LogFAQs > #932432397

#60





Years of release: 2014 (Wii U), 2017 (Switch)
Beaten?: Sure?

Mario Kart is another one of those franchises that I used to absolutely love. I spent so much time as a kid playing Mario Kart 64 and Double Dash with my mom, and every new entry in the series would have me hooked for a minimum of 50 hours or so. At some point though I've sort of started getting bored of it. Don't really play it as much as I used to, it just isn't as exciting as it used to be. To say I "outgrew" Mario Kart wouldn't be quite right, but maybe I kinda did?

Mario Kart 8 is a masterpiece and I still love it anyway though. I think we've pretty much hit the apex of the franchise here - I'm sure we'll get more Mario Karts in the future, but it's hard for me to see how they can improve on what they've done very much. It's about as polished as it could reasonably be. It's fast and butter-smooth, the tracks are great fun, and it remains a staple of couch multiplayer play. Even the online's getting reasonably decent by now!

I still play it reasonably often with my family - it's just always a good option for multiplayer. Nobody ever feels like *not* playing Mario Kart 8. We play Deluxe now on the Switch and it's even better because it's easier to find the controllers for it mostly. And it has all the DLC so I can play as ISABELLE. This is extremely important. I can't believe I can play as Isabelle in a Mario Kart game but here we are. This moves the game up a couple more places on the list at minimum.

I hope we get more Mario Karts in the future despite the fact that this is pretty much as good as they can get - Mario Kart Tour feels like an insult to me, I mean in theory a Mario Kart game on phones would be nice, but I've heard it's kinda rough so far, and the idea of turning something sacred like Mario Kart into a gacha really offends me and I hate it.

Honorable Mention: Mario Kart 7

I really liked MK7 too, probably enjoyed it for a good 30 hours or so, might have included it on this list in the 80's or somewhere around there, but I didn't have a lot to say about it so I culled it from the list and added it as a footnote here. Aside from being on the 3DS, Mario Kart 8 pretty much eclipses Mario Kart 7. It's weird to think that 8 was released only three years after 7 but we haven't gotten an entirely new entry since.