oh, who could forget “Bowser Castle 3”. Super Mario Kart hasn’t aged that well, but it deserves recognition for redefining how fun a racing game can be. Mario & Friends were well established by the time the SNES was released, so putting everyone in go-karts and racing them on colorful tracks while throwing items is still a formula used today.
The controls do take some time to get used to, but they are highly responsive and among the best that Super Nintendo has to offer. While the tracks are somewhat bland and flat due to the primitive technology of the Super Nintendo, they pushed the system’s capabilities to their fullest. The only thing I don’t really like about Super Mario Kart is the computer players; they become frustratingly difficult after you reach 150cc, and they have exclusive items like a fireball or an egg that you can’t use. I don’t understand why Nintendo decided not to give the player access these items; perhaps it was to make the CPUs more intimidating? Either way, this is one of the best Super Nintendo games out there and truly innovated the genre.
8 : Mario Kart: Super Circuit
I’ve only just realized today that Mario Kart: Super Circuit has “super” in the title because it looks and feels so much like Super Mario Kart. I’m not sure how I missed that, but anyway, here’s a Mario Kart game I played a ton when Nintendo re-released it for the Nintendo Switch. Being the first handheld Mario Kart was a HUGE game-changer. For starters, this is a really visually appealing game for the Game Boy Advance; the backgrounds are vibrant, the character animations are clean, and there is a great variety of tracks. I mean, we have tracks like Ribbon Road, Sunset Wilds, Cheese Land, and Shy Guy Beach—each memorable in its own right. You couldn’t ask for a more memorable lineup, and hey, you can even unlock every single track from Super Mario Kart.
The controls are similar to those of Super Mario Kart, which require a bit of a learning curve. I like how the jumping feels more weighted, making cutting corners more satisfying. The addition of Quick Run also makes Super Circuit shine, as you can now jump into a few random tracks for a quick five minutes without having to go through the entire Grand Prix. Sure, there was Time Trial in Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64, but it’s not quite the same as playing with others.
7 : Mario Kart 64
If there’s one thing Mario Kart 64 will always be the king of, that is the battle mode and character soundlines, I mean seriously, all of the characters are just so enthusiastic and excited, Mario is so happy about this game that he narrates the menu. While super Mario kart had a great battle mode, it doesn’t lay a finger on block fort, there is nothing more fun than getting 4 or even just 2 friends together to play some battle mode, you got the green shells and bananas which allows you to spam the track with garbage to pressure your foes, then there’s the stars which you have to use strategically because anyone could get them at any time, and the boo item throws the whole map into a loop, now if there’s more than 3 players, the first to lose their balloons turns into a freaking moving bomb for even more havoc. Like you really can’t top this!
And that concludes my highest praises, now on to the rest of the game, the character selection is a bit small for the Nintendo 64, and the controls are just ok. They do their job but drifting is just a nightmare to get used to. on higher speeds if you turn one direction and immediately the other, you can skid yourself to a complete stop, like whats up with that? now while a lot of the tracks are classics, there are also a handful of boring ones, besides places like Wario Stadium, yoshi valley, and rainbow road, everything else is either bland or really unfair, and why isn’t there a VS option for computer players? if they already have the mode in the game, why not? I mean don’t get me wrong, I love this game to death but it does have a few glaring issues.
6: Mario Kart 7
This, along with Mario 3D Land, is what convinced me that the 3DS was amazing. Mario Kart 7 does a great job of evolving racing mechanics in a way that’s deep yet simple for anyone to understand. When you go off certain ramps, your kart now busts out into a glider which you can fully control in the air. This allows you to choose between gliding for a long period or diving down for a quick boost of speed. There’s a really fun and natural balance to it. Also, your kart can drive through water without slowing down to a halt, giving it a more floaty feel. As obscure as this character roster is, I kind of like its uniqueness. There might not be Waluigi, but we can play as Honey Queen and a Wiggler, which is pretty neat.
And of course, the track selection is simply remarkable. We’ve got WooHoo Loop and Maka Wuhu—you drive through Wuhu Island, and yep, that’s all I gotta say. Then there’s Music Park, a fantastic track made entirely out of musical instruments, Wario Shipyard featuring loads of sunken ships to explore, Neo Bowser City with its blinding neon lights and heavy rain, and of course, the best rendition of Rainbow Road. With all that said, there are two main gripes I have with this game. The first being the lack of a versus mode—where is it? Is it hiding somewhere? I mean, sure, there’s Time Trials and online, but a normal versus mode with computer players should’ve been included.
And my God, the Blue Shells can be so obnoxious. I’m all for Blue Shells helping to balance out the gameplay, but they are especially excessive in Mario Kart 7. I swear, at least two or three are spawned per race, and it’s almost always on the third lap, which can completely destroy your chance of getting first, no matter how well you’re playing. But those are small prices to pay for one of the best games on the 3DS.
5: Mario Kart 8
Outside of the inclusion of the worst Mario character ever conceived, Pink Gold Peach, Mario Kart 8 is one of the most popular Nintendo titles out there. While it didn’t evolve its racing mechanics too much, the new twist here is that your car can go in anti-gravity. Not only does this look really cool, but you can also run into other racers and get a speed boost. The new items in Mario Kart 8 are especially great (wink wink Superhorn wink wink). I mean, it’s about time there’s a way to defend ourselves from the Blue Shell.
The Boomerang Flower and Piranha Plant are solid additions too. Oh boy, the track selection is straight-up dope. You want to talk about pushing the hardware capabilities? This cranks the Wii U’s limits and then some. Every track is breathtaking, highly polished, and a ton of fun. Quite frankly, there’s not a single bad track in this entire game—only a few mediocre ones, in my opinion, and that’s an impressive feat knowing how harshly I rate stuff. I mean, come on, Mount Wario, Electrodrome, Sunshine Airport, Cloudtop Cruise—these are all absolute slappers. But wait, there’s more—we also got retro tracks and DLC on top of that. The retro tracks, for the first time, are revamped so much that some of them don’t even feel like the originals. And the DLC was… well, very fairly priced, and it also gave us some amazing new tracks like Big Blue, Hyrule Circuit, Super Bell Subway, and the list goes on.
The online, for the most part, is pretty solid as well, although there are occasionally weird collision issues with items. The only problem with Mario Kart 8 are the battle tracks—because they aren’t battle tracks. Instead, we’ve got eight random courses from the main game slapped in instead, so the battle mode is pretty lame. The core racing has also been so well optimized in Mario Kart 8 that it’s going to be tough for Nintendo to improve the physics for their next game. And no, Mario Kart Tour doesn’t count as a real game.
4: Mario Kart: Double Dash
I’ve seen a lot of conflicting opinions about Mario Kart: Double Dash. Some people say the controls are too sensitive and it’s overrated, but this is personally one of my favorite GameCube games. Double Dash took the biggest steps with new ideas out of any of the Mario Kart games. The biggest addition is the inclusion of two characters per kart, and you can swap them out on the fly. Each character adds a special item too, like a Bowser Shell, Fireball, or Giant Banana. If that wasn’t enough, for the first time, you can pick between several different karts as well. All these new concepts lead to an additional layer of strategy before racing. Do you pick all light characters that can be pushed around but have great acceleration? Or do you go with a heavy character that moves faster but has lower acceleration? Pairing that with special items makes for endless opportunities.
The tracks are also pretty cool. There are so many great ones like Mushroom Bridge, Peach Beach, and one of my favorites, DK Mountain, for example. For the first time, you can unlock characters, karts, and even battle mode stages. And then there’s the All Cup Tour—a giant marathon where you have to play every single track. Beating that earns you the Parade Kart, yes, the same kart where the top three players ride in after the Grand Prix from the first three games of this series. I’ll mention the controls really quickly since some people don’t seem to like them. I personally have no issues with the sensitivity. In fact, I think it’s a good thing since you can move more subtly with precision. And the drifting is awesome in this game; you can whip out as many drifts as you want at any time.
And I haven’t even brought up the great Battle Mode yet. I haven’t played it very often since the game hasn’t been on any other consoles, but I’ve heard the Bomb Blast was a big highlight and have played with U a couple of times. And the fact that you can play this game with LAN cables with up to 16 people—that is mind-boggling. Double Dash really pushed the envelope with this one, so here’s hoping Nintendo comes back to the double cart concept in the future.
3: Mario Kart Wii
Next up is the best-selling title in the franchise, Mario Kart Wii. Part of the reason it’s on the Wii, which was the second best-selling console, and also that it’s a supremely good Mario Kart game. The new gimmicks have had a lasting impression. Some of those being 12 racers at the same time, adding bikes to the mix, and the ability to trick off ramps. What’s great about the bikes is that they aesthetically look different from the cars and play differently too. Turns are much sharper with bikes, and you can even do wheelies for a little extra speed. The addition of tricking off ramps adds so much to the gameplay because you’re incentivized to do these for a speed boost. The bigger the trick, the larger the boost.
This is when Mario Kart courses started to get quite expansive, featuring favorites like Coconut Mall, Wario’s Gold Mine, Maple Treeway, and also having DK Mountain making a return. The character roster is also freaking giant, and it has Funky Kong, only the best Kong of all time. People enjoy Mario Kart Wii so much that there are dedicated servers using CTGP, and people are still playing this game online today. There are also thousands of custom tracks, but that’s getting off-topic. I will admit, though, that the new items are kind of lame. Nobody really likes the Pow Block or Thunder Cloud, but the Bullet Bill is a better version of the Chain Chomp, I guess. While the Battle Mode is nice because of the large selection of tracks, it also forces you to use a timer and play with 12 racers. I’ve never really liked Battle Mode with more than 8 racers because it’s just WAY too hectic and almost impossible to use any real strategy, especially when players respawn after losing all their balloons. Overall, Mario Kart Wii is an important staple to the franchise as a whole, and that intro cutscene with Mario and Luigi driving with the Wii Wheel is PRETTY cool.
2: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
I won’t have much to say here since Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is so similar to the Wii U version, but this port is phenomenal because it fixes nearly every problem. The original didn’t have battle tracks, so this one does, and it adds brand new battle modes on top of that. Battle mode still forces 12 players, which makes things too chaotic, but it’s miles better than what we had before. Now, maybe you didn’t want to pay for Mario Kart 8’s DLC—well, you don’t have to this time. All the DLC comes packed in with the game, including the new 200cc mode, which I’m really bad at because Mario Kart hates me and is very rigged.
There are also new characters like Inkling from Splatoon (who I had to look up the name of) and my boy King Boo. We can also now use double items, and the game’s graphics have a little extra polish. The game also has its own brand new DLC that’s pretty good and features old tracks from previous games. You do have to get a new Switch subscription to play the tracks for it, though, so that’s bull, and it doesn’t have DK Mountain, so no deal. The game still has the same weird item collision issues, but for the most part, it’s a fairly smooth and fun experience. Now, before we go to number 1, let’s throw out the honorable mention.
Bonus : Mario Kart Arcade Games
GP 1, 2, and 3 are all very similar, so I feel like it makes the most sense to group them all together. If you ever wanted a Mario and Pac-Man collaboration, this is the game for you. Since Bandai Namco develops these games, they include characters like Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Blinky, and other random characters nobody cares about. The games themselves are all fairly flat, and a lot of them are repeats of each other, but they’re pretty fun.
Each game has around 50 to 100 items, which might sound really exciting, but you can only use a few of them per race per character. There are also boss fights with Bowser, challenges, and you can play multiplayer. I kind of like that these arcade cabinets exist; I just wish everything was unlocked from the start and you didn’t need to use Mario Cards to keep a hold of your save data. And I haven’t even brought up Mario Kart Arcade VR; that is a whole different topic. Anyways, let’s move on to number 1.
1 : Supa Mayro Kratt
We are finally down to the last game, and the best one in the series. This game has some of the best tracks in the Mario Kart franchise, including “Grass World,” and who can forget the memorable “Yoshi World”? The physics are also incredible, with smooth drifting. This game also has just an amazing character selection, with over 4 characters, including Mayro, Goshi, Loogi, and finally Bow Wow, the person I always play as in the game. This game also has some insane CCs, including 1CC, 40234CC, and the one I play normally, ∞CC.
Supa Mayro Kratt has been out for over 10 years and still holds a big place in my heart. It is incredible to think Mario Kart has come so far to this moment, and I can’t believe things like this exist in our plane of existence. I am so grateful to Nintendo for making this game, and it is truly a piece of art. When I was younger, I had no knowledge of this amazing game, and now that I’ve played it, I’ve realized that I had been ignoring a piece of absolute art. Special thanks to all of the creators of the game. I hope you all have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you all very, very soon. Later! (also 8 deluxe is my real favorite.)
