There’s a decent chance that Super Mario Kart is the game I’ve played most my entire life.

It sounds a little strange to put it that way, but it’s true. When my dad bought me a Super Nintendo, the first game that came with it wasn’t Super Mario World like most kids. (It was Street Fighter II. That’s not important right now.) The second game wasn’t Super Mario World either — it was Super Mario Kart, and I poured countless hours into the game both solo and with my dad.

Background time, because that’s how Music to My Ears always seems to go. I was a divorce kid. My parents split when I was 7, which is just old enough to understand what’s going on and just young enough to blame yourself for all of it. Sob story, boo hoo, let’s not dwell on it. The reason I bring it up is because seeing my dad every other weekend was about as good as it got for most of the time when I was school age, so finding excuses to do stuff together was high up on my list. Turns out playing video games was one of the leading choices.

We played a handful of other titles pretty heavily, too (like Final Fight 2 and NBA Jam), but none compared to Super Mario Kart. We had an unwritten rule in the Etling household — you raced hard for the first track, and then worked together to help whoever won that race get the most points in the other four. Yes, I managed to find co-op in a game that didn’t have any. This basically meant that the person in second place had carte blanche to destroy all the computer racers. Got a red shell? Well, you’re not shooting it ahead of you…so why not sit back and wait for third to pass you, then ruin his day?

As far as I know, my SNES still works. I have Super Mario Kart on emulator and through the Virtual Console on my Wii, but there’s something about that little cartridge that always brings me back. Maybe it’s seeing the game through nostalgia-tinted glasses; maybe the game really was that good.

Oh, wait! Maybe it’s because the SNES version doesn’t have any #%&$ing blue shells! That might be it.

Anyway, here’s five of my favorite picks for songs from Super Mario Kart:

Title Theme

One of the things I always liked about cartridge games was how quickly everything started up. You pop in the game, get a little coin noise for the Nintendo logo, then it’s straight into the title screen. No load times, no 27 developer companies, no nonsense. Not only is this a catchy little ditty, but I like the sequence that plays before you press a button. The racers go at it, hit various obstacles, and ultimately Mario gets a star and blows through a whole group of people. It sets the tone perfectly for things to come.

Koopa Beach

This is my favorite track from the game, hands down. I love the wacky synth harmonies and the strange backbeat being provided by what I’m guessing are 16-bit steel drums. The Koopa Beach tracks are pretty boring, all things considered, and the only real danger is getting pushed into that dark blue water and having to wait for Lakitu to save you from drowning. Still, when I think back on this game, this is almost always the first song that comes to mind.

Mario Circuit

This might not be the best track from this game (either for racing or for listening), but it’s certainly an iconic one as the first main theme folks heard. There were four Mario Circuits, two of them in the Mushroom Cup, which was most people’s first experience with the game. My personal favorite was Mario Circuit 2, with that boosted jump toward the finish line. One of the benefits of playing the SNES Mario Kart was learning that the racers took the same line every lap, so with a perfectly placed banana peel or turtle shell, you could make it so one of your competitors couldn’t make the jump. In fact, if you did it juuuuuuust right on 50 cc, that racer would keep missing the jump every time, which was an easy way to manipulate the standings and have fun at their expense.

Battle Theme

Regular readers know I’m a much bigger fan of co-op play than competitive stuff, and this is no exception. I always liked this music, but because of all that time spent playing this game with my dad, I never really cared about some sort of cutthroat quest to ruin his balloons. If anything, we usually just picked the stage with the water (see :22 in the video) and screwed around with the feathers and stuff. We’d just launch a bunch of green shells and banana peels everywhere and whoever screwed up and hit more of them lost. The theme was catchy, though.

Rainbow Road

The Mario Kart series has become known for having a Rainbow Road course in every game, and it all started here with this great version. Besides, I got plenty of extra chances to hear this music when trying to beat the track on 150cc. See, I usually played as Koopa Troopa, so the complete lack of walls on this Rainbow Road course may have been a problem when those fatasses DK Jr. and Bowser bumped me into the pit over and over and Lakitu had to pick me up every time and I got so mad at seeing that 8th place in the corner of my screen that — I’m sorry, where were we?

Music to My Ears covers soundtracks or individual songs from video games on a recurring basis, which is basically whenever Chris gets around to writing it. You can view all posts in the series by clicking here.