Mario Kart Super Circuit

Mario and his friends are having a great time shooting each other with shells, bumping the other near the edge of cliffs, and oh, racing. This game is all about racing. Unlike other games wherein you can only see cars and buildings, this game has cute Karts and lovable, huggable characters. Unfortunately, you can't customize the looks of Mario and the others because if you do, that's called blasphemy. There are five cups on the game and on each cup, there are 4 tracks. You are free to choose whether you want a grand prix (you'll race all the tracks of a certain cup), quick run (you're free to choose a single track you want to race on) and time trial (also a single track, but here you're alone). If you completed a track on time trial, the next time you race there again you'll race with a ghost and that ghost is yourself! I think it's cool because if you want to see how you've improved, save a lot of ghosts and race against them. There are eight characters in the game and each time you restart you'll have to choose a character, select what kind of race you wanted, choose a speed (50 cc, 100 cc and 150 cc), choose a track and you're off to go!

The cups vary by difficulty, of course the first one is the easiest and the fifth is a special cup that you could unlock after beating the four with a golden trophy in the grand prix. Oh, after you've raced in the grand prix, there's a short awarding ceremony for the first, second and third. You'll also see your rank, it could be a triple star, double star, single star, A, B, C, D, and E being the lowest. Your rank varies with the score of your place in the race, the time you finished it and most importantly, the coins you gathered. Yes, the coins are very important if you want to have a high rank. The tracks are so much fun, examples are Luigi Circuit (the rainy and slippery circuit), Bowser Castle (the fiery castle with large smashing heads, lava swimming pool and fireballs), Shy guy beach (with coin eating slippery crabs and vast waters that could drown you) and my favorites: The sky Island, the very popular Rainbow Road and the scary ghost filled Broken Pier. After you have finished all the five cups of the 50 cc, 100 cc and 150 cc with a golden trophy, high ranks (preferably star ranks) and a lot of coins, a special cup would descend! Just press R or L on your GBA and the old tracks would divert exposing new cups and new tracks. The tracks there are 3 times harder, I think? You could also connect your GBA using a connector (no wi-fi yet) and have battles. The battles are shooting each other with shells until the three baloons above their heads have popped. The last man standing is the winner.

They paid great attention to the details because the tracks looked really good and also the characters (Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, Yoshi, Bowser, Wario and DK). The audio on each track is also good and I really enjoy the entire game play. There are also several weapons that you could use in the game that would help you be the number one. My favorites are: The red shell (it's like a homing bullet that will target your opponent, the star (protects you from bumps and makes opponents fly when you hit them), the banana peel (very very slippery) and the mushroom (booster).

The controls aren't that hard to use too. The game lasts long because achieving high ranks on a cup is very hard and everybody would do their best just to try and see the special tracks which is really fun. For me, Racing never gets boring. There are also a lot of secret shortcuts that one must discover and try.

I find this game addictive, thumb hurting, opponent cursing and laughing develishly (there are a hundred ways to ambush an opponent). I like how the game works but I don't like the fact that it's hard to drive, shoot opponents, jump over obstacles and gather coins all at the same time. So I guess practice could do you good but don't overdo it or else your thumb might look like a worn eraser.

I definitely would recommend this to other players, it's totally fun.