Posted January 31, 2013 There seems to be one or two of us giving the SNES a bit of love recently and I've certainly been doing the same in recent weeks With all the talk of Mario Kart U recently, it seemed appropriate that I was making my way through the game that started it all off. I'm happy to say that I succeeded once again, after many failed attempts at 150cc Star Cup, in completing Super Mario Kart It certainly wasn't an easy journey, as anyone who has played the game will testify, but whatever challenge it threw my way I kept coming back for more, despite the fact that I was starting to feel like Bowser Castle 3 was about to feature heavily in my suicide note It may be frustrating as hell, but it's still one of the best Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 Interesting / disturbing fact: SMK has better award ceremonies than the current games o_O They may be basic, but at least they're all different from each other! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 Interesting / disturbing fact: SMK has better award ceremonies than the current games o_O They may be basic, but at least they're all different from each other! Yeh.. I actually kinda hate the whole 'drifting around the track' thing that's been going on in the award ceremonies recently If they included different endings for each character, it would give players more incentive to experiment with different racers rather than to automatically select their favourite. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 Good man, / nando /. SMK is such a tough but highly rewarding game to complete. @Ville, you're so right about the endings. That's something Nintendo could really do with sorting for the next MK game. Here's another fact for ya (if you weren't aware), a couple of endings in SMK were censored for the west: Peach & Bowser both drink champagne in the Japanese version : Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 Yeh.. I actually kinda hate the whole 'drifting around the track' thing that's been going on in the award ceremonies recently If they included different endings for each character, it would give players more incentive to experiment with different racers rather than to automatically select their favourite. Indeed. Now that I think about it, this truly is one way MK could flesh itself out a bit. Now it's just driving driving driving oh you won how nice. Not saying this formula hasn't worked previously, but it's really getting a bit boring and predictable now. That's why I like DKR so much, it took the main weakness of driving games, i.e. lack of plot and overall coherence, and sewed the basic driving sections together with a hub world, boss fights, battle challenges, secret keys and hard-as-nails coin challenges. Just imagine how it would've looked in the MK format: 4 basic cups and 1 special one, plus mirror mode. Would've been so much more boring... : o @RedShell Haha, Peach getting wasted : D Yeah, we definitely need more that xD Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted February 1, 2013 So that's how Bowser Jr was created. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted February 1, 2013 So that's how Bowser Jr was created. Quality. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted June 29, 2016 Super Mario Kart – 1992 Developer Interview translated into English for the first time: http://shmuplations.com/supermariokart/ : peace: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted June 29, 2016 When people play this game, they have a big smile on their face. That was a big goal for us: a game where both players and onlookers would be laughing and smiling. It does seem like there’s a boom in the popularity of actual go-kart racing right now, but that wasn’t really related to our choice to switch from cars to karts. It's nice to see that same design philosophy ( making people smile ) still remains today. I love the following quote. Miyamoto: It’s kind of like in kimodameshi - you experience fear even if nothing happens. It’s precisely because you don’t know what’s going to happen that makes it intense. If you knew to a certainty that nothing was going to happen, you wouldn’t be scared at all, right? I think that’s very important to the tension we experience in games. I think that indeterminancy, knowing that something “might” happen, is the most fun. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted June 29, 2016 It's nice to see that same design philosophy ( making people smile ) still remains today.Indeed. I was playing SMK just the other day (as I often do) and it still had me grinning like a maniac the entire time. After so many years... having played it so much... the fact it continues to have this effect is pretty amazing. :awesome: Loved the part which touched on the actual development process: Konno: We all worked on the same floor together. We all sat close to each other, too. The beginning was mostly just sitting at one’s own desk, grinding it out. Miyamoto: We didn’t have a rigid master design document or anything like that. Kimura: For the programing, it was all left up to us, and we were relatively free to do what we saw fit. Konno: The meetings were very informal, too. They were more like “chat sessions”, actually. Miyamoto: Yeah, I think 30 or 40% of it was just us talking. Konno: I took almost no notes during those meetings. Since we all sat near each other, it was faster to tap someone on the shoulder and ask directly, “we’re doing it like this, right?” I really only took notes for the things I knew I’d be likely to forget. Sugiyama: The early part of the development was mostly a process of repeated prototyping. Someone would suggest a new idea, we’d quickly prototype it, then gradually refine and add more detail to it. Miyamoto: Game design is often thought of as work you do with your head, but in reality, it’s real labor like anything else. You really have to draw everything out: it isn’t ideas that finish games. To middle and high school students, game design probably seems like some cool job where you sit around smoking cigarettes while great ideas just come to you. In reality, game design is steady, hard work–I want young people interested in a career in games to not have any misunderstandings about that, because lately, we’ve been seeing a lot of people like that. Consider this my word of warning, I guess. (laughs) They couldn’t be here today, but in addition to the five of us, there were three other key members who handled the music and character modeling. They did an excellent job too. Must have been such a wonderful and relaxed environment to work in. LOL @ Miyamoto's word of warning too. Anyway, a great read. Real shame Soyo Oka wasn't present for the interview though. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted June 29, 2016 Miyamoto: It’s kind of like in kimodameshi 1–you experience fear even if nothing happens. It’s precisely because you don’t know what’s going to happen that makes it intense. If you knew to a certainty that nothing was going to happen, you wouldn’t be scared at all, right? I think that’s very important to the tension we experience in games. I think that indeterminancy, knowing that something “might” happen, is the most fun Nice to see that they also think of Mario Kart as a survival horror game Great interview! Wish they still cared as much about battle mode now as they did then... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 30, 2018 (edited) 25 years later and Super Mario Kart truly is the game that just keeps on giving. This happened a few weeks back now (while playing the SNES Mini version) but I only got around to capturing it recently (gotta love the rewind feature of the mini ). So yeah, I was playing as Bowser (a character that I've never been very good with) and during this race on Choco Island, I completely messed up while trying to avoid an imminent banana peel from DK Jr. This caused me to crash into a Piranha Plant, but "luckily" I had Lightning as my item, so activated it right away to get back into the race. The tables had turned, the CPU were all tiny and squishable. I almost got instant revenge against DK Jr. but missed. Then came a LOL moment, when tiny Luigi ran into a banana peel! And what's this? Tiny Mario is just ahead, time to squish! I thought to myself. But just as I'm just about to perform said squish, bam! Tiny Mario suddenly turns into, Invincible Tiny Mario! Ooof!! What a cheeky git! That's cool, I've got a Red Shell now, eat this! Pow! Hehehe! How you like that? Oh, he's still tiny, ok time to squish... or not. And just for good measure, Yoshi then nicked a coin off me and DK Jr. (who's responsible for the entire fiasco) overtakes. Actually, I stopped playing from that point as I was on the floor in stitches! Anyway, here it is in video form: It's everything most people probably hate about the game, but I absolutely love and just can't get enough of. If SNES games ever become a part of Nintendo's Switch Online thing and they release an online enabled version of SMK, I'll probably explode. Edited July 30, 2018 by RedShell 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 30, 2018 57 minutes ago, RedShell said: If SNES games ever become a part of Nintendo's Switch Online thing and they release an online enabled version of SMK, I'll probably explode. It's probably one of my most wanted games for Nintendo's online service Recently, I actually attempted a random Super Mario Kart challenge (also as Bowser) if anyone is interested 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
