Kart Racing Games That Never Get Old: Mario Kart to Lego 2K Drive

Key Takeaway: Kart racing games never get old because the rules are simple, but the variables keep it fresh: tracks, karts, items, shortcuts, and live opponents all change every race. Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 64 are still the two best ever made.

I have never been more shamelessly proud of my skill at a video game than I was in the late 2000s about my proficiency with Mario Kart Wii. I poured…

I’m going to say hundreds (because I’m not sure I can come to terms with admitting to thousands) of hours into the game. It was the epitome of my Wii-era adult return to Nintendo’s joyful brand of deceptively simple gaming, and it brought me back to the Mario Kart joys of my teen years.

The Table of Contents

Kart Racers Never Get Old

I was really good at Mario Kart Wii. Really, really good. I was no pro gamer, but in all my years of playing the game, I only ever came across one guy who could beat me—a friend of my brother’s who wasn’t even that much of a gamer, he was just some kind of unholy natural at this particular game. We’ll not speak of him again.

Kart racing is a natural fit for the pure kind of game-loop delight that Nintendo has always excelled at (across genres such as platforming, racing, party games, monster-collecting RPG, etc.). The rules are simple, but the nuances and variables of track, kart, racer, items, shortcuts, and live opponents keep the experience fresh and reward ongoing time investment with increased effectiveness.

How I Got Hooked

I first came to kart racing, along with most gamers of my era, with 1992’s Super Mario Kart (its ’80s Sega predecessor, Power Drift, didn’t make it onto my radar at the time). Since I didn’t have my own SNES, I never got great at SMK, though I loved playing it at friends’ houses. So it wasn’t until Mario Kart 64 that I became a true devotee of the genre.

I played the game throughout high school, lost track of it for a few years, then picked it up again a couple of different times in my 20s when, after a move, I’d go back to my N64 and a few favorite games while getting settled into my new situation. This was also the environment in which I had my second biggest ‘shamelessly proud of gaming skills’ moment.

While hunting for jobs, I rewarded myself for sending in applications by trying to unlock each cheat for GoldenEye 007 on the N64: it took me (again) far more time than I care to admit, but I eventually unlocked them all, even the insane Invincibility unlock for the Facility level (finish under 2:05 on 00 Agent).

The Wii came out when I’d finally settled into work a bit and hadn’t been playing my N64 much for a few years – the perfect time for me to reconnect with some of the simpler joys of my youth again through a new Mario Kart. Over the next several years, I branched out to several of the other console, portable, and mobile titles (though only Mario Kart 8/Deluxe stuck with me the way 64 and Wii did), as well as going back to 64.

Gaming With My Kid

More recently, I’ve spent time playing kart-style games with my kid because they’re a perfect kid-friendly entry point to gaming and gaming-as-socializing. He loves the Mario Karts, and while branching out with him from that starting point, we’ve also discovered some spiritual successors that I might not otherwise have noticed since they’re not as obviously ‘kart’ games.

Lego City Undercover

The first was the 2013 classic Lego City Undercover (available on a slew of platforms). While you have to play through the first few mission chapters to unlock the main features of the open world, once you do, you’re able to hop into and out of every vehicle you see on the road and race around smashing Legos and creating whimsical havoc, which feels quite similar to the cartoonish chaos of kart racing.

Hot Wheels Unleashed

Second, we came across the two Hot Wheels Unleashed games, which don’t offer the powerups of Mario Kart but succeed in the ‘wide vehicle and track selection’ category and, by making the race cars actual Hot Wheels size in real-sized environments (that is, your car is toy-sized in a big backyard, or arcade, or village rooftops), captures the feeling of playing with toys much like kart racing does. Plus, in Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged, you can ‘side bump’ other racers off the track, which harnesses even more of the racing nuttiness of kart racing games.

Lego 2K Drive

Finally, we jumped from Lego City Undercover to another Lego game with an emphasis on zany driving hijinks: Lego 2K Drive. While I have to knock this one somewhat for a bit of microtransaction creep clogging up the menu screens (never a problem with retro gaming!), once you learn to ignore that, there’s a great kart-style racer in there.

Even without paying for vehicle unlocks, you can win a lot of vehicles by progressing through the game’s races and challenges and using in-game currency, and you can download up to 50 from a fan creation hub (which also lets you build your own vehicles from Lego pieces and share them). After the first couple of sessions, my vehicle-hungry kid had learned the system well enough to swap out fan vehicles whenever his itch for new rides needed scratching.

Another point in favor of Lego 2K Drive is that it offers the power-up style racing of classic kart games, along with the open-world option of Lego City Undercover (not unlike the open-world-and-races combo of Mario Kart World). I also enjoy 2K’s innovation, where your vehicle seamlessly switches between your current loadout of a road vehicle, an off-road vehicle, and a boat based on where you drive, so you can barrel along cross-country and watch your Legos reassemble on the fly into the best vehicle for the terrain.

The Classics Still Deliver

Of course, it’s also been fun to take my kid backward to the originals – both through the retro tracks in later Mario Kart games and by going back to my classic consoles and playing them in their original glory. The N64 has followed me through many life changes, so it’s been great to fire it up again and literally show my little guy how it’s done.