Thinking About Getting Into: Mario Kart

There is no shortage of video games that favor a single-player modality. In fact, these are the games that I’ve long preferred; I’ve logged scores of hours in Stardew Valley, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Animal Crossing. My fixation with Fire Emblem: Three Houses in early 2020 was nothing short of frantic obsession. Yet the other weekend, when I was in a particularly despondent mood, the only game I felt called to was one that, although it does have a single player option, is decidedly meant to be played in a group of two to four. But I was sad, and worn out from my sadness, and so I played Mario Kart by myself.

I can’t say I have particularly strong associations with Mario Kart. I had played it here and there as a kid, but I was more likely to turn to Super Smash Bros whenever the occasion called for a multiplayer game. Or Wii Sports, I guess.

Mario Kart, as I remembered, was simple in its rules, but it wasn’t necessarily easy to play. So often, I would drive myself off a cliff. I’d get stuck in the water. I’d fall behind as Lakitu, the flying, cloud-driving Koopa, retrieved me and settled me back on the track. When I played again recently, I realized: it used to be harder than it is now. You can’t fall off the track.

(This, I eventually learned, is because of a default setting in Super Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, called “smart steering,” which can be turned off. Not everyone is a fan, like GameFAQs user Mikeobk, who commented on a thread four years ago, “they made a goddamn babies game even easier.”)

But I suppose this makes me baby—that I appreciate the game’s new intelligent design. Because really, I think the most perfect thing about Mario Kart is that all you can really do is coast and coast and coast.

This general direction of the game has not changed since its debut in 1992 as Super Mario Kart, a game developed by legend Shigeru Miyamoto (“Mario’s Dad” and the creator of Donkey Kong, the Legend of Zelda, among others) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES. The original game has just eight characters in their corresponding go-karts. In the 2017 release Super Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, there are 41 characters, with the option to totally customize their vehicle with the wheels of your choice and their parachute or glider attachment. I usually play as Daisy, because I like to think that she looks like me, as much as I can claim a resemblance to any number of celebrities with my shared recessive combination of red hair and blue eyes.

I don’t have any strong preferences for the game’s 32 tracks, though I do have a fondness for the cows in Moo Moo Meadows. I usually select the Grand Prix option, which takes players through four different races. Each requires players to complete three full loops of the track. It’s simple enough, but still a challenge, because of the question boxes that players are encouraged to deliberately drive through, as each provides them with a random power-up or a weapon that they can use to throw their challengers off course (well, as off-course as you can get with smart steering turned on).

I always assumed that the question boxes were completely random, until a friend pointed me to an observation that John Green made in his podcast (and now book), The Anthropocene Reviewed. The game, he says, is more likely to give players in first place the more nominal tokens (like a coin or a banana peel). Those further back in standing get the real goods (Bullet Bill, who propels the player forward, the piranha plant that bites at nearby competitors, the lightening that zaps all other players at once). It is in this way that Mario Kart gives those who most need it a leg up, and those who don’t, as minimal as a bonus as possible. “In a Mario Kart game, the best player still usually wins, but luck plays a significant role,” Green writes. “Mario Kart is more poker than chess.”

I do not always come in first place when playing Mario Kart, and when I do, I don’t usually notice my lead until I’ve just about won. It’s a game that I play just to finish; to use doltish cliché, it is literally about the journey.

The real ingenuity of Mario Kart upon its release was its split-screen function, which made it playable by two people in the same room. Four-player functionality was added two years later with the release of Mario Kart 64. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe supports up to eight players through a local wireless connection. But playing Mario Kart alone, against a fleet of computer-operated competitors, there is not much to consider but the road ahead of me, the question boxes I might run into, and whether or not I can finally defeat Baby Peach this time around.

But I don’t really care about winning in Mario Kart, for the most part. It is simply something I can do when I don’t want to think so much, when I want to do something with my hands that’s not as productive as working on the sweater I’ve been crocheting for over a year now or trying a new baking project. I like the music of Mario Kart, dulcet and repetitive, and the vivid colors on the screen. I only have to exist in this particular moment, in a moving vehicle traversing sweeping meadows, climbing up the stairs of a haunted manor, mysteriously moving just fine while submerged completely underwater, and if I may face any setback, a turtle shell thrown my way or a banana peel tossed in my path, I may stumble for a moment, but I know that I will reach the finish line when I get there.