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 17^th 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.