First of all let me say that this is going to be lenghty blog, so if you like reading and enjoyed or hated Mario Kart I recommend to read because I won't be making a TL:DR version of this.

I want to start by saying that I really don't think that Mario Kart sucks, in fact I'm sure that it's a great game and the best of it's genre as of today, so think twice before raging at me like a sore Nintendo fanboy, I really like Mario Kart and it's really fun to play.

OK, now heading to the meaty part, wha's the problem that I have with Mario Kart? To me, it always has felt like a incomplete game, like it's great but something is missing, like if nintendo has a great concept on it's hands but don't know how to exploit it and it's frustrating at times, because like I said before, Mario Kart is a great game that I want to enjoy at it's fullest.

Let me say that after Mario Kart for snes, every tweak or change they added is so innovative and cool but I feel like they were poorly executed for the sake of having one Mario Kart per Nintendo system. They are focusing on quantity and not on quality.

Let me give you a few impressions of each existent version of Mario Kart

Super Mario Kart - SNES

This was the pioneer, the first one, the gem. I never owned a snes, but from what I can remember (because I was really young) I had a great time watching my cousins playing this game, however trying to play this as of today would be the most boring experience ever (not because it sucks, it's because it's really old).

Mario Kart 64 - N64

I can't say much about this game, me and my friends prefered to play Mario Party over this one. I hated the graphics of this game, the character looked like cutted out of a low quality image pasted on a piece of paper.

Mario Kart: Super Circuit - GBA

This was the first game I had when I used to have a GBA. This Mario Kart was the hardest I ever played, I enjoyed this one much better and the tracks were one of the best of the whole Mario Kart franchise.

Mario Kart: Double Dash! - NGC

This was also the first game I got for my NGC. I loved the fact that you could pick from a roster of more than just 8 characters, not only that, I liked the different karts, and the fact that you can use 2 characters at the same time and each character has specials now.

However with this game, the system pretty much changed overall, the karts were not balanced anymore . I was so angry at this Mario Kart because it could have been awesome.

Mario Kard DS - NDS

This game was pretty cool, the tracks however had creativity yes, but lacked the feeling that you were racing in a racing track. Also this was the first Mario Kart to introduce wi-fi gameplay, and it was fantastic, too bad in was for 4 players only and most of the people cheated.

Mario Kart Wii - Wii

This game is shit. Nuff said

Mario Kart 7 - 3DS

This is the latest instalment of Mario Kart as of today, and it came pre-installed in my 3DS when I bought it. This game is pretty good, it has great visuals and the 3D looks amazing. The roster is very disappointing, only 17 characters to choose from (one of them is your bloody Mii which has a stupid voice, I never thought I would hate myself that much) and I think half of them are useless or not memorable enough. Where's Waluigi, Dry Bones? Birdo? Bowser Jr? why not bring Kamek instead?

The new tracks are completely out of the norm making this game to feel less of a racing kart game.

Ok, now that I described some of my thoughts on each Mario Kart I want to discuss why these games can't seal the deal for me.

This game is about karts racing, but not just kart racing, it's a crazy battle for the damn 1st place using karts, the concept is simple yet fun and entertaining. Here's the thing, not a single Mario Kart has achieved this goal for me, sure there are items you can throw to your opponent, do that makes it crazy and fun? yes, but it's not enough.

Usually when you play Mario Kart in single player in a difficulty that suits your standars, you only race with the bitch that it's behind you creeping at you at the back. If Bowser (CPU) starts as 8th place don't think ever that he would hop up to the 1st or 2nd place to beat you, he starts last and ends last.

This seems to be a really silly complaint, but it's very important to me because I can't feel the crazyness of the race, when you really can't tell who the hell is going to win, true there are some exceptions in which shit gets really crazy with so many shells and the racers at the back can gain some momentum but that's very rare to happen, you are just stuck with the 2nd and 3rd place, it feels like you are only racing with 2 people! this situation extends to multiplayer mode as well, and makes the races very mainstream and somewhat boring. This problem is on every Mario Kart (I don't know about the snes version though)

The problem, I believe is on the items. The items are completelly umbalanced, and I see that in every new Mario Kart the items get more unbalanced than ever.

The amount of stun caused by the banana peel is ridiculous compared to the red or green shell, and don't make me start on the blue (cheap) shell which is completely broken, there is no way to evade it. The star last almost nothing, that squid-thing item is the biggest shit in the game, I hate when I get it when I'm in fricking last place, I could go on and on with this.

The karts are SUPER unbalanced, and it became very notorious since Mario Kart: Double Dash!. Since this game the difference in karts is huge, normally heavy karts have high speed but low acceleration, and lightweight karts have low speed but high acceleration. Now, let me please translate this, heavy karts are shit pick the lightweight ones.

The heavier karts have the same speed as light karts, but they have a horrible acceleration, bad drifting and in Mario Kart 7 the heavier ones usually can drive better on rough terrain, this is false, the kart is equally slow as light karts, now, this mechanic is pretty cool, I love it, but it was poorly excecuted, this would force gamers to pick the same characters all the time and the same karts as well.

On each new Mario Kart, the tracks gets wider, weirder and less enjoyable, they feel less like a karting track, this issue affects the items, because the characters looks smaller than ever, the items are even more smaller and the tracks are huge, I'm in fifth place and I get a frinking green shell, who the hell am I going to hit if it's incredibly hard to aim the stupid shell, I've only hitted people with green shells because the other racers were too close or I just had luck, not because of ability whatsoever.

Now, these assumptions are based on a kart game that I used to compare Mario Kart of course, and I played the crap out of it when I was a kid. Still do sometimes.

Yep! CTR: Crash Team Racing for the original PSN was the best karting game ever made in my opinion, and the last game before Crash Bandicoot became crap, though I really enjoyed Crash Bash. Many of you may think that this game copied Mario Kart 64, perhaps it did, but it surpased it with flying colors.

This game had a more than just 8 characters to unlock, a very entertaining story mode with boses and extra content between the levels raising the replay value of it. Very decent visuals not great, the tracks and the music behind the tracks are memorable, some of the music of this game marked my childhood forever.

To keep CTR short, this game was just addicting, I played this game for hours straight, alone! I didn't need anyone else to play it and have genuine fun. The racings were just crazy, anyone could be behind you not just the same character, the items are very balanced and the fact that you can use the wumpa fruits to enhance the items that you get is something that would suit Mario Kart pretty good.

Well, enough of CTR. Mario Kart has it's good things though, It offers nice visuals and colorful and vivid escenarios, I can't argue with that part, also since Mario Kart DS each Mario Kart has a great online (during gamplay) that feel completely lagless no matter with who you play with around the world, and that's because Nintendo is known for having shitty online games.

However everything is not perfect, the comunnication errors are very frequent and you can drop the races in just one chance, you can't drop in the menus or during the races, if you drop(by turning off the system) you ruin the game for everyone else. Also you can only choose your character once you join a party, you can't change it in between races.

Nintendo announced a new Mario Kart for WiiU, and I'm not excited about it, I'm actually expecting more of the same with a few tweaks here and there. For some reason I just prefer Mario Kart on handheld devices.

*sigh* I wish Mario Kart to be as cool as CTR was to me when I was a kid, or even better.