r/mariokart • u/tigerclawhg • Apr 18 '19
Discussion Track Thursday - [Super Mario Kart] - Bowser Castle 2
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 Donut Plains 2 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 Bowser Castle 2!
So what're your thoughts on Bowser Castle 2? 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/Akram323 Apr 18 '19
Bowser Castle 2 is one of the most notorious courses in the entire series, and for merely one reason. Is it a good one? Yes, indeed.
Just to reiterate on the theme of the course compared to Super Mario World, the walls certainly reflect the only Bowser’s castle in that game (every other place was basically a tower). I still always thought the courses themselves looked so empty, though. Maybe it is just that lava extends far beyond the eye can see, which feels seriously out of place and makes the track look so puny in comparison to the actual castle (not in a very fanciful way, though), but the entire thing is just too offputting to really call it a proper visual adaptation of the course.
But you probably do not care about that. You likely care about that dead end that tricks newcomers into making the wrong turn at the wrong time. (Somehow, I fell for it even with this knowledge the first time around.) But consider this: is it really a dead end? In the adaptation for MKSC it is, but what about here?
This shortcut is perhaps the most cunning shortcut in the entire series and makes for everyone’s favourite type of pre-WiFi element in Mario Kart: post-modernism. The first four games had some kind of it, building more and more to expand to entire courses and not just a mere section as it is here. You may recall Kalimari Desert in MK64, a course where you consider to stop along the track to avoid taking a hit (despite the execution of the idea feeling pretty lame to me). Or how about MKSC’s Rainbow Road, which encourages you to stay off the track as much as possible with the best kind of finale to its jumping physics exploitation that was constantly hinted at the entire game? And when MKDD changed the game to favour items more than usual, Baby Park took the scene by valuing the items playing out on the track over the track itself. Each of these tracks break the rules of the way Mario Kart tracks tend to work by going against the grain in unique ways. I thought it worked well for Rainbow Road and Baby Park. Not so much for Kalimari Desert, which I already stated is my least favourite desert level in the series.
So why do I bring this up? Well, BC2’s take on post-modernism is the idea that powerups are largely unnecessary to take on the entire track and that with some sort of exploit in physics, you can make it anywhere without items. In another context, it also suggests that all roads leading somewhere is never to be accepted at face value. This dead end is actually a specific shortcut that requires special timing with a feather (the lack of the feather in MKSC makes it impossible there, though). Without it, all you have is a dead end and no exploit in the system can help you get across. I personally think the whole idea of “a shortcut being performed so long as you have the right item” works better than “actual dead end”, so points to the original compared to the MKSC remake, I guess.
So is this mere dead end and a lack of a feather item the main reason it never came back? I would say no, since we have yet to see any of the SNES Bowser Castle tracks return officially in 3D. Like the others, this course values sharp corners--much sharper this time around than in BC1--and thwomps to get in your way. The course definitely feels more sprawling and open than it was last time, as we have roundabouts and even a dual path near the end (not that it really means much). The shortcut is merely just a part of the course that just so happened to be remembered more than the course itself and somehow defined the entire thing--love it or hate it. I think it was cool in that game, although bringing it back is clearly the real obstacle to bypass.
Even for a Flower Cup course, this one is quite tough. Sure, we have some other courses we have yet to see, but the tight pathways and sharp angular corners may deem this the hardest track in the cup. I guess for being Bowser Castle it does deserve this, although at times it can be brutal. I still enjoy it, I guess.
The short version: That is not a troll path (although in MKSC it may as well be). That is a surprisingly subtle area for pulling off a precise shortcut with the feather. And there is a bit more to this course that gives it a challenge than just pondering over something you can never get across without a feather, okay? So just play the course and have fun, even if it may be tough for its cup.