American Standard: Mario Kartasia

by Benn Ray

Lately I've been cutting the turns a little tight.

I'll grip my steering wheel and press buttons on the side which send turtle shells shooting from the front of my car and knocking out the drivers ahead of me.

I have Mario Kartasia. I've been playing and obsessing over Mario Kart on the Wii for several weeks now.

When I'm not racing, I'm thinking about the tracks, replaying them over and over in my head, trying to figure out the perfect course which is completely fruitless. Not only because it's a video game, but because when racing against others in Mario Kart, there is no perfect routine because a key element to the game is that it is also random.

You can be in first place, see the finish line, and suddenly out of nowhere, things blow you up, zap you, fry you, etc. And therein lies the tease, because you can see a path to victory. It seems plausible, and sometimes it is. But you can’t always predict you’ll cross the finish line first, no matter how close you are to it.

I've been playing online, sometimes with friends, sometimes with groups of strangers from around the world. I'm pretty stoked that I've raced people from every continent so far except Africa. And been summarily beaten by many of them.

With Nintendo's Wii, you can create your own sort of avatar and in Mario Kart you can race with that character. And I've raced a Darth Vader, several Chuck Norris' (for some reason), several Simpsons characters, several South Park characters, a couple of Family Guy characters, people whose names I can’t pronounce, people who have characters in their name I can’t even read, and lots of people who go simply by “Mom” and “Dad” (come on, you can't characterize yourself in some other way?).

I always feel sad when I race a Mii avatar that is designed to reflect the person who created it, and that Mii is ugly. Nintendo's Mii fundamentally makes the Wii version of you cuter. So when I see an ugly Mii, I immediately think to myself, wow, that person must really be a monster.

During online races, I irrationally pick nemesis easily. "Oh, that person has picked voted to race on Rainbow Road even though we've raced on that twice - I'm gonna take 'em out!" Or, "Okay, we're all waiting for one person to vote on a track - come on, what's wrong with you?" Sometimes it's a name. I remember I had decided over a series of races that someone named "Meggy" was my mortal enemy, and not only did I need to beat this person, but they must be destroyed. So I would knock them off the track, blow them up, zap them, etc. as much as possible.

Of course, after those races, I felt like a guilty asshole. Meggy never did anything to me except maybe cut me off in a race and have the name "Meggy."

So then I raced like Mr. Nice Guy, and get slaughtered by an army of Japanese kids. Karmic payback for poor Meggy, I suppose.

I'd be lying to you if I told you I wasn't thinking about playing Mario Kart now. In fact, that's what I want to go do.

Here's my Mario Kart Mii number: 4639-9710-1694.

If you have Mario Kart and wanna race, email me your Mii number.

Comments

[fordprefectajt]

The plural of Chuck Norris is Chuck Norri.

[Benn]

It's surprising how many different Chuck Norri there are online on the Wii Mario Kart.