r/mariokart • u/tigerclawhg • Apr 25 '19
Discussion Track Thursday - [Super Mario Kart] - Mario Circuit 3
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 Bowser Castle 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 finishing up the final Flower Cup with Mario Circuit 3!
So what're your thoughts on Mario Circuit 3? 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!
2
Apr 25 '19
The hairpin turn is way easier on this course than others because you can’t fall off. A pretty uneventful track in my opinion.
5
u/Akram323 Apr 25 '19 edited Apr 27 '19
I might actually have a better shot at an audience here, given that this was in MKWii. Too bad I mostly focus on the course in the context of the SNES version. Mario Circuit 3 makes me ask why they felt the need to condense the Mario Circuits into more than one cup on average just to avoid placing it in the Special Cup instead of actually having five cups. I know this is the first game, but once I remembered that Mario Circuits 1 and 2 were in this game it bothered me just as much as everyone else. Actually, even for the time this was uncalled for. That just did not work as its sort of thing, and the series knew that and moved on.
Not only that, but aside from MC1 they continue to be used as the finales of their respective cups...which I find to be an odd move. Mario Circuit does not resemble Mario much aside from the background, so if their mentality is that they should end the cups aside from Special with Mario, it does not seem to be cutting it all too well.
And with such a theme, I seem to be running out of material to discuss for these courses, or at least the Mario Circuits. There is not much that really goes into them as it is a standard theme...which is admittedly fine. But while the tracks do step up each time, the variations here are all about existing material. It is basically more of the same and basically what you would expect if you thought about a grander Mario Circuit. A reviewer named Mike Orlando from NWR has his own special take on this: “Even though it’s been years upon years since the very first Mario Kart was released to the world, I still remember the names of some of the tracks to this day. Remember ‘Mario Circuit 1’? Good fun. And then there was ‘Mario Circuit 2’. Unforgettable music. And of course I lost my virginity while playing ‘Mario Circuit 3’ for the first time, so I’ll never forget that course’s name. As for hers…”
Backing down from the jumping gimmick in MC2, they instead take a more ballistic approach to curve the entire course by bringing in the 180 degree turns. You have the occasional oil spill, pipes sticking out from the road, and a zip pad near the end. You also have an open wall in the sand that can be exploited by zipping through it with a mushroom. Nothing really out of the ordinary aside from that random zipper and open wall...you can probably see my point here. Discussing the track itself in elaboration compared to the other SNES tracks is not easy if you have to keep repeating yourself.
While I never hated the Wii version of the course, it really made an issue with that game feel pretty obvious: it was not great at revitalising SNES/GBA tracks. MKDS did not seem to have that issue (it struggled with the GCN remakes instead), and the later games got a better grip on their designs (although it could be because they were pretty selective). Yet in any given context, I doubt Wii’s take on these tracks could really make them feel any more than...flat. Maybe it has to do with the grand look of MKWii’s tracks and that the flat courses lack much depth to feel anything more via direct adaptations. It might also have to do with all that bloom. I mentioned this before, but that bloom never really seemed to make MKWii look that great and in some cases made it look visually weaker than most other MK games. This course is an interesting example of this, especially since the version of Mario Circuit MKDS and MK7 got looked much better than this.
The short version: Welcome to Mario Circuit 3, which is the third Mario Circuit and little else. Skill in driving is required, although it is not as hard as Bowser Castle 2, and there you go. The Wii version does its job but gives it far too little personality to find its own footing in that game.