A quick and complete history of Mario Kart ahead of Mario Kart World

After over ten long years, the future of Mario Kart is finally here. Indeed, the gap between Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart World has been the longest in the franchise’s history. Sure, we received Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Kart Tour, and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, but none of these were intended to be the next big Mario Kart game. Mario Kart World is exactly that, and with a new era for the series soon beginning, we figured it’s a great time to look at the development history of the Mario Kart franchise as a whole. There’s an absolutely huge amount of information here, so we’ll be telling the condensed version of Mario Kart’s history.

The history of Mario Kart actually begins with F-Zero, which was a launch title on the SNES. Thanks to its impressive scrolling and scaling technology, F-Zero felt ahead of its time, and it was received well by fans and critics. Following its success, Nintendo began pondering ideas for a two-player racing game – and after visiting a real go-kart course and programming driving physics for several months, the team eventually made the decision to include Mario characters and courses in the game. The final game wound up at a much slower pace than F-Zero, but it wound up immensely popular. The development team faced many technical challenges in order to get split-screen multiplayer working, but it was worth it – Super Mario Kart was the beginning of what would become Nintendo’s biggest cash cow.

The next Mario Kart game took somewhere around four years to develop, and it was a huge step up from the original Super Mario Kart. Though Mario Kart 64 had an identical roster to Super Mario Kart (aside from swapping Donkey Kong Jr. for Donkey Kong), its improvements were found in the graphics and gameplay departments. If you play Mario Kart 64 right now on Nintendo Switch Online, you might notice that the drivers look a little flat. This was much more easily masked on old-time CRT monitors, but they’re actually 2D sprites! In this game, the Nintendo 64 has to render eight racers, the course they’re playing on, and up to four different point-of-view screens if four players are participating. Converting the drivers to 2D sprites saved on memory and resources, which wound up making the game work as well as it does. Unfortunately, midway through development, one of the team’s storage devices failed, and somewhere around 80 percent of the character models and sprites were lost and had to be remade from scratch. This was a huge setback for development, but the team carried on and finished the game anyway. Mario Kart 64 received a similarly positive reception to Super Mario Kart – its biggest strength is its multiplayer, which still holds up fairly well to this day. That being said, if you play Mario Kart 64 now, you might notice that it doesn’t have a lot of exclusive or unique content or features that make it stand out. So while its reception was definitely positive at the time, some players these days think it’s one of the weaker entries in the series. That being said, Mario Kart 64 is still a fun and addictive game that can easily hold your attention for a while.

Mario Kart: Super Circuit was the next game in the Mario Kart series, and it took Nintendo over five years to release. In fact, Nintendo didn’t even develop the game. It was Intelligent Systems, who is now responsible for Fire Emblem, WarioWare, and Paper Mario titles. This makes Mario Kart: Super Circuit the first game in the Mario Kart series that Nintendo didn’t develop entirely in-house. Compared to Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart: Super Circuit is something of a step backward. The Game Boy Advance’s hardware wasn’t very powerful, so it couldn’t support a Mario Kart game with full 3D courses like Mario Kart 64. Instead, it reverted to the mostly flat 2D courses seen in Super Mario Kart. As a result, playing Mario Kart: Super Circuit in the modern day feels a little bit unimpressive – everything this game does, another entry in the Mario Kart series does better. And although Super Circuit was received well after launch, it’s often considered one of the weaker entries in the Mario Kart series, if not the absolute weakest one. That’s not to say the game holds no value, though: the idea of Mario Kart on the go was an incredibly novel one at the time.

In 2003, Nintendo released their most ambitious Mario Kart game yet: Mario Kart: Double Dash for the GameCube. Up until now, Mario Kart games remained fairly similar – most notably, in their character rosters. It had pretty much only been Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Koopa, Bowser, and either Donkey Kong or Donkey Kong Jr. up until this point, and Mario Kart: Double Dash set out to change that. Indeed, Double Dash introduced a whole host of new drivers: Daisy, Birdo, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Paratroopa, Diddy Kong, Bowser Jr., Waluigi, Toadette, Petey Piranha, and King Boo. This renewed character roster helped the game feel more fresh, but new drivers weren’t Double Dash’s only claim to fame. To this day, this game remains a fan favorite thanks to its two-driver system: one drives the vehicle while the other holds an item, and the two can swap out anytime. At first, Nintendo wasn’t sure if this system would be liked or not. In fact, they were so unsure that they made a version of the game with single-player driving just in case. Eventually, Nintendo decided they liked the double driver system, and it paid off – Mario Kart: Double Dash was loved by fans, and to this day it’s remembered for its unique mechanics, iconic courses, and its signature chaotic gameplay.

Mario Kart DS was released in 2005, and it was the second-ever portable Mario Kart game – it was also a massive upgrade over Mario Kart: Super Circuit. Mario Kart DS’s claim to fame was its brand-new online play, which let players connect and race against each other via the internet for the first time ever. Despite being on such a small handheld, Mario Kart DS was absolutely packed with content – not only did it have a bunch of retro courses in addition to new ones, but it also had the elusive Mission Mode complete with unique boss battles plus the ability to design your own emblem. Mario Kart DS was received incredibly well on launch, and it went on to sell well over 20 million units – a huge success. These days, Mario Kart DS might not stand out as much, but its Mission Mode makes it worth going back to. Plus, it’s got playable R.O.B. – how can you go wrong with that?

Mario Kart DS was extremely successful, but its 20 million copies sold paled in comparison to the whopping 37 million units that Mario Kart Wii shifted. Mario Kart Wii is where the franchise really began to hit the big time. The Nintendo Wii was extremely popular, and Mario Kart became a must-have game on the platform. Mario Kart Wii boasted a ton of additions: a bigger character roster, larger and more detailed courses, the addition of motorcycles, enhanced online play, and an upgrade from 8 to 12 racers. Mario Kart Wii’s most iconic imagery, however, was with the Wii Wheel that was packaged in with the game. Nintendo created dozens of failed Wii Wheel prototypes before settling on the final design, and they were so confident in the final product that it was plastered all over Mario Kart Wii’s cover art and marketing material. This also increased the game’s casual appeal, which helped it sell a massive number of units. In the modern day, Mario Kart fans are sort of split over this game. Retrospectively, Mario Kart Wii is not a major graphical improvement over Double Dash, and the gameplay is absolutely at its most chaotic and “unfair” in this title. On the other hand, Mario Kart Wii’s tight controls and refined gameplay have created an active speedrunning scene and modding community, which has given Mario Kart Wii more longevity than most retro Mario Kart games. It also has Funky Kong, which is an additional point in its favor.

Released on Nintendo 3DS in late 2011, Mario Kart 7 is one of the strangest games in the series. When the system launched in early 2011, it started off slow – its launch titles were weak, which meant players weren’t too eager to spend $250 only to play their standard Nintendo DS games again. The 3DS needed a killer app and fast, which prompted Nintendo to prioritize the completion of Mario Kart 7 by December that same year. Nintendo actually wound up lacking the staff it needed to meet that goal, so they enlisted the help of Retro Studios to produce all of Mario Kart 7’s retro courses. This endeavor was successful, and Mario Kart 7 was released on time to a positive reception. It also adds gliding and underwater racing, which went on to appear in Mario Kart 8 as well. Here’s a fun fact: Waluigi is not playable in the game (possibly due to time constraints), but Waluigi Pinball is playable. How does that make any sense?! The game also includes Metal Mario and Honey Queen as newcomers. Bizarre choices! In the modern day, Mario Kart 7 is considered one of the more basic games in the series – most of its additions are outdone by Mario Kart 8, though Mario Kart 7 is still a solid, fun, and perfectly playable part of the series.

And then we have Mario Kart 8, which released in 2014 and became the “current” Mario Kart game for over ten years. Just like the 3DS in its early lifespan, the Wii U started off slow and needed a killer app. Mario Kart 8 wouldn’t come until about two and a half years later, but it did in fact become the best-selling Wii U game of all time (which isn’t saying much). Mario Kart 8’s headlining mechanic is anti-gravity, which lets racers drive on walls and ceilings. In practice, this doesn’t change much – but it does create quite the spectacle on certain courses. What made Mario Kart 8 different was its incredible graphical quality, which still holds up today. Its courses look absolutely gorgeous, and they’re packed with all sorts of small details.

This is where things get interesting. In early 2017, Nintendo began development of Mario Kart World as a Nintendo Switch exclusive. Because development was only just beginning at the launch of the console, the team prepared a simple port of Mario Kart 8 to tide fans over. This “new” game, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, added a traditional battle mode plus a few new characters such as Bowser Jr., King Boo, and the Inklings. However, a bunch of convenient circumstances happened all at once – one big thing is that Nintendo realized the Switch could not fulfill their vision for Mario Kart World. It couldn’t render a giant open world plus detailed graphics and 24 racers, so the team was considering lowering the resolution and lowering the frame rate below 30 frames per second in certain instances. This would have wound up as a somewhat gimped Mario Kart experience had it released in this state. Eventually, the pandemic happened, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s popularity exploded. The game meant to tide over fans wound up selling almost 70 million copies in total. In response to this, Nintendo decided to release the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass, which added a huge number of returning courses to the game’s track lineup. This gave them more time to work on Mario Kart World, which had shifted development to Nintendo Switch 2 sometime around 2020.

And that’s where we’re at right now! With Mario Kart World right around the corner, a new era for the Mario Kart series is about to begin. We can’t even imagine what the next Mario Kart will look like, but we’re sure it has to be another ten years away at this point. Mario Kart World is a big evolution for the series, and you can be sure that we’ll be posting tons of content and guides for the game. This was definitely a more condensed version of Mario Kart history, and there are certainly more in-depth sources you could find – but as we move into the first truly new game in the series in over 10 years, it’s always nice to look back and remember how much work has gone into every single Mario Kart game. Several of them are playable on Nintendo Switch Online, too, and we may even get more returning Mario Kart games with the release of Nintendo Switch 2. If you want to learn more about Mario Kart World, check out the official website.