Mario Kart has long been one of my favorite games and one that I always return to when looking for something to do with a group of friends. From the Nintendo DS to the Wii to the Nintendo Switch, I’ve seen my fair share of interesting ways to play an otherwise straight-forward and rigid racing game even with all its rules and limitations.
Mario Kart, from a proceduralist perspective, is a fun game that is meant to be enjoyed with multiple people and doesn’t necessarily deliver any particular message. But what I’d like to do is to highlight a more play-centric perspective by giving a few examples as to how the players have given their own meaning and way of playing this “simple” family game.
To start I’d like to mention a different game and genre of playing games that serves as a prime example of the play-centric perspective. This being Mario 64 and the speed running communities surrounding the game. Though not intended, players have created and continue to find new strategies and glitches allowing them to achieve the best possible time to get certain amounts of stars. They’ve created many categories and their own particular rulesets that run parallel to the game but are not enforced by the game itself. They also use internet spaces to discuss and share their records and strategies.
Mario Kart has a similar community. In this particular speed-running category, fans have truly come to create a unique and interesting player experience that, while not bending the rules of the game, challenges its intended structure. The players have come together to making up this truly interesting category of speed running. Together they’ve created the phenomenon known as the Blue Yourself challenge.
The Blue Yourself speed run challenge requires a player to go into single player mode, lag behind the rest of the racers until they are able to get a blue shell, take that blue shell all the way to first place, and use it effectively hitting yourself in while in first place. The item intended to be used by players that are not in first place to get an edge and take out the person in first place now has a new meaning and purpose. The player wants to hit themself with the blue shell as soon as possible for a chance at a world record speed run.
Another, more personal, play-centric example of playing Mario Kart is what my friend likes to call Beerio-Kart. In this game, all players must finish drinking and entire beer by the end of the race start to finish. The only rule is that you must put down your controller and not play while drinking the beer. If someone finishes the race before their beer is finished, then they are disqualified. It’s an interesting game and I believe it’s a testament to how adding a drinking, or real life, element to video games gives it a new meaning and player experience.
In both these examples the rules and intended purpose of Mario Kart and its mechanics are misconstrued. The blue shell is used by the player inappropriately and a family game becomes a grown up game. While playing Mario Kart the normal way is certainly fun, these other two ways are definitely worth a try.
I think one Mario Kart title that might also be interesting to look into is Mario Kart Double Dash for the game cube. This was my childhood Mario kart game and I think it is still the only Mario Kart title to this day where two players could be present on one car. Double dash’s main mechanic was that your cart would have two characters on it and in co-op modes you could play with another player on the same car with one player controlling the back character who throws the items and one controlling the front character who drives.The players could switch between who was driving or who was throwing the items but you would either be the driver or the person throwing items. As a result, there were all sorts of informal ways to play the game with this added level of partner cooperation. I just think it is an interesting Mario Kart title to consider as it relates to what we talked about this week with co-op gameplay and I do feel like being able to play with someone and not just against them in Mario kart was a shift from how Mario kart usually is played with all players racing against each other.
Though I enjoyed playing Mario Kart with my friends, I’ve never owned a copy of the game myself. It has always been a game I play when I go hang out at someone else’s place, and even then it would not be of the 2 types you mentioned in your post. The only ‘changing’ we would do is have the player who finishes last hand the controller over to other players when we had a limited number of controllers. So reading about the different ways players have tried to implement different things into the game was quite interesting. I expected that there would be competition for the fastest record between players in the community, but the Blue Yourself speed run challenge was somewhere I was not familiar with and something I want to try next time, though I will most likely fail before being able to use blue shell. I also really look forward to trying out Beerio-Kart the next time I get the chance to.
Throughout all of the party games that I have played, Mario Kart still reigns supreme from a play-centric point of view. I recently learned that when choosing karts, the meters that show stats like acceleration + top speed are inflated to disguise players that their choices matter more than they actually do. Also, the item distribution within Mario Kart rewards players who are lagging behind. All of these combined with an intuitive control scheme means that Nintendo values player-centrism and enjoyment by all players moreso than a rigid, fair competitive environment.