The birth of a legendary series of racing games, and possibly the most impressive entry of them all!
If you have never played any Mario Kart game - which I doubt, since a MK game has appeared for every Nintendo console since the SNES (except for the Virtual Boy, but that doesn't count), the game pits you in a Grand Prix race where characters from the Mario universe race against each other for the Gold Trophy at the end of the cup.
To race, first you select the engine size: 50cc, 100cc and 150cc (unlockable), then you choose a character; the original line-up was Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Yoshi, DK Jr., Bowser and Koopa Troopa (my personal favorite). The characters were divided by weight, and you had the light weights, medium and heavy. After this, you choose a Cup, which consists of 5 tracks to race in, and you had the Mushroom Cup, Flower Cup, Star Cup and Special Cup (unlockable).
The level design was fantastic, tracks were modeled from classic Mario games, focused on Super Mario World. All tracks had the craziest shortcuts you could imagine, and obstacles as well, and the AI got really, really hard on 150cc, so it was quite a feat to finish this game with a Gold Cup, but it was easy on 50cc. In classic MK fashion, you could make your opponents' life miserable by throwing them items that will stop them from getting in 1st place.
You could play Grand Prix for 1 or 2 players, and in addition, you had Time Trials for one player, where you could race to achieve your best lap speed alone, and a Battle Mode for 2 players, where you must pop your rival's baloons before he pops yours! This was my favorite mode.
The graphics were splendid and colorful, and it really showed that it was heavily using the SNES hardware, so it was amazing what was achieved using only 2D graphics. All characters had very fluid animation and the levels were very colorful too, no slowdown of any kind, and while watching the replay of a race you could rotate the camera of your character all 360 degrees, no distortion. Sound was really good too. Lots of great music and engine sounds, I just loved the music of this game; back then, Mario characters didn't have a voice, so there were no voice samples, but for some it was better this way.
For many, this is the best Mario Kart to date, but that title might be taken soon by Mario Kart DS, which I'm currently playing hehe. For me, this game had the best track design in the series, and the multiplayer was great, but it got better later when the game featured 4-Player multi with the N64. At times the AI got frustratingly hard, I think those are the only complains, but anyway, don't miss this classic, get it used or wait for it to come out on the Wii Virtual Console.