If we pretend Mario Kart 8 never got a booster pass or Big Blue I’d honestly argue Mario Kart 7 has the best track lineup in the franchise. The retro lineup for this game is nuts. Coconut Mall, Koopa Cape, and Maple Treeway are by far Wii’s three most popular tracks, Waluigi Pinball and Airship Fortress are beloved by Mario Kart fans, Daisy Cruiser is a fan favorite from Double Dash, the remake of SNES Mario Circuit 2 is surprisingly solid, DK Pass is there. I don’t think there’s a single miss in this lineup. The lineup of retro tracks is so good that I’d go as far to say it stole all the good ones. Mario Kart 8 was able to snag some decent retros and had a killer Lightning cup, but still had to deal with a bunch of C-List tracks until it got DLC, and some of the best retros in its base game were from 7 itself. Mario Kart Wii also has a fine selection but a handful of stinkers managed to slip in. And those two look like masterpieces compared to the selection Mario Kart DS got, dragging down that game’s overall track quality from a 9/10 to like a 6. The new courses are also no slouch either, especially the Wuhu Island levels and the new Rainbow Road, being the first tracks in the series to be divided into three sections instead of laps. These courses aren’t too common in 7 & 8 but are always among the best in the series, 3DS Rainbow Road being a strong contender for my favorite Rainbow Road in the series. It's a generally strong lineup. Sadly, this game A: doesn't have a vs. mode for some reason and B: was rendered obsolete when Mario Kart 8 launched only three years later, so this great track lineup is unfortunately stuck in 7.
This game also gave us the Honey Queen, a minor NPC who appears in 2 missions in Mario Galaxy, as a playable character. 7’s roster is infamous for being very small and cutting a lot of series staples for more out there picks, most notoriously axing Waluigi despite the game bringing back his signature stage Waluigi Pinball. Honey Queen was generally the face of this backlash due to being the most random “who the fuck wanted this?” character they could throw in, every other weird pick was at least still a mainstay Mario enemy or recurring power up/Smash midboss Metal Mario. I’m gonna be honest though, I think a lot more people would be open to Honey Queen being a driver if they put her into a larger and more complete roster, like Mario Kart Wii’s or the current 8 Deluxe one. Mario fans adore the extended cast of the franchise and love it when they do this kind of shit with obscure irrelevant D-List characters. If Honey Queen never got in 7 but was randomly added to Mario Kart Tour as a newcomer, I would bet Mario Kart fans would be begging for her to be brought over to 8 Deluxe with the rest of the Tour exclusives. They recently added Poochy to Tour out of nowhere and so many people have started begging for him to come over to 8, imagine if they added him to 7 back in 2011 before he started becoming prominent.
Case in point, I can type in “Mario Kart Fan Roster” into Google Images, find 3 rosters with the Whittle from Mario Galaxy 2, a species equally as irrelevant as the bees in Galaxy, a roster with the monkey dude I don’t remember the name of also from Mario Galaxy 2, rosters with every Mario RPG OC that exists, why does this Nintendo Kart roster have 4 Sonic characters and 3 PAC-Man characters but only 1 Nintendo franchise has more than 2 racers? Why does this roster lack Dribble & Spitz & Orbulon but have Vanessa from WarioWare? I grew up with Touched too but like she doesn’t even have microgames?, is that the fucking Lion from Super Mario Land????? You may think the Lion from Super Mario Land making an epic comeback in Mario Kart 8’s BCP and finally giving Sarassaland the big revival no one with a full time job wants would be hilarious but imagine if he instead made his epic comeback in 7 and Waluigi still wasn’t there. He would have been just as hated! His legacy would have been “hey that’s the random lion boss they put in Mario Kart 7 over Waluigi,” which is exactly what will forever taint Honey Queen’s legacy and causing her to remain as a “Haha what if they added this to make people mad” outrage pick for speculation regarding the remaining 5 MK8D slots until the end of time.
This game also gave us the Honey Queen, a minor NPC who appears in 2 missions in Mario Galaxy, as a playable character. 7’s roster is infamous for being very small and cutting a lot of series staples for more out there picks, most notoriously axing Waluigi despite the game bringing back his signature stage Waluigi Pinball. Honey Queen was generally the face of this backlash due to being the most random “who the fuck wanted this?” character they could throw in, every other weird pick was at least still a mainstay Mario enemy or recurring power up/Smash midboss Metal Mario. I’m gonna be honest though, I think a lot more people would be open to Honey Queen being a driver if they put her into a larger and more complete roster, like Mario Kart Wii’s or the current 8 Deluxe one. Mario fans adore the extended cast of the franchise and love it when they do this kind of shit with obscure irrelevant D-List characters. If Honey Queen never got in 7 but was randomly added to Mario Kart Tour as a newcomer, I would bet Mario Kart fans would be begging for her to be brought over to 8 Deluxe with the rest of the Tour exclusives. They recently added Poochy to Tour out of nowhere and so many people have started begging for him to come over to 8, imagine if they added him to 7 back in 2011 before he started becoming prominent.
Case in point, I can type in “Mario Kart Fan Roster” into Google Images, find 3 rosters with the Whittle from Mario Galaxy 2, a species equally as irrelevant as the bees in Galaxy, a roster with the monkey dude I don’t remember the name of also from Mario Galaxy 2, rosters with every Mario RPG OC that exists, why does this Nintendo Kart roster have 4 Sonic characters and 3 PAC-Man characters but only 1 Nintendo franchise has more than 2 racers? Why does this roster lack Dribble & Spitz & Orbulon but have Vanessa from WarioWare? I grew up with Touched too but like she doesn’t even have microgames?, is that the fucking Lion from Super Mario Land????? You may think the Lion from Super Mario Land making an epic comeback in Mario Kart 8’s BCP and finally giving Sarassaland the big revival no one with a full time job wants would be hilarious but imagine if he instead made his epic comeback in 7 and Waluigi still wasn’t there. He would have been just as hated! His legacy would have been “hey that’s the random lion boss they put in Mario Kart 7 over Waluigi,” which is exactly what will forever taint Honey Queen’s legacy and causing her to remain as a “Haha what if they added this to make people mad” outrage pick for speculation regarding the remaining 5 MK8D slots until the end of time.