Super Mario Kart
Super Mario Kart is a racing game on the SNES featuring characters from the Super Mario Brothers games.
Super Mario Kart offered a single player game where you could pick your favurite character and race against all the others in a championship. There were four championships to be won, as well as three levels of Karts 50cc/100cc/150cc with 50cc being the slowest Karts and 150cc being the fastest. 150cc racing can get very fast!
While the one player is entertaining, the game really came alive with the two player mode. Three two player options were available, race alone, race with computer characters, or battle mode. The first two are pretty self explanatory with the two players either racing each other alone or with the other characters being controller by the computer.
The real fun however, is in the battle mode.
In Super Mario Kart battle mode each player gets three balloons that rotate around the Kart. Within each of the four battle arenas are yellow power up squares (think Mario power ups) which when driven over provide the player with a randomly selected weapon. The weapons range from heat seeking Red Shells, bouncing Green Shells, Banana Skins, Feathers and a Ghost. The object of the battle game is to burst all of your opponents balloons.
The fun to be had in Super Mario Kart battle mode is immense and is yet to be beaten by any game on any platform. In my opinion at least. Even Nintendo failed to improve the game when they made Mario Kart 64 for the N64 console. Not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, however even its 4 player gaming couldn't match the original's unique balance.
In my mind, there is nothing quite like skidding around a corner of the 4th battle map, launching a Red Shell off at some bazaar angle, only to hear the screams of shock as a more naive player gets hit from out of nowhere :)
Super Mario Kart is simply Nintendo at their very best.