Mario Kart's first portable title takes more inspiration from SMK than MK64, which if you've seen my review for Super Mario Kart you'll know I don't see as a great thing.

It has definitely improved on the formula the first game set however. The flat 2D stages still limit the amount of personality the tracks can convey, however the fact that every track has a different theme definitely helps make them more memorable. Except for 4 freaking Bowser’s castles that all look the same. I swear, Super Mario Kart and Super Circuit were the 2 MK games I never played growing up, so when retro tracks became a thing I was always confused why there were so many Bowser’s castles that all looked the same. Between this and SMK, there’s 7 of the damn things that all look and feel the exact same.

Also these different themes lay some great groundwork for future games to use them as retro courses. Especially Mario Kart 8, any of the tracks from this game that MK8 got its hands on turned it into something brand new. There's courses in this game I genuinely can't wait to see remade like that again.

AI are far less obvious cheats, although they'll still pull stars out of nowhere in first place when you catch up to them.

Drifting feels far better than it ever did in the original, even if it's still not quite perfect. What I don't like is the mini-turbo though. Not only is there no visual indication of when you've managed to get one, but for some reason the turbo boost only happens about 2 seconds after you stop drifting, it's very hard to plan for.

The game includes every single SNES track, however it removed almost all their stage hazards leaving them with even less personality than before. It's nice that they gave you the extra content to unlock, but I just don't see the point when the stages were barely that fun to begin with, and now they've made them even more bland. Especially when compared to the much more varied Super Circuit tracks, unlocking these old ones as a bonus feels like getting dollar after winning $1000. I mean, sure it's nice to have more, but compared to what I just got it's almost like it isn't even there.

Coins are back for their last appearance until MK7. I'm very neutral on coins in Mario Kart, I really couldn't care less if they're in or out, however this game manages to make them annoying by giving you a constant beeping sound whenever you have 0 or 1 coins. There's really no need for that at all, it's not like having 0 coins puts you in any danger, and even if you have 30 coins you'll still be wanting to collect more, so having an audio reminder that I'm at 0 coins makes absolutely zero difference to how I play.

The coins do have a rather unique function, in that they're how you unlock the retro SNES courses. You have to collect 100 of them in a cup to unlock the relative cup of SNES courses. This is fine, however this game makes you lose coins just from being bumped into by another player. It can be extremely frustrating to be trying to unlock these tracks only to lose 10 coins at once because some asshole AI decides to play bumper cars with you on a straight.

Overall I think the game was fine for the first portable Mario Kart. If you were on a car journey or something and this was the only option it scratches that MK itch, but in almost any other situation you'd probably rather play Mario Kart 64 which was out years before.

Easily the worst Mario Kart I've ever played and easily within the top 5 worst games I've ever played in my life.

I'm not personally a fan of Super Mario Kart, but I will say if you're a fan of that game you'll most likely enjoy this one.

This has every problem Super Mario Kart had, minus characters able to spam power ups at will, BUT introduces a new problem instead which is even on 50 CC the game is TOO fast. I cannot even turn in this game without crashing into a wall, which can most likely be blamed on track design.

A nice touch to this game is that you can play every track from Super Mario Kart. But, other than that I don't have anything good to say about this game.