6.75

Super Mario Kart stands as a fascinating history lesson as the launching point for an entire subgenre of video games, and perhaps Mario’s single most successful series in the modern era of games. However, as a standalone game, particularly in 2024, it is little more than a foundation and proof of concept of the modern kart racer. The graphics are incredibly dated and flat and, while I generally love retro pixel art, the flatness makes it difficult to tell what’s coming up ahead and requires reliance on the map, which takes up a surprisingly large portion of the screen. The driving is also simplistic; while power sliding exists, it’s nowhere near as refined as it would be going forward in games like Double Dash and Mario Kart 8. While the game has a pretty health number of tracks, it’s hard to tell because it only has a small handful of environments that it reuses for multiple courses, which makes it feel very samey overall. You can certainly still have fun with Super Mario Kart in 2024, but unless you’re a history buff or nostalgic for the SNES, there’s absolutely no reason to play it over literally any other mainline entry in the series.