A few weeks ago, I did a short post about the success of my evil plan to turn one of my friends into a 1:64 die-cast collector. When my buddy Jason and I met, the number of toy cars that he owned was a nice round figure: 0. He now has over 200 of them! And he’s acquiring more of them all the time, and planning a whole place at his new apartment to display them!
It’s likely that part of what drew my friend to Hot Wheels, in particular, was that brand’s series of replicas of MarioKarts. Under the HW imprint, Mattel has made a line of replicas of the carts and characters from that famous series of games, and Jason has to collect them all, or as close as he can get! This is understandable, considering his enthusiasm for MK, and the Mario “world” in general, which he has been into most of his life. Happily, along with the “Kart” replicas have come hundreds of other diecasts of classics, muscle cars, racing cars, and fantasy cars, to which I say: whatever gets ya there!
He’s hooked! My evil plan worked! MuaHaHaHa!
Except…
What if Jason had an evil plan of his own? While I turn him into a diecast collector, is he turning me into a gamer???
It wasn’t long after Jason and I started hanging out that he inspired me to write this post reminiscing about my childhood days with the Intellivision, Mattel‘s home gaming system of the early 80s. Since he collects vintage gaming consoles, he had a couple of mimics of the original Intellivision and several ROMs of the game library, and for a while, we were reliving some of the classics that I remembered playing when I was between the ages of 11 and 13 years old.
One of the games that I best remember from that time-one that I played on the Intellivision and in the arcades-was Donkey Kong. This game-as almost everyone knows-was the genesis of today’s “World of Mario.” I played the original game with some gusto for a while, but as I got older, I lost interest. By the time Mario Bros came out I had moved on from video games for the most part; I do remember my brother playing some of the various iterations of Mario Brothers on his NES, and I remember watching him from time to time and thinking it looked like fun, but I never got into it myself. Today, I look back with nostalgia at the original, but what stuns me is what it’s turned into!
So, it wasn’t long before Jason was introducing me to some of the much newer stuff that he enjoys. The first adventure was “Zelda: Breath of the Wild.” More an RPG than a video game, this is another game with a long history going back all the way to the mid ‘80s. I can just barely remember playing the original version of the Legend of Zelda, although I must’ve played it at a friend’s house because I remember it on NES, a system my brother had but that I never did. Soon after this, due to my obvious interest in car racing via my slot car hobby, he made the suggestion that I try my hand at another of his favorites: MarioKart.
At first, I was skeptical: sure it looked like a racing game of sorts, but there were no cool cars in it…carts that look like mice or frogs when I want Ferraris and Jaguars? Meh…and the tracks all looked like various versions of Candyland and other board games. But hey, I agreed to play a few rounds with him: after all, what could it hurt?
It took about 15 minutes for me to start salivating; within an hour, there was no coming back!
FULL VIDEO: How much fun is it? If you haven’t tried it, get on board, gearheads! You won’t be sorry!
Now, I won’t pretend to know much about the 40 year history of games that have led to this elaborate world, but I understand that to Nintendo fanatics, The World of Mario is regarded with an almost religious degree of reverence and respect… and that’s something that I fully understand and appreciate, because that’s how I feel about the history of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars! It’s a passion that people that are very into and knowledgeable about. Since I am not that guy, the significance of the game’s sprawling cast of characters is largely lost on me. Thus, I usually choose to race either as Bowser or Bowser Junior, not because I have any deep understanding of the backgrounds of the characters, but because I like their “punky” look, with their red mohawks and spiked bracelets and armbands! That’s something I can relate to!
Jason, by contrast, changes his character up all the time, and I’ve seen him race as virtually all of them, as he does have the background to understand each character’s significance to the game and its history.
This led me down the path of researching other racing games that I had heard of, and was peripherally aware of, but had never seriously investigated. Forza Horizon. Forza Motorsport. Gran Turismo. Need For Speed. Even some older games that are now considered “classics” like Ridge Racer and WreckFest… all this has got me thinking that maybe it’s time for me to invest in a gaming system! Believe me, no one‘s more surprised than yours truly to even be having this thought: until the last six months, it wasn’t even on my radar, but now I find myself wondering: what platform? Xbox? PlayStation? Nintendo Switch? So many decisions, and they all seem to have something to offer!
While starting my research on this, I found many gaming sites that list MarioKart in the top 10 of racing games, and at least two online articles called it out as number one… Not because it’s in any way a realistic reflection of motor racing, but because it’s just so damn fun to play!!!
So yeah, the vehicles are goofy and the tracks are childish, but get over the idea of MK being a reflection of real motor racing in any capacity, and let the fun begin! Its so addictive that you won’t care: I just went with it, and I’m going with it still! I haven’t had this much fun since I started building my slot car collection back in January 2020, so now I’ve got racing upstairs, racing downstairs, racing against the clock and racing against a friend! How much longer before I’m racing my sleep???