Tag: mario
Here We Go! 20 All-Time Best Mario Kart Tracks
Mario Kart is celebrating its 30-year anniversary today, August 27, 2022. Below, we take a fond look back at the best tracks where we’ve burned rubber over the years.
Mario Kart is one of Nintendo’s most popular franchises, now having appeared on every major platform since its inception on the Super NES. And that means there are a lot of tracks across the entire franchise, many of which have been revisited in later games with remastered versions. There’s some truly stellar track design throughout the series history, and we’re here to celebrate the best of the best. Here are the 20 best Mario Kart tracks across the entire series.
20. Banshee Boardwalk (N64)
Image Credit: DeafRetroVideoGamer on YouTube
Lots of Mario Kart tracks have been based on the classic Ghost House stages, but none of them did it quite so well as Banshee Boardwalk. The N64 Ghost House stage is full of sharp corners and rickety plans that create odd gaps, making the whole thing feel chaotic and dangerous. Boos fly around the stage to give it some ambiance, but they mostly leave you alone. Maybe they’re just as afraid of go-karts as they are of eye contact.
19. Mario Circuit 1 (SNES)
Image Credit: Supastarrio on YouTube
The OG. There’s nothing flashy about this very basic Super NES track. It’s just a handful of turns delivered with the choppy beauty of Mode 7 on a green field. But it was the first track of the first Mario Kart, and that gives it a certain degree of significance. It’s the one that introduced the world to Mario Kart as a concept, and all the pieces we still recognize as fundamental to the series were there.
18. Koopa Troopa Beach (N64)
Image Credit: GamerJGB on YouTube
This classic from Mario Kart 64 is a quintessential off-road track, a wide open beach where the boundaries are more defined by the shoreline than hard track markers. The flexibility of having so much space to explore meant there was plenty of room for creative maneuvering around opponents, and a few tricky shortcuts rewarded the daring and punished the unlucky.
17. Sunshine Airport (Switch)
Sometimes Mario Kart tracks just take place in random areas that make us think the world of Mario has advanced infrastructure. Take Sunshine Airport, a track that envisions shutting down all Mushroom Kingdom air travel so that you and your friends can do go-karting. The runway makes a nice wide-open track while the parked airliners serve as both obstacles and track pieces. Massive windows inside the airport make the whole thing look nicely lit, and there are tons of little details like the baggage claim area to give it just that tiny bit of added character.
16. Music Park (3DS)
On the other end of the spectrum, Music Park is a fantastical location that doesn’t even pretend to be analogous to the real world. You’ll race across piano and xylophone keys with the music corresponding, navigate around bouncing musical notes, and bound across drumheads. It’s a wildly creative track that really makes use of the concept.
15. Maple Treeway (Wii)
Image Credit: GamerJGB on YouTube
Ah, autumn. The crisp air, the cool breeze, the blue shell screwing you over. Lots of Mario Kart tracks have taken place in lush green forests but Maple Treeway went instead with the bright brown and orange hues of fall. It committed to the concept with leaf piles that served as visual obstacles as well, making for one of the most unique Mario Kart tracks to date.
14. Electrodome (Switch)
Do you like disco balls, groovy tunes, and corkscrew turns? We do, and that’s why Electrodome from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has found its way on this list. This stylish track has a pretty cool layout, with its signature section breaking into two paths that corkscrew to basically run on top of each other. You can see other racers above you, but thankfully you’re using the anti-gravity wheels to not fall into each other. In the final stretch to the finish line, kart racers drive over short steps that play different musical notes before vaulting over a gap toward the checkered flag. Electrodome’s twist-and-turn design has numerous big curves that make it an excellent course for snaking, too.
13. Waluigi Pinball (DS)
We didn’t know that Waluigi was a pinball aficionado either–at least not until we drove through his pinball-board course in Mario Kart DS. This colorful track has narrow, curved paths that resemble lanes inside a pinball machine. It also has a really cool tunnel that pushes your kart to ridiculous speeds before launching you like a pinball. The best section of the track is a wide open area filled with round bumpers that you absolutely do not want to run into. When you exit the bumper-laden section, there are a pair of flippers that attempt to smack you off course (of course).
12. Rainbow Road (N64)
There’s a lot of competition for Rainbow Roads given that the concept is reimagined for every installment of Mario Kart, but the N64 variation is one of the very best. This track ended your journey through the game with a grueling endurance race, one of the longest in the entire game. The turns were well calibrated to offer a good end-game challenge for drifting without any guardrails, and the vision of rainbow-colored fireworks painting the sky was a sight to behold.
11. DK Mountain (GameCube)
Image Credit: GamerJGB on YouTube
Behold, the reason Mario Kart: Double Dash included an odometer at the bottom corner. You don’t actually need to know that your kart is averaging around 40 miles per hour for most of a race, but when you get launched out of a barrel cannon it’s nice to know you’re hitting 200 MPH. That gimmick helps make DK Mountain especially memorable, but the entire track is a delight. The hilly expanse, high banked curves, and treacherous rockslide all make it a race to remember.
10: Coconut Mall (Wii)
An underappreciated gem, the Coconut Mall is another slice-of-life track that does a lot with a simple concept. While a mall may not seem like an especially powerful setting for a race track, the design does wonders by incorporating elements like escalator boosts, wide thoroughfares broken up by decorative elements, and a trip outside to the parking lot.
9. Moo Moo Farm (N64)
Image Credit: Torran on YouTube
It’s hard to put a finger on why Moo Moo Farm is so memorable. Maybe because it’s such an early track in MK64 that we’ve run through it 500 times, maybe because that banjo riff is a legit bop, but the name kept coming up over and over among the GameSpot staff. This track is relatively straightforward compared to some, but it strikes just the right balance with clever obstacles like Monty Moles, loads of tiny hills, and a well-placed underpass where you can set up traps right before the finish line.
8. Wario Stadium (DS)
It’s a nice homage for Mario Kart to include some tracks inspired by ExciteBike and rallycross events, and it’s only fitting that the proprietor of such a location would be none other than Wario. Mario’s doppelganger has big monster truck energy and this track expresses that idea to a tee with big ramps and mud and fire hazards.
7. Tick Tock Clock (DS)
Did Mario and his pals shrink or is this just a really big clock? Either way, it’s a creative idea done well. The track design gets a lot of mileage out of moving parts like gears, and the whole thing is painted in gold and bronze tones to really sell the feeling that you’re go-karting around an old grandfather clock. Hazards like a swinging pendulum and a working clock face that could block your access to boost pads makes it one of the absolute best.
6. Airship Fortress (DS)
Image Credit: GamerJGB on YouTube
Some of the best Mario Kart tracks take a familiar Mario mainstay and turn it into a track, and this is one of the prime examples. Airship Fortress riffs on the flying vessels that have been a signature of Bowser’s army since Mario Bros. 3, and sure enough it makes for a neat, inventive track. From the Bullet Bills that charge towards you right off the starting line to the rickety wood of the airship itself adorned with rows of flames straight out of the NES days, it perfectly captures the feeling of racing through an airship stage.
5. Daisy Cruiser (GameCube)
Image Credit: GamerJGB on YouTube
Daisy doesn’t get much love in Mario lore, but this track sure does. Daisy’s luxury cruise ship lets you race down bifurcated paths rife with shortcuts, go below deck through a ballroom, and then come right back up through the stairs. The concept lends itself to a relatively small-sized track but it makes great use of the space.
4. Toad’s Turnpike (N64)
It’s not flashy, but Toad’s Turnpike is the quintessential example of a simple concept done right. A bustling highway busy with cars, buses, and trucks makes for a particularly hazardous racetrack, especially as you’re choosing when to drift and build up your boost. Pull-off lanes are reserved for item boxes, both creating a choice of whether to pull off or keep more speed going straight. And the trucks are perfectly calibrated to create a tight squeeze at least once in a typical race. It’s just excellent, subtle track design.
3. Rainbow Road (Switch)
That’s right, the latest Rainbow Road reigns supreme. More than simply a multicolored track set in space, this one really thought through the mechanics of a fictitious space station that seemingly exists specifically for go-kart races. The multi-layered track design has branching points, and the anti-gravity concept at the heart of MK8 is pushed to its absolute limit here with vertigo-inducing twists. Plus the track is just undeniably gorgeous, with its rainbow effect looking like LED lights across the entire race track.
2. Bowser’s Castle (N64)
Image Credit: GamerJGB on YouTube
Like Rainbow Road, one Bowser’s Castle had to take the top spot, and the N64 version is the absolute best. This track design has some fitting traps like Thwomps and fire-breathing Bowser statues, while also expressing that the King of the Koopas enjoys the plush life with a red carpet and paintings of himself. The spires that end the track create a distinct break from the more regular thoroughfares within the castle itself, for an almost unprecedented level of variety in a single track. For absolutely nailing its classic Mario concept, this is one of the best tracks around.
1. Baby Park (GameCube)
I want to get hit by a hundred items while going in a circle seven times and I’m not kidding.
Baby Park is one of the simplest concepts in all of Mario Kart, but there’s such elegance in that simplicity that it’s one of our absolute favorites. Items fly fast and furious and ricochet throughout, and the simple track shape means that an absolute perfectly-timed drift could mean the difference between victory and defeat. This is Mario Kart at both its most chaotic and its most skill-testing, creating a blend unlike anything else in the series.
Mario Kart: The Agony And The Anguish Of The Blue Shell
Mario Kart is celebrating its 30-year anniversary today, August 27, 2022. Below, we take a look at one of the most controversial power-ups in video games, the infamous Blue Shell.
There is no single item in all of video games as hated and feared as Mario Kart’s Blue Shell, aka the Spiny Shell. Though it didn’t debut with the original game on the Super NES, the item has become a recognizable icon and a part of the series’ identity. It is the ultimate equalizer, representing not just a single mechanic in a single Mario spin-off, but Nintendo’s entire philosophy of play. Naturally, some people just really hate the damn thing.
The original Super Mario Kart was essentially a pure test of skill, rudimentary as it was. The tracks were flat and it approximated the idea of 3D by rotating and scaling the map around the player’s kart. The items were mostly recognizable, aside from a few oddities like the Feather to jump over obstacles, and specialized items that would only appear for CPU-controlled versions of Bowser or Yoshi. There was no spiny blue shell in the bunch. The most powerful item was the Lightning Bolt, which had an extremely low probability of appearing across the board and only slightly higher if you were trailing behind the pack. It was an equalizer, sure, but its effect was distributed more or less equally. It hit every racer except the one who triggered the item, so whether you were in first place or fourth place, you were impacted.
Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope has a substantial season pass
This Halo Infinite Forge Mario Kart creation is bananas
One clever fan made a Halo Infinite Forge Mario Kart crossover, and it’s so brilliant, it almost makes the wait for the Halo Infinite Forge release date worthwhile. The fan, who goes by bissuetox on social media, posted a minute-long video clip showing their creation in action. They started with a race course set in a field that looks like it came straight out of Nintendo’s classic kart racer, albeit with Halo constructs instead of sentient mushrooms and a fire-breathing turtle.
Bow Wow Announces All-New ‘Millennium Tour’ Lineup Featuring Keri Hilson, Mario, Day26, & More
Mario may have referred to the Omarion-toplined edition of the ‘Millennium Tour’ as “raggedy sh*t” during their VERZUZ battle in June, but it appears the GRAMMY-nominated singer has had a change of heart as he’s listed as one of the headliners for the forthcoming iternation of the highly anticipated North American jaunt.
Once again led by Bow Wow,
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Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – All DLC Tracks Released So Far
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has continued to be the best selling game on the Nintendo Switch, having sold nearly 44 million copies since the end of 2021. It also celebrated its five-year anniversary in April, marking half a decade since it was ported from the Wii U to the Nintendo Switch. It was originally released in May of 2014, meaning it’s been over eight years since Nintendo last released a new Mario Kart game on console.
While the next mainline Mario Kart game isn’t coming anytime soon, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is getting a ton of fresh content from now until the end of 2023. Nintendo announced that 48 new tracks will be added to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, split into six waves of eight tracks. So far, two waves have been released, adding sixteen tracks from other Mario Kart titles as DLC.
The Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Pass gets you all six waves of tracks, whenever they are released. The Booster Pass can be purchased for $25 on the Nintendo eShop and is also included in the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack subscription, which runs $50 a year for a single subscription. While Nintendo doesn’t announce which tracks will be included in each wave until right before the next wave is released, some data miners were able to determine possible future tracks based on some music in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Some of the tracks found were Maple Treeway (Wii), Sunset Wilds (GBA), and Amsterdam Drift (Tour). Here is every DLC track added to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe so far.
Paris Promenade – Tour
First appearing in Mario Kart Tour, Paris Promenade is a course set in the heart of Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the center of the course. The majority of the track is flat, running across brick roads. Paris Promenade has a special feature that many of the Tour courses have, where the path you drive through the track changes each lap.
Toad Circuit – 3DS
Toad Circuit originally appeared in Mario Kart 7 on the 3DS. This shorter course is similar to some of the other character based circuits in Mario Kart, resembling something closer to a real-life race track than what you expect from Mario Kart. You can tell this one is Toad’s track because of his giant balloon.
Choco Mountain – N64
Choco Mountain first appeared on the Nintendo 64 and takes place within a, presumably, chocolate mountain. The course itself is designed to go up and through the mountain before heading back down to do another lap. It features falling rocks in one section and has the vibes of a mountain mine.
Coconut Mall – Wii
Coconut Mall is an iconic track from Mario Kart Wii. This track takes place inside a mall, featuring escalators that can either boost you up or slow you down depending on when you try to go up them. There are also some cars in the parking lot at the end of each lap that can take you out if you aren’t careful.
Tokyo Blur – Tour
Another Mario Kart Tour track, Tokyo Blur, takes place during the daytime in a section of Tokyo. This map features Japanese buildings and a brief stint on a Tokyo highway. Like many other Mario Kart Tour maps, this track has three different paths, so each lap isn’t the same as the previous one.
Shroom Ridge – DS
Shroom Ridge made its debut on Nintendo DS. Similar to Toad’s Turnpike, Shroom Ridge takes place entirely on a busy road, with NPC vehicles driving that can wreck anyone who touches them. Instead of taking place in a city environment, the course takes place on a grassy mountain ridge.
Sky Garden – GBA
Sky Garden originated on the Game Boy Advance, taking place on a giant beanstalk in the sky. This course features bouncy mushroom platformers and a few flying sections. The track features stone roadways on floating clouds, weaving between massive beanstalks, with a few bouncy mushrooms along the way.
Ninja Hideaway – Tour
Ninja Hideaway is another Mario Kart Tour map and this one isn’t based on a real world location. Instead, it takes place in a fictionalized ninja hideout that is far too big for the Mario characters. You race through the hideout and across massive rooftops, as Koopas and Shy Guys cheer from the sidelines.
New York Minute – Tour
Starting off the second wave of new tracks is New York Minute, another real-world map from Mario Kart Tour. This one takes place in the streets of the city, with a small detour with what seems like Central Park. Once again, this map has multiple different routes, changing from lap-to-lap.
Mario Circuit 3 – SNES
An SNES classic, Mario Circuit 3 is one of, if not the, blandest Mario Kart tracks ever made. The map takes place in a dirt area with colored blocks surrounding the track and an outside green pasture with original Super Mario blocks and green pipes decorating it.
Kalimari Desert – N64
Kalimari Desert originated on the Nintendo 64. This desert map has a western vibe to it, as players race around a mountain. The main attraction of this map is a train that constantly circles the track on a set of tracks, occasionally crossing over the actual track.
Waluigi Pinball – DS
Waluigi Pinball originated in Mario Kart DS. This map is designed after the lanky mischief maker and takes place on an oversized pinball machine. The majority of the course is the loading track, where the pinball travels through on its way to the main table. On the main table there are tons of massive pinballs flying around that will wreck anyone in their path.
Sydney Sprint – Tour
Sydney Sprint originated in Mario Kart Tour, taking place in the performing arts area, near the Sydney Opera House. The map sends players through parks and buildings, surrounded by the waterfront and a ferris wheel. Like other real-world inspired Mario Kart Tour maps, this course features multiple paths, changing each lap.
Snow Land – GBA
Originally from the Game Boy Advance, Snow Land takes place in an icy winter wonderland, with penguins sliding around the track. Like some other tracks with ice on them, karts have slightly less traction when on ice. The track has a relatively simple layout, coming from the GBA.
Mushroom Gorge – Wii
Mushroom Gorge first appeared in Mario Kart Wii. This track takes place in a grassy mountain area, with multiple gorges filled with giant mushrooms. These mushrooms are bouncy, and you need to race across multiple mushroom tops in multiple areas.
Sky-High Sundae – New/Tour
Sky-High Sundae is technically an original map for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. The map will be appearing in Mario Kart Tour at a later date, so it’s technically a Mario Kart Tour track but also this is its first appearance. The course takes place on a massive ice cream paradise, floating in the air. The map features tons of jumps and anti-gravity areas.