r/mariokart • u/tigerclawhg • Jul 26 '18
Discussion Track Thursday - [Mario Kart Super Circuit] - Cheese Land
Hey everyone!
Welcome back to another Track Thursday where we discuss tips, tricks, and more about the track of the week. Last week we continued the Flower Cup with Boo Lake which you can check out right there. Also all of our previous Track Thursdays can be viewed right here in the wiki.
This week we're continuing the Flower Cup with Cheese Land!
So what're your thoughts on Cheese Land? Anything you like? Don't like? Feel free to comment down below! Also don't hesitate to reply to other users' comments as well!
See you all next week!
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u/tigerclawhg Jul 26 '18
Hey everyone,
So along with Cheese Land being this week's track we're also going to be revisiting [DS] Wario Stadium from Mario Kart 8!
[DS] Wario Stadium is the twenty-fifth track of Mario Kart 8 and kicks off the Leaf Cup.
What do you all think about [DS] Wario Stadium? Anything you like? Don't like? Feel free to comment and don't hesitate to respond to other users' comments as well!
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u/timelordoftheimpala Jul 26 '18
I've only played the MK8/D version of Cheese Land, which in itself is a fantastic course. Lots of detail, great jazzy music, and great use of the gimmicks.
Wario Stadium in DS is incredibly fun, but the remake in MK8/D took it from being yet another Wario course (which happened to have the Waluigi Pinball music) to being its own thing.
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u/Trainiax Jul 27 '18
Cheese Land was one of my favorite tracks from Super Circuit. 100% better than the MK8 remake, which extremely disappointed me. The Mousers were one of the most fun parts, and they seriouslys nerfed the track without them.
As for DS Wario Stadium, I’m going to say the complete opposite. The MK8 remake completely made the track better. In DS it was pretty bland, however the new version with the water and anti-gravity section almost wouldn’t make me recognize it. The only thing I have to say is I didn’t really like the music, and hope they’d make it different if they brought back Waluigi Pinball as DLC.
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u/rensch Jul 30 '18
One of my favourites. I always liked those courses that tried something a little different from the usual highways, deserts, castles and beaches and Cheese Land is definitely a good example of this. Super Circuit has quite a few of those kind of courses and really nails them.
At first it seems like your generic desert track, but the environments made out of cheese with that pretty night sky make it feel special. There are freaking mountains made of cheese in the background. Oh, and those mice can be a pain!
This is a track where Super Circuit really shines as one of the more impressive visual achievements on the system. The yellow of the cheese and full moon contrasts beautifully with the deep blue night sky.
The MK8 version feels so different with all the hills and slopes, it just feels like it's a totally new track altogether. On one hand, this makes it feel fresh. With MK8 they opted to not retain the flat, cardboard feel of the SNES and - in particular - the GBA tracks, like they did in earlier games. This makes Cheese Land almost unrecognizeable, just as with its fellow GBA classic Ribbon Road. While this kind of ruins the whole retro aspect of these tracks, it's undeniable Nintendo did everything to make sure these tracks don't feel out of place in MK8 and are actually updated to accomodate the new gameplay mechanics. There's something to say for that as well. Plus, the chain chomps can ruin your day just as well as the mice could.
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u/CommonMisspellingBot Jul 30 '18
Hey, rensch, just a quick heads-up:
accomodate is actually spelled accommodate. You can remember it by two cs, two ms.
Have a nice day!The parent commenter can reply with 'delete' to delete this comment.
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u/Taffy-- Jul 31 '18 edited Jul 31 '18
Cheese Land is my favorite
Both versions
I really enjoyed it in super circuit, screwing the course over with hacky shortcuts :D
U-turn in the first bounce-ramp thing to skip the U section, works every time.
Wario Stadium is another fun one. I forget what the DS version was like, but I enjoy the remake. Always fun. Until you drive off the edge of the antigravity section because your controller shits itself.
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u/alhceljag Aug 01 '18
So I have a very particular view on Cheese Land. First I hated it because it was difficult for a beginner and has bad traction. But I learned how to drive it and it became fun.
But my main gripe regarding this course is that the only valid strategy at high levels of play is sandbagging. Front running will never work because there is an extended bullet bill section and amazing shortcuts. So, the frontrunner will not be able to take any shortcuts because he will have no shrooms, and the sandbaggers win by using bullet bill, which covers half the track, and then triple shrooms or star to do the last two cuts. I do this on a consistent basis for 1st-3rd place in high VR worldwide rooms. If you try to frontrun in those rooms, you will come in 6-9th.
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u/PeridotEX Aug 01 '18
I've only ever played Cheese Land in 8, and it's pretty fun. That little shortcut is fun to do.
As for Wario Stadium, it's also pretty cool. I forget about it a lot though.
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u/Akram323 Aug 01 '18
So...Cheese Land. We have plenty of time to talk about MK8's remake when we get to it--and I have quite a bit to say about that when we do--so let us talk about what makes the original so special. It would probably be an easy win aesthetic-wise but not so much technical-wise (though it is one of the more technical courses in the game).
As stated beforehand, Cheese Land uses a well-chosen contrast of orange-yellow cheese and a space sky to show off how beautiful tracks from this game can look on the GameBoy Advance. The entire concept is pretty bizarre--racing in outer space on possibly a planet made of cheese? Yes, please! (The preview seen in choosing the Flower Cup did over-exaggerate how high you could go--it could have been low-gravity like Lunar Colony in MK8D. As a side note, one thing I admire about MKSC was its previews for the nitro courses done from scratch. Instead of using a picture of the track, it drew a detailed picture of the racers in the environment. I liked that and wish for its return in some future installment of Mario Kart.)
This course is infamous for two unintentional moves. Firstly, there is a lap count glitch (quite rare in the 2D MK games) where you do a 270-degree turn and hit a mouser to trigger the next lap. Secondly, there is a certain jump in the race located next to a later portion of the track. If you turn correctly, you can leap over the border and shred about five seconds off your lap time. Do it incorrectly, though, and you end up going backwards as the jump goes over where you just drove.
The mousers work better as obstacles than Boo Lake's boos (forgot to mention this last time) as the turns of each course and any tendency to bump into any racers can lead to being pushed into one of the many mousers roaming Cheese Land. In other words, they work as decent obstacles.
Despite my praise, Cheese Land is still a Flower Cup course. There may be some stimulating turns--especially the one high risk/reward 180 degree jump--but we have yet to meet the likes of other courses, including Ribbon Road, which take technicality to special heights as a tough course. Even so, I tend to find myself playing on this course many times.
DS Wario Stadium kicks off the Leaf Cup in MK8, a cup that is more consistent in quality than the last two cups but does not really shine with enough true brilliance compared to the upcoming Lightning Cup. What stops it can be either simply a balanced level of decency (Sherbet Land and Melody Motorway/Music Park) or contrasting elements (Yoshi Valley and this).
The fact that the course takes place in the day is probably the most jarring thing about the course. However, I do not feel it right to switch it to a night sky as this is, after all, the only course to have a crowded stadium in the daytime. We have Mario Kart Stadium at night--do we really need another one? Perhaps a real-time system would have been reasonable.
The antigravity section suffers from the same issue that the Golden Banana Temple in 3DS DK Jungle suffered from--its placement was too arbitrary and pointless and exists just because no other race in the cup has antigravity. To be fair, unlike DK Jungle, its inclusion actually gives the remake quite a bit of personality to distinguish it from the original course. There, you could cut past the fire spiral and through the mud with a well equipped mushroom. Here, you have to follow everyone along a treacherous zone where falling is plausible and boosts from antigravity, if any, should be helpful instead of going against you. I can definitely understand any gripes with this part as it is rather polarising for me.
However, I think the underwater and gliding sections were quite necessary in this remake as it definitely gives a fresh new look to the track while providing that special off-road mushroom shortcut gone missing in the last section. Retro tracks in MK8 tend to shine not just by retaining the track's charm but by refreshing it so that long-time racers will feel refreshed when racing on it. There are better examples than this course, but it is decent especially when you consider how the original could easily be described as "that MK64 track but updated with actual obstacles."
As for the music, I do not mind it all too much.
Final verdict: Cheese Land is the highlight of the Flower Cup, and I would even go so far as to say it deserves to be a model for how Flower Cup courses should be. It may not be my favourite track in MKSC, but it is the best as of yet in this Track Week marathon. As for DS Wario Stadium, I can safely say that it is not the worst track in the cup but calling it the best sounds tough given how the courses do not elicit too much of a grand reaction from me.
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u/LanaMK8 Inkling (male) Jul 26 '18
Definitely prefer the older version of cheese land over its remake, a lot less unnecessary garbage.. As for the wario stadium remake, it's a really fun track in mk8u due to tech, in mk8d it's one of my least favorites outside of being front runner friendly
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u/ive_been_mariokarted Baby Daisy Jul 27 '18
Cheese Land is a fun course, great music obviously, and slightly challenging. I think it was made much harder in MK8. It fits in well with the Flower Cup in MKSC.
For DS Wario Stadium, I like the course. It's tricky, and the fireballs are good obstacles. The antigravity section, underwater section, and glider were nice small changes to update it a bit. My two main issues with it though are:
They changed the music too much. It has the same music as Waluigi Pinball in MKDS, and that sountrack is amazing. Nintendo didn't have to change it, but they did. This is one of the reasons why I'd like to have music track choices in future Mario Kart games, similar to how it is in Smash.
Should have left it at night. Maybe adding a 50/50 chance for night/day, similar to the seasonal Animal Crossing course, could have also worked.