Celebrating Mar10 Day with Fun Facts about Nintendo’s Mario Kart!

It’s Super Mario Day, a special occasion every year on March 10th celebrating the iconic Nintendo game character. Today, we’re going to highlight one of our favorites in the franchise, which should come as no surprise is the infamous Mario Kart! The first game, Super Mario Kart, was released in Japan and North America in 1992, with a subsequent release in 1993, and has been winning our hearts over ever since.  We’ve all got our favorite Mario Kart Racer, of course, as we’re sure you do, too, but we bet you didn’t know that it was the first game to feature other playable characters from the Mario franchise besides Luigi and Mario!

Here are some super fun facts about Mario Kart to impress your friends with at game night or on your next road trip!

1. The idea for Mario Kart was inspired by a glitch during development for the Super Mario Brothers game. Project team members noticed an error where the Koopa Troopa shell bounced back and forth across the screen, inspiring the initial concept for a kart racing game!
2. In its initial release, Mario Kart sold more than 8 million copies, but today they’ve outsold that number more than tenfold with over 100 million copies!
3. Your advantages as a player will vary depending on which character you choose, as each of them have their own unique abilities and qualities that impact racing performance and playability!
4. Waluigi made his character debut as Wario’s evil brother in Mario Kart Arcade GP 2.
5. The iconic yellow turtle who counts the track laps with that infamous sign is named Lakitu, but that’s not his only gig! He’s also the owner of all the tracks in the game.
6. That dastardly Blue Shell has more of a purpose than wreaking havoc on your peers (although, we certainly do enjoy that quality about it, too!)  Originally the blue shell was added to prevent gameplay performance issues by game devs who were concerned the game may lag if too many players were next to one another on the track at the same time.  It was intended to spread racers apart, but of course gamers took matters into their own hands, creating the infamous spiny nemesis!
7. Adding up the console and mobile versions of Mario Kart, there are 170 original race track courses through the franchise, more than half of which can be seen in Mario Kart 8 (for a total of 96 tracks in the game!)

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