Mario Karts Significance
By Sage Smotherman
I can say from experience, that Mario Kart, made my childhood. I would wake up early on the weekends and even early on some weekdays, just to play Mario Kart before my brother would wake up so I wouldn’t have to share. I would have friends over almost daily just to play multiplayer with all of us. I made new friends through Mario Kart and would play daily. For 2 or 3 years in a row, I would have a huge birthday party were all of my friends would come over and we would have a huge 12 person tournament and the winner would be rewarded the title of, “Coolest kid in the grade.”
Another very interesting thing that was attributed to was the social aspect of this. Many people had connected to people that they never knew existed and were able to become friends. I talked with a peer of mine about Mario Kart and he told me something very interesting about how Mario Kart affected his life to this day. He said that he met his best friend through his Wii, and specifically through Mario Kart. Because of Mario Kart, this kid was able to meet somebody new and create a life long relationship. I also had made many friends in my elementary days, through the greatest game of its generation. A feature that was introduced to the world from the Wii, was the ability to play with “friends online”. This meant that you no longer had to be in the same room as somebody you wanted to play with. Because of this, I was able to play with some of my best friends, after I moved to a completely different state. I would just have to call my friend from my house phone and tell him that we should play, and we were able to catch up on our new lives while having a good time playing a game.
Mario Karts success could be attributed to many things. Its advanced graphics for its time, the amount of endless fun you could have on it, or the biggest key to its success, the invention of the wii. The wii was huge when it came out. It sold 26 million units in 2009, the most to date in a single year. The excitement for the wii to come out was unbelievable. Every kid in America wanted one and many would get one for Christmas. I also got one around this time, along with many of my friends. When the Wii came out, it came with the basics like Wii Sports, and Wii Fitness. There were also other games that were gaining popularity because of the Wii and almost everybody was trying to gain success by hopping on the bandwagon of the Wii. The wii games at that time were very fun and kids were more than content playing them. Personally, I played Wii Sports but it wasn’t exactly my favorite thing in the world. It was sports, which was my absolute favorite thing in the world, but it didn’t seem real enough. I wanted non-stop action and something that I could really get into and enjoy for a long time. Then, I heard that Nintendo was remaking Mario Kart (1992) for the Wii. By that time I was fairly familiar with the cast of the Mario games and instantly wanted to get my hands on this game.
This game has everything any little kid would want. There is a very lovable cast that has a character that will perfectly fit anybody's personality. There are the games favorites like Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi, but there are also villains like bowser, and princesses, Princess Peach and Daisy. This game also provides lots of action that little children needed to keep them busy enough to give their parents a much needed break. Kids could play 3 different game modes and change lots of rules to make the game more fun for them. It was a very fun game with lots of action, but it also wasn’t challenging lie you would think. There are many different difficulties that are perfect for every player.
Just to show you how many people actually played this wonderful game, I performed a survey in my chemistry class. 17 students answered that Mario Kart was a big influence on their younger self while 7 said that they had never played Mario Kart or that it wasn’t an important or significant experience. So, by this data, in my generation of 15–16 year olds, 70% had a positive experiences with this game and a few had positive things to say about the game. One student, Tyler Lantz said “It introduced me to video games, and I am very thankful for that” when asked how Mario Kart has affected his life today. This just shows how Mario Kart can introduce young children to the very fascinating world of video games, that I believe, everybody should be able to participate in. Another student, Blake Peterson stated, “I do not play very many video games to this day, but Mario Kart will always be special to me, because it was something that I always enjoyed.”
Another major factor that tells the relevance of the game is if the game is still somewhat relevant to this day, and Mario Kart is defiantly relevant. Many of my friends still own Mario Kart and we will occasionally play to have some nostalgic fun. It seems as if games will usually “go out of style” but Mario Kart seems to be holding its own even to this day. Usually, games will “die” when it gets 10 years old or older. Many games that I used to play many play station 2 games, that I haven’t heard of since then, but not Mario Kart on the Wii. Yes, the play station 2 hasn’t been heard of for some time, but the same goes for the Wii. Even with the Wii becoming even more rare than ever, Mario Kart can still be found on every Wii that there is.
