Glen Atwell
Shaun InguanzoSuper Mario Kart (Review)
December 17th 2006 19:17
Players: 1-2
Genre: Racing
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: SNES
Year: 1992 (USA), 1993 (PAL)
Man do I remember sucking at this game... Also, I think I'm just going to modify/remove review fields now since some of this stuff really doesn't apply to games outside the RPG genre. Having no fields is better than having cluttered ones I figure.
Super Mario Kart is a racing game featuring 8 playable Nintendo characters: Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, Yoshi, Toad, Bowser, Donkey Kong Junior and a Koopa Trooper.
There's a single player mode where you can compete in up to 4 different "cups" as well as a time attack mode. There are also 3 different multiplayer modes: Mario Kart GP (which is like the regular cup mode, but with two players), Match Race (where it's 1-on-1 racing) and lastly, Battle Mode (where you battle against each other in specially designed stages. There are three balloons surrounding each player's character, and the one who pops all three balloons wins. You accomplish this by using Koopa shells or banana peels to attack them).
The graphics are what you'd expect from Nintendo: bright, crisp and colourful. The music is also what you'd expect from Mario. As for replaying the game, there's very little in single player since it's the same all the time but different difficulties. However, like a lot of Nintendo's games, it shines in replay value if you've people to play with.
Score: 7/10
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Comment by Justin
There's 3 if not 4 cups the single player can race for, the battle mode has a long replay value, having friends (or a father) to race against was one of the most addictive features of console gaming. Plus, you could play as 8 characters, albeit with 4 classes and 2 of each class.
Couple this with the Zelda review and I'm shocked by your vicious scoring system this morning. I'm going to have to have a lie down again...
Comment by Nina
Comment by The Daily Sonnet
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Lots of Sonnets
Comment by Ahmed
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Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
ah... Memory lane...
Comment by Cibbuano
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It was great fun, but there was always the one guy that was much, much better than everyone else..
Comment by Ahmed
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Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
Please read the entire review instead of just going off the overall score, since I included pretty much everything you said in this paragraph:
"There's 3 if not 4 cups the single player can race for, the battle mode has a long replay value, having friends (or a father) to race against was one of the most addictive features of console gaming. Plus, you could play as 8 characters, albeit with 4 classes and 2 of each class."
Here are the lines again:
"Super Mario Kart is a racing game featuring 8 playable Nintendo characters: Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, Yoshi, Toad, Bowser, Donkey Kong Junior and a Koopa Trooper."
"There's a single player mode where you can compete in up to 4 different "cups" as well as a time attack mode."
"However, like a lot of Nintendo's games, it shines in replay value if you've people to play with."
I don't really understand your argument when it consists of what I've noted already.
Also, not everyone in the world will consider Mario the greatest game. That goes for any game. You may think a game is a complete waste of time while someone else considers it their favourite game of all time. And of course vice versa. Our gaming preferences differ. Is that a crime?
Ahmed: I'd have to agree with you on it probably being one of the most enjoyable racing games I've played. I'm not too fond of the genre, but I rather enjoyed playing the versus mode and piling red shells into my opponent. Well, and the track too.
Cibbuano: Actually, I had a similar experience since I didn't own the game. Back when I played Mario Kart a fair bit I used to go over a family friend's place every Sunday. So I almost always played it co-op. It's nowhere near as fun without friends playing though, which is why I never bought it for myself (as I rarely got the chance to play games with other people after that guy and one other girl moved away from town for some years). I tend to favour long-lasting single-player because of this.
Comment by Ahmed
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Anyway, Super Mario should technically be thought of as the best game of all time, not because of opinoins, just looking at it objectively it makes sense for it to be that...
Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
I'm pretty sure I mentioned when I first started up this blog that my preferred genres are RPGs and fighting games. Racing games and Sports games are probably my least liked genres.
So a 7 is pretty good coming from me in this case since I'd rate most other racing games that I've played a 5 or below.
Comment by Stanley
i am having flashbacks now.
Comment by Ahmed
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Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
I find good reviews are those where you can see where the reviewer's opinions are coming from. I'd consider a bad review being if I just said "this game is great" or "this game sucks, don't get it" without saying why I thought that way.
Anything that involves personal opinion is subjective. If a game were to be 'reviewed' objectively, it'd have to involve pure stats and no personal opinion at all. Ie, "You can have more than 1 player, you can do this in the game, you can't do this in the game, this game sold 1000 units in this country".
So... You wouldn't be able to say, "This mini-game was fun", "the controls were awkward", "it's fun to play with friends", "the characters were interesting" and so forth since they're all disputable and not facts that objective writing requires.
It'd be pretty damn boring and pointless writing reviews if I could only tell you the technical capabilities and sales figures of the games.
Keep in mind that I haven't told any of you that you're wrong for thinking Mario Kart is awesome -- because it isn't wrong to think differently, obviously. However a few of you have told me that I'm wrong for disagreeing wtih your opinion, for not having as much fun as you did on this game.
Funny how that works.
Comment by Ahmed
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You could say 'such and such minigame was best because it controlled better than other games, it had more polish and neater graphics', you give valid objective reasons for what you would think the majrority think so.
Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
And that is what I aim to do.
"for what you would think the majrority think so."
No.
I am not here to suck up to the "majority".
If I were here for the money I would rate every popular game a 10/10 so that the majority of people would be happy that someone else thinks the same way they do.
But I'm not.
Comment by Ahmed
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Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
I can say that I don't use IGN much, since I'm not sure whether that figure on his review is the mean of all the user submitted reviews, or his own figures. Regardless, there are plenty of user reviews on the site: http://readerreviews.ign.com/rrobj/game/index/568333
Some people rated it a 10/10, some rated it pretty close to the other end. Nothing unusual. All individual reviews too.
So tell me, what makes you think I'm trying to speak for the majority?
I am one person, and speaking for one person's opinion of a game. Wanting me assume others think a certain way or to speak for a majority is pretty stupid and pretentious.
I'd also consider anyone using my review alone to decide whether to buy a game pretty stupid. Just because I like a game doesn't mean you will. If a buyer's checking someone's review before buying a game, it's pretty much guaranteed that they'd check multiple people's reviews to get different opinions about what they liked and disliked about them.
Comment by Ahmed
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You see, Ivan Sulivic is a professional writer, he knows what he's doing and he's held accountable to what he writes unlike 'KillZone_roxorz_3000', so he reviews games objectively, very objectively. Actually the KillZone review is an excellent example of impartial reviewing, Ivan mentions that the game has gotten a lot of hype but it did not sway the review one way or the other, and it generall holds up.
If IGN was in fact for instance reviewing games without objectivity then there would be plenty of 10/10's by the writers, but they are held accountable to what they do put online hence they do their best to not let personal opinoin get in the way. I mean, sure it does, but not to too high a degree.
That is the whole point of being impartial.
Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
Comment by Ahmed
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Anyway, gah, forget it, this is one of those 'we agree, but we just want to argue' kind of things that happens on the internet...
Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
Just take my reviews with a grain of salt like anyone elses is all I'm trying to say, since I view myself as just another nobody on the internet who likes talking about games.
I'll warn you now that there are some more "closer-to-average" (5/10 is average for me, not 7.5) reviews coming up on some platformer games that other people have enjoyed over the years. It's "sameness" that really bores me with games.
Though I can say that there IS one Mario game coming up in review queue that I really quite enjoyed.
Comment by Ahmed
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Comment by Sword Serenity
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Comment by Ahmed
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Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
I had some technical issues playing it though (very small hands don't go well with focused analogue stick play) but that's no real fault of the game. A shame really since I'd have liked to play that one through to finish and see how it went.