Currently Playing: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Is Undeniably Oddball
If an apartment exists in a city, and that flat does not contain a copy of Mario Kart, is it even inhabited by humans under the age of 70? Ok, so as a saying, I admit it's not as snappy as the tree/forest/noise thing. But the point remains, there are few people in the Western world who have not played Mario Kart in at least one of it's permutations and variations. The game is considered by most people to be the default game purchase one would associate with a Nintendo branded console. If you own a Switch, or a Wii, or a Wii U, or a GameCube, or whatever, it is expected that you have a copy of Mario Kart to go with it. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty interesting piece of sociology; no other console that I can think of has such a universally agreed "default game" like a Nintendo console does. There might be preferences, or trends - most male gamers will own a Football Manager or Fifa game, most PC gamers will at some juncture have tried a version of Civ(ilisation) and most Xbox gamers will have at one point or another rotated a Call of Duty game through their collection. But everyone, gamer or not, just sort of assumes that if you have a Nintendo console, you have Mario Kart. It's almost a question of being polite - it's a multiplayer game, if you *deliberately* don't own it, you must be deeply antisocial, or just have no friends.
This fact becomes all the more startling when you actually take a step back to consider just how downright weird Mario Kart actually is. We are all so familiar with Mario Kart that I think we - and by we I do kinda mean everybody - only judge it by comparison to itself, Mario Kart 7 vs. Mario Kart 8, Mario Kart 8 vs. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, etc. Nobody ever seems to stop and think about how we would perceive it if it came out fresh today, from a new indie studio as a bold new title. Would it thrive in the same way we have seen Rocket League being embraced? Or would Mario and gang fall flat without years of history helping them along their way.
If you're still not on board with this line of thinking, then try this; let's describe the game:
So, you're like, one of a whole bunch of characters racing around a track, and there's like an Italian plumber and his brother and their nemeses who are skinny and wear different coloured hats. And then there are a whole bunch of animals, and then the plumber is back again but he's made of solid metal but not dead, or he's pretending to be a red panda and he has a girlfriend who is a princess or a cat or made of solid metal too. Also there is a dog and various turtles and a sentient mushroom.
You with me so far?
And all these characters drive around and around in circles on these kinda cartoony hell worlds which are constantly moving around them and it's not always clear what is alive and what isn't. And all the characters are armed to the teeth with (more) turtles that they throw at each other and then those turtles headbutt you and explode and your character screams and waves it's arms about.
You see how this is, without the benefit of familiarity and tradition, kinda a hard sell?
Oh yeah, and some of the weapons are almost insta-death, like the Blue Shell is really hard to avoid and everyone thinks you can't (but you actually can), but then they've made this new game about squids and now this game has to have squids in it so there is this squid that ejaculates black ink all over you so you can't see where you are going and it does that even if you are a squid too! So much for species loyalty, eh?!
I'm not claiming that I am not enjoying the time I am spending with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. On the contrary, I am loving every strange, frustrating, minute, Blue Shell to the face be damned. But you have got to admit, it's a funny ol' game. If it had been released today, would it be even half as beloved or successful? I'm not so sure...
