Retro corner - Super Mario Kart, a personal view

Super Mario Kart. Three words (hereafter referred to as SMK) that probably stole more hours of my life, over as long a span of time, as any other game.

Picture the scene. November 1993, in a tiny indie game store in Old Bethnal Green Road in the heart of London's East End. Sunken-cheeked crones, pearly kings, tousled-haired urchins and opium-addled drabs littered the street (there may be a degree of poetic licence here but - hey - it's my flashback). The shop was a stone's throw (from a particularly burly urchin, anyway) from my university hall of residence and £25's worth of birthday money was burning a hole in the pocket of my flatmate. He picked up the blue box of SMK, handed over the cash and going to bed at a civilised hour instantly became a thing of the past.

Not an exaggeration - we often played that 'one more Cup' until the dawn chorus was well under way, neither of us wanting to quit as a runner up. If I'd have put the hours into my degree that I put into that cartridge, I might have got a First.

SMK was essentially a horizontal-split-screen two-player game, where 8 Mario-universe characters in go-karts negotiated cartoon-style racing circuits, which featured a number of Mario themes. Two player was undoubtedly the focus of the game - in single player the screen was still split in two, with the lower half taken up with a side-on map, around which the karts raced. This map had no real purpose in the game and it was as if Nintendo had tagged on the single player as an after-thought. Maybe that was another example of Nintendo being ahead of the market?

SMK laid the foundations for all the Mario Karts that were to come in terms of structure. 8 karts (up to 12 by Mario Kart Wii), three cups - in order of difficulty Mushroom, Flower and Star - with Special Cup unlocked when the other three are completed. Each cup had five races, not the four of later versions (a weakness of those later versions, I think). Each race had 5 laps (cut to three now but I think the modern tracks are longer) and each cup had three difficulties, 50cc, 100cc and the unlockable 150cc. And that was pretty much it (well there was Battle Mode but I never really played that).

Written down, it doesn't seem that impressive but, as with all great games, that greatness was borne out by extended play. It was a game that rewarded skill. Unlike, say, the Wii version, you couldn't get a sequence of events that would allow a novice player to beat a veteran. When you were good at this game, you were 15 seconds ahead of the field - no blue shell levellers here.

The powersliding was possibly the best realised in the whole series. You could skim a corner so tightly that, on particular occasions, Lakitu the cloud-dwelling race marshal, could momentarily dance around your screen, convinced that you were in reverse, before you sped off, with a tenth of a second advantage over you opponent and with Lakitu eating strato-nimbulus (possibly).

My flatmate and I quickly built our own SMK lexicon, added to during extended play. 'Bowser poo','onions' (gold coins), 'Yoshi egg' and 'Luigi you cheating flashy bastard' were all used frequently. We even had a Cup victory song - 'Who wants to dance, who wants to sing, who's gonna be the flat Mario Kart King' (to the - mangled - tune of 'Who wants to be the Disco King', by The Wonderstuff). Particularly effective smacktalk when halfway around the final lap of a Cup's fifth race...... Sixteen years, two marriages and three children later, we still sing this song when we meet up and (to?) play SMK.

The game has stood the test of time, in two player anyway. It is probably the only game from that era that I still play regularly. Later versions have been easier - 3 laps instead of 5, respawning item boxes, Cup progression without a top 4 finish, rubber banding, blue bloody shells - but probably more playable for a beginner. I think, in what some might think as heresy, that all things considered, SMK isn't the best all-round version of the game. I love Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart DS and they have, arguably, surpassed the original, in that the single player game is better realised and there's online play. When it comes to local multiplayer though, against a player of a similar skill level, SMK still reigns supreme.