Finally, the date has come and Mario Kart: Super Circuit has been released. Believe it or not, at first I wasn’t going to even get this title. I needed to save money for the GameCube. But, because of the GameCube’s slight delay and me getting more money, I was able to pick it up.

Graphically, the game is great. All the sprites look fantastic in their pre-rendered form. I’ve play the 50cc class so far, so the game plays slow. I’m sure it’ll speed up once I get into the higher classes.

The sound, while good, is too soft in my opinion. Even with my volume at max I can barely hear some of the voice samples sometimes. The music is great. Some of the tunes have a really old school Super Mario Kart feel to them, which is just fantastic.

The controls aren’t as tight as I’d like them. Though I’m sure I’ll get used to them in time. I feel a bit let down because Yoshi no longer has the dead on steering that he used to have. Now he’s just really good at off road courses. So, for the first time ever I have switched my driver away from Yoshi. I am now a Luigi driver. I took the recommendation from the manual because it said he has really great steering, and he does.

I've now had a chance to try out the single-pak multiplayer element to the game. The download to the other GBA is pretty quick, about 20 seconds. The graphics actually don't suffer a lot, at least not as much as in F-Zero. Everyone has to be Yoshi, which is ok, he's not an awful character. You can't choose a class to race in, it defaults to 50cc (I think). There are 4 good tracks to choose from. Overall, the single-pak link is really solid and works great.

Mario Kart: Super Circuit is a fantastic game overall. It’s exactly what the series is famous for. Good “kart” racing and a fantastic battle element, which it invented.