Mario Kart: 8 Hour Review

When I make my spaghetti sauce every few weeks, I like to change up something in the ingredients. Just one or two things and just enough to make it stand out. A new flavor. A new texture. Just for kicks.

Mario Kart has been made eight times now and with most of the same components. Each one has virtually all the same characters, the same controls, and with the introduction of the GameBoy Advance version, tracks from games past have added to each game to double the number of tracks available to play.

But each iteration has had just one or two things different to make them stand out. Holding two items (weapons), power-sliding, network play, different karts, a new weapon or two, two drivers per kart, and now, motion controls. Not all the changes stay in each version, but usually there is some mixing of ingredients from past games into the newest one.

Mario Kart: Wii hasn't been getting super high review scores for mostly that reason. But for me, I think the games change just enough to keep them fun and fresh. It's a tried and true formula that works well. And with the Wii having such a drought of hard-core games for non-casual gamers, Mario Kart is a taste of something fresh from what we've been playing for a long time.