What would you say is the heart and soul of theMario Kartseries? The classic racers? Themany wonderfully devious items? Smacking your sibling upside the head and throwing your controller out the window? All viable answers, but not the one I’m looking for.
No, the heart and soul of Mario Kart is its tracks. From the shining brilliance of Rainbow Road to the manic loop of Baby Park, it’s the tracks that are largely responsible for our many best and brightest Mario Kart memories. That’s part of what’s been so great about the newer Mario Kart games; the fact that they always bring some classic tracks over from the older entries.
10 Best Mario Kart Tracks
The Mario Kart series has featured 170 tracks over its storied history, but which ones are the best? Read on to find out.
While there are plenty of top-ranked favorites amongst the series’ community, though, everyone has their personal picks. Maybe a particular track meshes well with your playstyle, maybe you have some particularly fun memories associated with it, or maybe you just vibe with that track’s aesthetic.
There’s no objectively right answer, but if it were up to me, these particular tracks would get a little more play than they currently do, and in this particular order.
10Choco Mountain
Going Off-Roading
This is kind of silly, but Choco Mountain was always one of my go-to courses in the olden days, and for one distinctive reason: its theme song. That harmonica lives permanently in my memory, and it will never leave.
Even putting the irresistibly catchy song aside, though, Choco Mountain is a good beginner-intermediate level course fornewer, younger racerscoming to grips with some of the game’s more complex elements.
It’s got plenty of tight corners, it’s absolutely full of bumps and lumps to jump off of, and perhaps most importantly, its falling rocks teach you the importance of maneuvering around obstacles. The best part comes right at the end of the circuit, where you have several tall bumps back to back.
I’d always try to see how high I could launch myself off each, usually resulting in me colliding clumsily with the wall. It was a dumb decision, but a fun dumb decision, and a good frame of reference when and when not to hop on other tracks.
9Sunshine Airport
Hops And Curves Galore
I despise air travel with a fiery passion, and I don’t particularly like going to the airport either. It’s crowded and cramped and everything’s too expensive. More than that, though, all that empty space on the tarmac is just begging for some irresponsible racing.
I’m not brave enough to try something like that in real life, so Sunshine Airport is probably the next best thing.
Sunshine Airport meets a good middle point between verticality and traditional track layout. It’s still a fairly straightforward track, but there are plenty of quick hops between planes to keep you engaged, not to mention that big launch and gliding bit right before the starting line.
Combine that with racing through the concourse and across the tarmac, and you have a delightful little microcosm of every irresponsible thing you could ever do at an airport, consequence-free. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a video game airport since grinding through one in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2.
8Kalimari Desert
High Potential For Shenanigans
All Mario Kart tracks, some more than others, have a degree of what I like to call “shenanigan potential.” When you’ve been playing with some buddies for a while and get bored with regular racing, shenanigan potential is the degree to which you can faff about with the track’s gimmicks for your own entertainment.
As far back as my childhood, one of the tracks with the highest level of shenanigan potential was Kalimari Desert. As you may expect, the focal point of Kalimari Desert’s shenanigan potential is the train that puffs around on a rail of its own, occasionally crossing through the track.
In my youth, my friends and I would get up to all sorts of assorted nonsense with this train; we’d play chicken right in front of the crossing, we’d have little mini-races along the train’s tracks, and we’d try to hurl ourselves into it as fast as possible while it was encroaching.
Yeah, it’s not the “proper” way to play the game, but if you’re just bumming around with friends, it’s the little dumb bits like that train that make for the best memories.
7Dino Dino Jungle
Prehistoric Party
There’s a natural appeal to a merger between dinosaurs and race cars. They’re diametrically opposed concepts, the pinnacle predator of the past meets the engineering achievement of the future.
If you want to make a good dinosaur-themed racetrack, you need lots of big caves, maybe some natural water features, and, of course, at least one dinosaur. Those are the precise elements you’ll find in Dino Dino Jungle.
This prehistoric jungle has everything to make a cave-dweller feel at home, from vast, spacious plains to crystal-filled caverns to sprawling bridges over the coast. The highlight is, of course, a massive and adorable brontosaurus, who both nearly steps on you as you drive through the plains and gives you a little nudge as you drive over the bridge to the finish line.
The only thing that would make this track better would be if you could drive up the brontosaurus’ tail and back, though the addition of glider pads in Mario Kart 7 onwards at least gets you closer to the big lug.
6Wario’s Gold Mine
A Drifter’s Dream
What is it about tracks owned by Wario that makes them so excellent? Maybe it’s his grungy aesthetics, or maybe it’s his complete disregard for safety regulations.
I couldn’t say for sure, but both of those elements certainly contribute to what I like about Wario’s Gold Mine. After all, who doesn’t love cruising through a mining shaft at incredibly unsafe speeds?
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Not unlike a minecart-themed roller coaster, Wario’s Gold Mine is a, er, gold minefor drifting enthusiasts. It’s a narrow track with lots of deep, sharp turns and high drops, not to mention the occasional hazard flying down the rails.
Drifting is one of my favorite parts of playing Mario Kart, and if you’re looking to get good at drifting, Wario’s Gold Mine is one of the best tracks to practice on, in my opinion. You either learn how to control the angle of your drift, or you collide face-first with a cart and go flying over the edge.
5Music Park
Feel That Beat
Mario Kart is primarily a game governed by sight and gut feeling. You see racers in front of you and warnings for items coming up behind you, and you rely on your gut to handle tight turns and know when to drift.
Sound is also a vital component of the Mario Kart formula, though, and I’m not just talking about it is admittedly pretty great music. Listening for the signals of the track and racers can work to supplement those gut instincts of yours, and nowhere is that clearer than racing at Music Park.
As you’d expect from a track with the name “Music Park,” the audible element has greater importance than usual, with the distinctive beat of the soundtrack and the many moving hazards and gimmicks informing your racing strategy.
Keeping an ear out lets you know when the Piranha Plants will switch pipes or when the big music note dudes are going to bounce, and that in turn lets you know the perfect time to drift or hop to take advantage of either. It’s also immensely satisfying to drift down the long line of piano keys, hearing their tones sounding out behind you in perfect sequence.
4Twisted Mansion
The Pinnacle Of Spooky
There are a handful of tracks across the history of Mario Kart with a distinctly “spooky” aesthetic, with chief examples beingclassics like Banshee Boardwalkand Luigi’s Mansion.
I love a good spooky track; there’s something satisfying about the thought of outracing a malevolent spirit. However, when it comes to a track that really makes the most of its vibes, we have to give it up for the most ambitious spooky track to date, Twisted Mansion.
Twisted Mansion is the same basic idea as Luigi’s Mansion, that being a gigantic mansion absolutely crawling with ghosts. The difference is that, as the name implies, this mansion has gone distinctly non-Euclidean.
Hallways and passages are constantly twisting and shifting, seamlessly moving you from the ground to the walls until you suddenly find yourself passing through a suspended mass of water and shooting out for a twisting glide over the courtyard. It’s a track with its vibes nailed down to a tee; the Haunted Mansion at Disneylandwishesit could be as spooky as this place.
3Mount Wario
It’s A Long Way Down
The vast majority of Mario Kart tracks are traditional circuits. You go through the whole track for three laps, and that’s the race. However, there are a small handful of tracks, mostly in the newer entries, that eschew this tradition.
Instead of being three laps around a closed circuit, they’re one long line, ending with a solid un-looped finish. This kind of track means no leaving traps between laps, and no exploiting gimmicks you’ve already passed. My favorite example of this kind of tricky layout is another hit from the king in yellow, Mount Wario.
Mount Wario is a proper thrill ride from top to bottom, starting you on a high note by dropping you out of a plane, followed by swerving through icy drifts, cruising through a hydroelectric dam (also owned by Wario, apparently), and finishing off with a slalom down a ski slope.
It’s the kind of extreme sport you love to see in a fantastical racing game where the laws of reality don’t quite apply, and it’s all brought to you by my man, Wario.
2Royal Raceway
Shoot Into That Wild Blue
The older Mario Kart games were a little lighter on crazy gimmicks compared to some of the newer entries. That’s not a bad thing; it helped the series build up its competitive audience back in the day.
That said, it was the gimmicks that really captured my heartback in the N64 era, and one that I still carry a sizable torch for to this day is the boost launcher in Royal Raceway.
Royal Raceway is a mostly-normal racetrack, set on ordinary roads, passing by mountains and stands full of fans. The main reason I was always eager to play it growing up is the bridge segment, wherein you run over a long series of booster pads, go flying off the bridge’s ledge, and land back on the track with a loud THUD.
It was simple as far as gimmicks go, but there was just something magical about getting to boost so many times in a row and go flying off a ledge like that. Without dying, I mean. Nintendo knows it too, which is why, in subsequent appearances, that ledge was upgraded with a glider pad, just to make that little bit of flight extra special.
1DK’s Jungle Parkway
Welcome To The Jungle
Donkey Kong has hosted a few jungle-themed courses over the course of Mario Kart’s history, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight the very first one, from all the way back in the Nintendo 64 days, DK’s Jungle Parkway. Remember, this was the first game the modern DK appeared in;it was Donkey Kong Jr. in Super Mario Kart.
DK’s Jungle Parkway has pretty much everything I love in a Mario Kart track rolled into one snazzy package: it’s got plenty of tight turns for drifting, a huge boost pad-powered jump over a river, and plenty of shenanigan potential from the little spiked balls that get hurled at you when you go off track.
I think my favorite element is the bridge before the cave in front of the starting line. It’s barely wide enough to accommodate two, maybe three racers, which makes it a perfect choke point for racers to beat each other to. It’s fun, it’s tense, and it’s got a pretty little riverboat. In short, I love it.
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