Didn't unseat Mario Kart but I got a lot of kicks with this one.

User Rating: 7.4 | Kinetica PS2
When my roommate bought this for his PS2 I figured it was just another racing game for him to whip my butt at. Kinetica is definitely a deviation from racing games in that you can do tricks on straightaways and during jumps to generate energy which can then be used to accelerate your racer. This system was also successfully used in later games but to my knowledge it debuted here. In this case the racers are human beings with wheels so the tricks are handstands, back-flips, etc..
Maybe I am biased because I am not much of a gearhead and I was successful at this game, but prior reviews that say the game is not fast clearly didn't even give it a chance. It only took me about a week or two of casual play to unlock all the tracks and racers and beat it on the highest difficulty, but the speed that is required to succeed on those levels is truly insane, you are going so fast that you have to have the tracks almost memorized to make it through without crashing.
It's not even in the same league as Mario Kart but for the casual driving fan who doesn't need all the realism of modern racing games, this is a great diversion and, at least in my case, a great game to pick for "loser buys the beer".