
We Rank ALL of the Super Mario Kart Games
In April 2022, “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe” will be celebrating its 5th anniversary. Despite originally releasing back on the Wii U in 2014, the game has seen new life recently thanks to Nintendo introducing more courses to the Switch version via DLC. What does that mean for hope of a brand new Kart experience in the future? Who knows, but for the time being, we can look back at the series as a whole and rank the titles in terms of their overall quality.

Before we go into the ranking though, there’s a couple stipulations to put in place. The first being, we’re not counting the mobile game, “Mario Kart Tour.” The excessive ‘gacha’ mechanics of the title along with the very different functionality of it separates it too much from the rest of the field of games. We’re also not counting Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit since it’s as much a physical toy as it is a game. Your experience with it will vary tremendously based on how much space you have in your home to set-up a course. It’s still a strong enough product to recommend though if you want to purchase it for your home (and, it’s on sale!).
There were also multiple Mario Kart arcade releases which, due to the nature of being an arcade game, are hard to judge without having extensive time and money to play them; so they won’t be counted. And finally, we’ll be counting “Mario Kart 8” and “Mario Kart 8: Deluxe” as the same title, since barely anyone played the Wii U anyway.