Mario Kart Disaster

Mario Kart is one of the staple series from Nintendo. Its first entry came on the Super Nintendo and has since seen some further addition to the franchise on near every Nintendo console. Having owned every addition to the franchise, it is clear that there are some pressing issues in the past few installments that Nintendo just seems to not want to address.

Since the Super Nintendo Mario Kart, the Mario Kart series has seen massive improvements in the terms of graphics, customization,  multi-player accessibility, and even just building itself up as a game with more and  more option. While there  have been many attempts to steal success from their success, such as Crash Team Racing, Nintendo has been unwilling to add a central story line or other mini-games of that variety, but that is not the pressing issue in the game play today.

Many have noted it, but nothing has been done to fix it. The game play is now totally unbalanced. Nintendo has a reputation for trying to balance game play for all its members, especially as the online community has grown and they have been forced to push their games online. Their efforts led to an over regulation of the game play though, which ironically has led to the exact opposite of what they were trying to do. In short, their attempt to balance game play has led to an unbalance of game play.

While offering many car options and characters to drive with, none of that matters if the successful are constantly punished. Too often when playing the recent installments have the driver in first place found themselves bombarded with items at the very final stretch. While it may be ok to give lower ranked players better items to catch up, why is it ok to also in the process punish the better drivers by hitting them 37 times in a row when the finish line is in front of their eyes? Exaggeration – yes. But does that nullify the point? No.

Being a skillful driver and being in first place for 98% of the race, only to fall behind to not second place, but third, fourth, fifth, or even lower due to items all colluding at once to hit you seconds away from the finish line, is not what balanced or even fair game play is.

Many have noted this obnoxious trend in the recent additions, but yet nothing has been done to address the issue. Personally, it has led to a refusal to buy any more additions unless a review comes out stating that the problem has been fixed. A series built on fun driving, competitive racing with a Mario twist, and itemized chaos (though still fair) pushing the kart to the point of needing car repair, has turned into a predictable mess every single race. Unless this issue is corrected, especially with the rise of internet game play, Nintendo can expect more people to follow suit in not picking up the next copy, and for reviews to drop on the later installments.