We take a look at the innovations that have shaped the Mario Kart franchise throughout the years.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/28540
Mario Kart 7 comes out today, and everyone is really excited for it. Neal Ronaghan already played the game and gave it a favorable review. It can be hard for a franchise to have this many entries and still be relevant while inspiring nostalgia in players. Nintendo's philosophy is to re-invent their franchises (either drastically or in small doses) in a manner that makes them appealing but still familiar to players all over the world. Mario Kart is no exception. In honor of the seventh entry finally being a reality, we take a look at the innovations sprinkled throughout the Mario Kart games, and see which ones became staples of the series and which were dropped once they grew to be superflous.
Super Circuit - You could recover from slipping on a banana skin sometimes, by tapping down and brake. This has never been done since, shame. I love this game because it's a true sequel to SMK!
I used to see Nintendo as a company that made every game count. They either did something brand new or if it was a sequel or spin-off the gameplay was unique enough or improved enough to stand on its own. On the NES, SNES and N64 Nintendo rarely made a throw-away title and they were not only good at mixing stuff up with their sequels but it came across as so natural. It was rarely forced.
I think on the Gamecube is when they started to lose it but it wasn't due to a lack of trying. They clearly tried to do something different with games like Wind Waker and Super Mario Sunshine but it came across as forced. Nintendo couldn't effortlessly change things up. Double Dash is another great example. Clearly Nintendo didn't want to just make "More Mario Kart 64" because that's not how Nintendo did things back then. But no obvious improvement or innovation was coming to mind so they come up with the double kart thing and the whole things feels incredibly forced.
It is the last time Nintendo really tried with Mario Kart because Nintendo changed afterwards. After struggling to innovative every time out with the Gamecube Nintendo switched to releasing product for the sake of product. Mario Kart is now disposable. If you miss one game it doesn't matter because the goal is to just to get a Mario Kart out for each system.
The options were to either not make Mario Karts anymore because they've pushed the concept as far as it makes sense to or make generic Mario Karts. Since one involves abandoning an established brand I can see why they chose what they did.
What don't you like about it? Really creative (and relevant to the franchise) tracks and the best battle mode in the series (though I haven't played MK7 yet). The only way I could see it being any better would be to modernize the online system.
I really love how vastly people feel about different Mario Karts. While the games are all primarily similar, they each generally have enough individual differences to make them unique. It's kind of awesome.
I KNOW that Mario Kart is all about the multiplayer, but especially in the newer games you unlock karts and characters through single player, so going through that to get the best is really frustrating.
I wonder if fixes the flaw in MK DS and Wii that online the game ascends/descends (depending on your viewpoint) into less being about fun and more being about how few mistakes you can make to win and get higher up the ranks only to run into nothing but those who play the game to precision-perfect to the point they suck the fun out of it.You mean like Starcraft?
If I didn't have anything to unlock in the game, the likelihood of me playing single-player at all is slim. It's nice having some sort of reward, no matter what it is.
In MY case, I can't stand Mario Kart Wii. It is just a very unfair game. It is rubber band-ing at its worst.The interesting thing about this statement is, Mario Kart Wii actually has very little (or possibly none) rubber-banding, certainly less than previous games in the series. Unless you're not talking about AI scripts and instead the general notion of keeping the racers together, which would be something more subjective.
I wonder if fixes the flaw in MK DS and Wii that online the game ascends/descends (depending on your viewpoint) into less being about fun and more being about how few mistakes you can make to win and get higher up the ranks only to run into nothing but those who play the game to precision-perfect to the point they suck the fun out of it.You mean like Starcraft?
