Mario Kart MAYhem: Roundtable #1 – Our Mario Kart Memories
Welcome to Part 1 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 keep your Mario Kart thirst quenched.
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.
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 enjoy the ride as the team takes you through our Mario Kart memories. There will be five roundtables total, and that means you can earn up to five chances to win! Prizes will be announced shortly – but feel free to join in and share your Mario Kart memory. Is there a significant or memorable event you associate with Mario Kart? Let us know in the comments.
I will never forget the fun we had with Mario Kart 64. For my 17th birthday, I had a party with about twenty or thirty people. It went until almost 3am, and we all managed to wake up at roughly 7am as roughly fifteen to twenty people slept over. We had no sleep, we were hungover, and nobody could be bothered driving home. The next best thing? Play video games, of course!
I’ll never forget the day – it was cloudy and overcast and rain was looking. As I said before, everyone was too exhausted to do anything. We all cooked ourselves breakfast. And then settled in for the entirety of the day playing Mario Kart 64. Yes, it was a Wii Virtual Console version, but it was some of the best fun we’ve ever had with the series. My friends were shocked that I had working, modern and responsive controllers (most of them were those guys who had the floppy, unstable N64 joysticks with the weird white powder coming out of them, whereas I kept mine in as good condition as possible).
Throughout the entire day, we would play course after course, championship after championship. There was little to no argument about who was to go next, we were on a rotation. Everyone got a go, though there were the obvious winners. People who weren’t playing would go back and forth between nearby fast food outlets to get lunch and dinner as the day went on. It was a great day, and a great time. But all good things had to come to an end, and at roughly 7pm, everyone decided to go home. While we managed to play what felt like twelve hours of Mario Kart 64 – I think that’s testament to how great the games are. They manage to keep your interest and bring people together for copious amounts of time without getting boring. While Mario Kart 64 is not my favourite of the series, I certainly appreciated more after that long and enjoyable day.
2006 was Mario’s 20th anniversary and to celebrate Nintendo Australia held a national tour, that saw them bring a host of past and then present games, starring everyone’s favourite plumber. The game I was most excited for was Mario Kart DS.
I was excited for Mario Kart was because it was an elimination round game in the Super Mario Challenge. The game had been out for over six months at this time and I liked to think I was pretty good. I liked to think that…
It was Friday 21st of July and my brother and I showed up nice and early. It was so early that we had to wait about an hour until the event actually opened up the velvet ropes to let us in.
Being that I was a member of the Nintendo Australia website I received an SMS to present to get a special Mario Gift. It was a small Mario Bros. Wrist strap.
The first round in the Mario Challenge was facing off against another player in New Super Mario Bros. My opponent was a guy dressed as Link… I was worried that this Nintendo fan was going to deny me my chance to play in the Mario Kart round. I don’t know what it was, possibly the whole crowd watching on the giant DS Lite screens behind us or just the adrenaline in the moment but I pulled out some awesome moves to collect those stars before he did.
I had done it! I was through to Mario Kart phase! The time arrived for me to show these people my awesome Mario Kart skills. It was an 8-player race and I was quick to choose Yoshi. I had this in the bag with Yoshi! The countdown began.
I hit the accelerate button at just the right time to get a huge boost from the starting line. I was ahead of the pack. It was the last time I saw the lead. In fact, I watched as all the other players overtook me, one by one. I had no hope. I was slaughtered.
Thankfully I didn’t talk any smack so there was no embarrassment in my loss. Just a reaffirmation that I’m not really that good after all.
Even though I didn’t win my race this is still my favourite Mario Kart memory. If I hadn’t of gone to the Connection Tour to play Mario Kart, I wouldn’t have walked away with some cool Mario swag. I wouldn’t have had the crowd cheer as I wall kicked my way to safety after Mario fell down a pit to certain death. Thanks to Mario Kart I got to have an awesome Nintendo-filled day.
If you know me you know that Mario Kart 64 is my favourite Mario Kart title and probably you’d expect my favourite memories would be from it – but it’s not.
Sure Mario Kart 64 holds many memories for me, it was my first Mario Kart and there were many memories made in the many hours I played of that game as a child.
My favourite Mario Kart memory though has to do with Mario Kart: Super Circuit – the game everyone forgets. There’s actually a couple of strong memories I have here so I’m going to do two.
My whole life I’ve played games with my brother, we’ve played tons of games together but Mario Kart: Super Circuit is among our favourites. Being able to play Mario Kart wherever we or our family went was the best (as a kid that’s usually out of your control). We played it in the car, at our grandparents and aunties. Our parents owned a store as well and we spent hours locked up in the back playing not just Mario Kart, but all our Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games. We spent a lot of time playing that game together and we got really good at it.
You can be sure that the Link Cable was pulled out in anger more than once.
The other memory from this period is trying to absolutely nail the fastest time possible on Rainbow and Ribbon Roads. If you check out these videos you’ll see what some of the world records are like. Now in 2002 there wasn’t YouTube, so the only times we had to go off were in magazines and although I didn’t come quite as close as that I still like to think I did alright. The technique and precision required to jump those tracks hasn’t been possible in later Mario Kart games. That game was precise.
My Mario Kart memory is much less exciting compared to others but hell, I’ll tell you all anyway. The most fun thing I have found in any Mario Kart is going through Grand Prix mode with a friend, both co-operating and competing at the same time, and making progress in the game to unlock more tracks and characters.
Here I was, thinking I was pretty much finished with Double Dash, just winning the Star Cup at 150cc and then all of a sudden All Cup Tour appears. Not ‘new’ stuff as such, but still exciting to have more Mario Kart to play!
Then we beat the All Cup Tour on 150cc and the game decides to give me even more to play by unlocking Mirror Mode for every track so far.
Finally beating everything unlocked the Gold Parade Kart, and it felt like a badge of honour. A reward for all the fun and skill you’ve had so far. The Kart itself handled like a shopping trolley, but it was nice to have nonetheless!
Being able to play all this Mario Kart with my brother, and just have the game keep on giving was just the coolest thing.
This is a hard one to narrow down. Normally I’d choose any of the times I played this as a kid, at parties, or sleepovers, but everyone probably had these memories growing up. So the most recent memory I can think of would be the Mario Kart Wii launch day. My housemate at the time, and I, love Mario Kart, and luckily, we both had the day off when MK Wii came out.
We went straight to our local JB HiFi, 8am, grabbed some coffees, and waited. As soon as they opened, we ran to the Mario Kart end cap, grabbed our game and Wii Wheel, bought them and ran straight home. We unlocked everything that day, taking turns in Grand Prix, while chatting about all our Mario Kart memories at the time. It’s also worth mentioning, this is the first Mario Kart game I played on the day it came out, and I’ll be sticking to that tradition from now on!
Something of a rivalry formed between me and my friend, since Mario Kart Wii. We’re both about as good as each other, so when we play in groups, we tend to alternate between 1st above everyone else. If there’s one way I can recommend playing Mario Kart, it’s with having a rival to play against, to keep your skills sharp, and the competitive banter going!
As we previously mentioned, if you post a comment on this page here sharing one of your Mario Kart memories, you’ll be in the running to win one of our many prizes!
Be sure to include your name and email address with your comment, otherwise we won’t be able to contact you.
While you can share as many memories as you want, only one comment per roundtable will be accepted as an entry.
Want to know what you might win? Follow Pink Gold Peach through to the final prize pool.
My first memory of Mario Kart was a bittersweet one; because I wasn’t actually playing it. I remember seeing the older brothers of my friends playing Mario Kart 64 at a birthday party. They were in a separate room from the uncool younger kids, and to me, it looked like some kind of clandestine meeting. They were all crowded some crappy little CRT TV playing a 4 player race on Yoshi’s Valley. To me at the time, it looked like some sort of insane wizardry! How do they know where to go on this track? How did they do it sideways without falling off the cliff? Who’s racing as the green dinosaur thing?
Mario kart has always been one of the games that myself and my friends resorted to when there was nothing else. I don’t have any specific memories which were good, I just really enjoyed the series as a whole. But my most played one was Mario Kart 64.
In the beginning we’d use my 64 but due to the state of the controllers we eventually moved to an emulated version. I was the better one at the racing side of things, and one particular friend was really good at battle.
Probably my favourite moment involved practicing awesome starts in the battle mode. Depending on who started across from you, a turbo boost could boost you up a level on block fort or double deck, getting you out of the action and into a really good spot to snipe with the green shells. Suffice to say, that really annoyed my friends when pulled off correctly.
Nowadays, we just play mario kart 7. I’m now at uni, and whenever studying gets a little too much we all just bust out our 3DS’s and have a couple of friendly (and not so friendly) races and battles just to relieve or create some stress.
My memories date back to super mariokart on the snes. Mariokart never has been as challenging as that game for me and to get gold on every cup required more than just precision racing, it required strategy. It became less about coming first in races and more about just making sure you beat a certain other racer by a certain number of positions to ensure you stayed on top of the leader board.
I spent hours on that game, more than any other in the series and to me the game represents some of the best times I’ve had on the snes.
Even the battle mode was a lot of fun where you could use the feather to jump into protective boxes and then jump out to attack. It was sneaky, evil and made for some vicious trash talk.
For my 8th birthday I received a shiny new Nintendo 64 with the clear purple controller and a copy of Mario Kart 64. My friends all brought their controllers around for the first ever multiplayer video game i had ever played! It was amazing! We spent hours trying to nail the jump through the waterfall in Koopa Troopa Beach. I’m still no good at it to this day.
16 years later, I invited some of my mates (all in our early 20s) around to reminisce and play it all again (mind you, we used an emulator and Wii U Pro controllers. None of our 64 controller joysticks work well anymore after smashing them with mario party minigames).
The game is still amazing and we all had a competition to see who could jump the wall in Wario Stadium! I can’t wait for Mario Kart 8!
My favourite memory was getting Mario kart ds with my ds for my birthday. I was so happy and spent many, many hours playing through it. I remember how my younger siblings used to get my game and ‘accidently’ delete my data. I ended up finishing the game and unlocking all the characters 2 to 3 times but it was worth it and so much fun! I remember playing with all my friends and beating them all!
I remember playing round after round of Super Mario Kart on my friend’s SNES right after school (and after Power Rangers).
We used to play Battle Mode so often that I remember a particular moment where it was the water-course, we both had a single balloon left, and he was chasing me down with a red shell, whilst I only had a measly green. With him being too far away to drop my shell behind me to use as a tactic, I was thinking of shooting the shell ahead to try to make it richotet in his general direction to throw him off a little bit. I did so, only I shot it directly straight ahead, causing it to bounce back straight at me. On reflex, since I was approaching the corner at the time, I hopped to skid my way around the corner. That single hop accidently allowed me to jump over my projectile and nail my friend completely unaware.
He still remembers that loss at how ridiculous it was, hahah.
My greatest mario kart moment was when I versed the creator of this awesome website. Daniel Vuckovic. It was a rainy day in my home town and Nintendo were holding an online event on Mario kart 7 for people to verse Nintendo employees and online game reporters. When the specific time slot for this event had begun, I seized my original black 3ds that was already loaded with mario kart 7, booted up the system and tryed to join a match but because of the rain it took an hour just to get connected. The allocated time limit was almost over and I wasn’t able to verse anyone. When I thought all was lost, I heard a ding coming from my 3ds and saw Vook’s Mii waving at me. I seized the 3ds and let the race begin. It was a tough race between vook and I but in the end, Vook won. After vook had won, the internet connection dropped out. I layed back on the lounge and thought about the epic race I had with the creator of this awesome website.
Thanks guys, fantastic memories to read through, it’s great to see how much fun everyone has been having with the series throughout the years.
My favourite memory was beating special cup with a friend on the original mario kart. We played it for months and we discovered we could team up to beat the NPC karts. We would take turns driving second place to protect the one of us coming first.
My favourite memory is more about what happened while we were playing the game.
A few years ago my sister and I were playing Mario Kart Wii online against two of our cousins for the first time and I think we had the phone on speaker we were making so much noise that my mum got annoyed and called their mum. Then they just started talking for a bit about technology and my mum brought up a movie where the people have sex via virtual headsets to avoid getting STI’s. In the heat of the gaming though, we thought we heard our parents discussing whether or not you can get STI’s from playing Wii and we were pretty much in shock. We stopped playing after that race because we had to suss out what they were talking about.
It wasn’t really about what happened within the game but it will always be my most memorable moment playing Mario Kart.
I remember getting a copy of Super Mario Kart for a birthday present many moons ago, and myself and a bunch of friends getting particularly engrossed in its Battle Mode.
Once I stayed at a friends house and took my copy over, we stayed up all night playing it and Madden (the first one, gosh I feel old) not getting any sleep at all until the next night. Battle mode rocks in SMK and I don’t think any other battle modes to date have been as much fun.
Battle mode on the SNES version absolutely loved it!
I am, without question, as excited as I have ever been for this new release of Mario Kart. In commemoration, I purchased the original to play on my old SNES, it will only just tide me over until May 31 🙂
I remember one particular school holidays when my brothers, my cousins and myself played the 64 pretty much non-stop. So much multiplayer Mario Kart and Goldeneye!!!
My favourite Mario Kart memory is from Double Dash, racing against my brother in a First-to-10 on Baby Park, 10 laps with Frantic item setting. Bowser Shells and Giant Bananas everywhere it was absolute chaos. Probably the most fun I’ve ever had on any racing game.
Mario Kart 64 was always the go to game for my brother and I whenever Ocarina of Time or Mario 64 got too hard or too scary (Gohma for a 5 yr old was terrifying). Playing battle on Block Fort, racing to get the shells the fastest to snipe one another from the top of the stage.
My fondest memory was playing Mario Kart 64 for the first time.
My uncle came round for a visit and surprised me with a shiny new Nintendo 64 with Mario Kart. I’d never really played video games up until that point and I just remember being in awe of this game: the characters, the tracks, the music.. I was terrible at it, getting stuck on walls and going the wrong direction, but it was the beginning of my love of gaming and Nintendo and will always hold it as one of my fondest gaming memories.
The best memory I have of Mario Kart is the time me and my brother were playing Mario Kart on our brand new Nintendo 64 we got for Christmas. We immediately fell in love with battle mode and before long we were obsessed. I vividly remember parking our karts on top of Block Fort and sending dozens of green shells onto the ground below where they would bounce around and wreak havoc for the other players. The sound effects for when the bounce off a wall and hit other players was particularly satisfying and I always get a kick out of doing the same trick 15 years later.
The most memorable MK memory for me was during a Mario Kart competition that was held at my school (N64 version). I had talked myself up so much to all my mates before the competition. I was sitting there ready to ace round 1. The course was Moo Moo Farm, definitely not my favourite. It got to the half way through the 3rd lap and I was winning comfortably, victory was just around the corner. However, out of nowhere I was struck by a blue shell and everyone cruised past me to the finish line. Last. I finished last in round 1. I am still scarred by this…
My favourite memories are from playing battle mode non stop on the Super Mario Kart. We could spend hours just on one arena without either of us getting hit. Did you know that you can actually jump a shell without a feather? We played so much we saw it many a time.