Mario Kart MAYhem: Roundtable #4 – Characters and Items

Welcome to Part 4 of Vooks special event, Mario Kart MAYhem. To celebrate the upcoming release of Mario Kart 8, the team at Vooks will be bringing you content every week to reflect on why we love Mario Kart so much, and why it’s such a popular and long standing franchise.

That’s not all we’ll be doing either, as staff member Troy (aka StewPenguin) will also be streaming a different Mario Kart game each week until the game’s release date on May 31st – you can check them out every Saturday on the official Vooks.Net Twitch Account.

To top it off, there’s prizes to be won too! Each Friday, the team will be uploading a brand new roundtable tackling a topic we thought we’d all enjoy discussing about Mario Kart.

At the end of the month, each comment will automatically enter the prize pool to win some cool prizes on the eve of Mario Kart 8′s launch, so stay tuned and hold on as the team jumps into the ten games across the series’ twenty one year tenure and decides which items and characters throughout the games are their favourites.

There will be five roundtables total, and that means you can earn up to five chances to win! Feel free to join in and share your your opinion on this topic. Let us know in the comments!

Did you miss our first or second roundtable? Fear not! All opportunity for entries are open until the end of the month – so you can comment on Roundtable #1, #2, #3 and #4 today and gain four entries in the competition. As mentioned previously though – only one comment per roundtable, we can’t allow duplicate entries on the same roundtable, unfortunately. The current roundtables are as follows: –

Roundtable #1 – What’s your fondest memory of Mario Kart?
Roundtable #2 – What’s your favourite Mario Kart game?
Roundtable #3 – Which of the Mario Kart games are most overrated and underrated?

And with that, let’s get into the responses!

I will be honest, I was going to go with someone like Yoshi or Toad but everyone seems to like them. Then I was going to go fro Rosalina, as she seems so aloof when she doles out her own brand of mayhem and destruction but that was also already taken. For the sake of variety, I dived into the older games and tried to remember the lesser known or less represented characters and which ones I really enjoyed playing as. Other team members in this roundtable love the appeal of playing as the generic bad guy – such as Shy Guy or Dry Bones – but I also love this too. But with Birdo. Birdo is an interesting and enigmatic character with a colourful history and I love how interesting she is as a character. She’s kind of been relegated to Yoshi’s dubious love interest in recent ties, but I loved playing as Birdo. Her design was unique, her noises were annoying enough to annoy your peers while playing and she does it all while looking fierce as hell in her unique bright red bow.

As for items, this was an easy one to decide. Bananas, in all shapes and forms, are a fun and yet simple addition to the Mario Kart universe. Double Dash!! included the Giant Bananas, which would split into three when you hit them (although they were exclusive to the Kongs). Other games allowed players to pick up one or three at a time, depending on your luck. What appealed most to me about Bananas is that they can be laid down anywhere and everywhere, and while the effects might not be as instant they have the potential to keep giving to players from beginning to end. Sure, players can memorise where they are in the track, but as things get more and more intense there’s more potential for people to forget. And that short term investment – that is – a placement of a banana, is bound to pay off in dividends later down the track (both literally and figuratively speaking).

My favourite Mario Kart racer has changed over the years. Back in the day I would always jam that N64 analogue stick down and to the right to nab him the quickest. The cute noises, the bright green and the all-around nature of his handling meant he was my number one pick for the longest time. The smaller and light racers just didn’t do it for me and I didn’t buy Mario Kart to go slow so Bowser and DK were never even up for consideration. In more recent time I’ve switched it up to Luigi. He’s green, and is an all-rounder. Perhaps I just felt sorry for him? For Mario Kart 8 however I have been playing as Pink Gold Peach a heavy character, maybe my favourite is changing again?

For my favourite item I thought long and hard across all games as to what I would dub my most favoured. You don’t really think about this too much when you play the game, you use what you’re given at the time and just pray it’s not a Banana. I came to the conclusion the Thunderbolt item is my favourite. The Thunderbolt is the only item that affects everyone equally, if you’re coming in a bad position then using the item will affect everyone in front of you the same. It’s not like the Blue Shell which may hit people in front on its way to the front of the grid. You’re not going to win a race either with the Thunderbolt and it will force all those people in front of you to refocus on the final race in their shrunken state. Chaos is fun!

Picking my favourite Mario Kart racer isn’t an easy thing. Not because there are so many great ones to choose from… It’s because there are so many that anger me!

Toad, affectionately know to my brothers and I as ‘The Stool’ always annoyed us. We could never let ‘The Donkey’ win either. I think it’s best for me not to say what we called Peach. Wario has never held any appeal as a racer either. Then there are the famous brothers, Mario and Luigi, who were reserved for whoever didn’t pick Yoshi fast enough.

Yoshi… You used to be my favourite. What happened to you? Back in the Mario Kart 64 days Yoshi was my default choice. Now he just bugs me to no extent. I loved the MK64 Yoshi, with his electric sounding noises. In the newer games he just sound so whiny and annoying. Also I can never seem to win any races with him in the newer games. But hey, that might just be me.

Nowadays I just rotate between the different mid-weight characters. I find them easier to control with a nice balance of speed and acceleration.

As for my favourite item it’s hard not to say the Triple Red Shell, but I’m going to bypass it and say the Golden Mushroom. There is nothing better than being behind your friend in multiplayer, getting that power-up and continuously boosting past them, leaving a trail of dust for them to feast upon in 2nd place.

Had you asked me about a month ago, I’d have easily told you my favourite character was Luigi or Yoshi. For the longest time the dudes in green have just been the coolest dudes to ever grace a kart. My perspective has been changed though. During the Mario Kart Direct, a certain character has surpassed even the dynamic green duo to become my favourite Kart-er. With all her grace and poise, Rosalina slid past her impoverished rabble of rivals and right into my heart.

For some bizarre reason, she’s in the Large class of racers, she must be weighed down by her large amounts of not caring for the concerns of other racers as she elegantly leaves them in her dust.

Sorry Luigi and Yoshi.

As for items, I’m gonna go back to my all time favourite Mario Kart (as of now at least, since 8 isn’t out yet!), Double Dash. Each set of characters had their own unique items that only they could acquire. My absolute favourite of these was the Chain Chomp that Baby Mario and Baby Luigi could get if they were a bit behind. It seems to have been replaced by a Bullet Bill that everyone can get in current Mario Karts, but nothing quite compared to the unpredictable bounce and jolty pattern the Chain Chomp took on the course. Dragging you behind at high speed, it chomped your competitors on the way to the front. When you see a Bullet Bill coming up from behind, you just pull over and it’s all good. With a Chain Chomp on your tail though, you just had to hope and pray you didn’t become it’s next victim!

My favourite racer would have to be Dry Bones, without a doubt. It was because I mained him and Mario in Mario Kart DS that I adopted the handle Mario_Bones, which I use to this day. It was a combination of him driving a bloody tank in races and the fact he was a generic enemy that I began using him. I find using characters like Dry Bones, Shy Guy and Lakitu more interesting than using the main character. It might be because of their weird character designs. It also meant I wasn’t fighting over the character I wanted to play as with friends, which I certainly would have had to do if I played as Yoshi or Toad!

When I discovered the technique of snaking, it turned out that Dry Bones was one of the better characters for it, which was handy. Lightweight characters were at the advantage in that game. I won many a match against friends using Dry Bones, sporting my custom emblem of a Dry Bones wearing a Mario hat on the front of my vehicle. Unfortunately, Dry Bones suffered a blow in Mario Kart Wii and hasn’t been playable in either of the subsequent games – meaning I haven’t been able to use him for a long while. Here’s hoping that he returns in Mario Kart 9 with some new tricks up his sleeve.

As for items, back in Mario Kart Double Dash, I loved playing as Baby Mario and Baby Luigi. They drove a pram – what’s a pram doing on a racecourse!? On top of that, they had a signature item that was hilarious to see pop out in front of a pram- the Chain Chomp.

It’s an item that’s all but been replaced by the Bullet Bill in later games, but I always found it more fun. The chaotic bouncing of the Chomp as it tugged you around the course always made me laugh, and only the Blue Shell can bring a terror to your heart like when you have a massive, bouncing beast charging towards you. While I’m iffy about the idea of signature items themselves, there were some really fun items that were introduced with the concept that would be great to see again return to the series.

Favourite character is a tricky one… I started off with Yoshi originally, as he was my favourite character in general (still is, I suppose). I started using Bowser when I got better at Mario Kart, using him or Dry Bowser from MK Wii. But the guy I’m happiest to see coming back in Mario Kart 8? Definitly Shy Guy. I can’t even really explain why. I guess it goes back to him being a Yoshi series staple, but I dunno, I just think Shy Guys are awesome.

So my favourite item isn’t really a power item, unless you really know how to use ‘em. I’ve always loved getting Triple Green Shells, not just for protection, but also the thrill of hitting someone with a Green Shell using nothing but you leading a target, and luck. You can’t help but brag when you get that lucky, ‘skilled’ shot against your friend on the last corner on a track. I just love it.As we previously mentioned, posting a comment on this page sharing your opinion on this topic will get you one entry to be in the running to wine one of our many prizes! Be sure to include your name and your email address with your comment, otherwise we won’t be able to contact you.

We can only accept one comment per roundtable, unfortunately. If you want to get as many as four entries into the competition, and haven’t already, feel free to contribute to the roundtables we have previously run in the last few weeks: –

Roundtable #1 – What’s your fondest memory of Mario Kart?
Roundtable #2 – What’s your favourite Mario Kart game?
Roundtable #3 – Which of the Mario Kart games are most overrated and underrated?

Want to know what you might win? Follow Pink Gold Peach through to the final prize pool.