Darran Jones of Imagine Publishing's magazine NowGamer attributed the original success of Mario Kart to its use of the Mario characters and to being a new type of racing game.

Development of the first Mario Kart game was overseen by Shigeru Miyamoto, then the general manager of Nintendo's EAD division, who is best known for creating the Mario franchise and other successful Nintendo properties. Thus, the Mario Kart series was born, with its first title, Super Mario Kart, released for the SNES on August 27, 1992. They made a prototype that featured a generic 'guy in overalls' it was decided that Mario characters and concepts be included when the developers added Mario driving one of the karts, out of curiosity as to how the game would look, and were satisfied with it. The modern Mario Kart series is widely considered to trace its spiritual origins to the Famicom Grand Prix games, which were released for the Japan-only Family Computer Disk System add-on these were the first Nintendo racing games to feature Mario as a player-character.įollowing the Japanese launch of F-Zero, a Super Nintendo Entertainment System game which was exclusively single-player, Nintendo developers decided to create a two-player racing game for that console as a follow-up. The classic logo used until Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 The games in the series have sold a combined total of over 150 million copies worldwide.

It has also been referenced in the Paper Mario role-playing series and inspired several stages in the Super Smash Bros. The success of Mario Kart has spawned many cartoon-style racing games published by various gaming companies from the 16-bit generation onwards. There have been a total of 15 titles in the series: 5 original home console games, a home console port, 3 portable games, a mobile game, 4 arcade games co-developed by Bandai Namco Entertainment, and an RC-based game. It was inaugurated in 1992 with its debut entry, Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which was critically and commercially successful. Mario Kart is a series of kart racing games developed and published by Nintendo as a spin-off of its flagship Mario franchise. “Holy smokin' tires! Kart mania is spreading and has invaded the world of Super Mario.” - Nintendo Power Volume 41, October 1992

The current logo used since Mario Kart DSġ5 (9 console, 4 arcade, 1 mobile, 1 RC)

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