Welcome to my spring passion post thread, through which I am going to be sharing my thoughts on each of the Mario Kart Wii Grand Prix Cups. I absolutely loved playing Mario Kart growing up and have learned that reflecting on these past experiences can shed new light on the game. To me, Mario Kart was not a mere game–it helped me develop a sense of scrappiness and quick thinking that I have been using throughout the past decade. On that note, my spring passion thread is focused on analyzing each Grand Prix Cup based on their levels of difficulty and course features. I am not starting out with anything particularly outstanding or awful–my first blog post is going to cover one of the four retro cups, Lightning Cup.

Each Grand Prix Cup series encompasses four tracks–Lightning Cup includes SNES Mario Circuit 3, Peach Gardens, DK Mountain, and N64 Bowser’s Castle. SNES Mario Circuit 3 is the first track of the series and is by far the least exciting. The course has some obstacles and sharp turns that pose somewhat of a challenge, but other than those features, the primary challenge of the race is the CPU, the programmed opponents. In a way, that combination makes racing the track nerve-wracking, especially since the long finishing stretch gives competitors a chance to throw blue and red shells at each other. But on the other hand, the lackluster design makes some races plain boring because there are barely any obstacles the actual track entails.

The next track in the series is Peach Gardens, which compensates for the underwhelming first race through SNES Mario Circuit 3. There is so much more room for error in Peach Gardens, which features a bridge that competitors can plummet from, garden patches that significantly slow down cars, hedge mazes that require experienced control over the wheel, and groundhogs that throw racers for a loop towards the finish. But the biggest challenge the track entails is the chain chomps scattered around the gardens–they quickly jump out from behind the hedges, catching racers by surprise and making them go from first to eighth in less than a second. Although planning out your path through Peach Gardens is perhaps the most hectic out of the four Lightning Cup courses, the obstacles and the track’s music make it one of the most exciting courses in Mario Kart Wii.

The third Lightning Cup track–and my personal favorite–is Donkey Kong Mountain. Racers are shot by a cannon to the top of a mountain and have to traverse a way down through tumbleweeds and across a super shaky bridge. I am partly biased because I love any Mario Kart course that has a cannon, but the features that help racers create leads are simply unmatched. The ramps and uneven ground going down offer many places to perform tricks and escape POW blocks, there is a shortcut across a gorge, and there are multiple cut-throughs that CPU characters don’t utilize. The shaky bridge at the end makes finishes crazy because it is absolutely lethal–if you’re hit with a blue shell or bumped off the bridge, you can kiss star rank goodbye.

The final course is N64 Bowser’s Castle, which is the most underwhelming Mario Kart Wii Bowser’s Castle track in my opinion. It entails everything that a Bowser’s Castle should be, with eerie music, scattered thwomps, sharp turns, and lava geysers. However, the course does not have some feature that particularly stands out from the typical Bowser’s Castle, especially when compared to the other two Bowser’s Castles in Mario Kart Wii. It’s by no means a terrible course and certainly is not the worst of the cup, but it’s also not the most memorable.

Lightning Cup is a middle-of-the-packer because Peach Gardens and Donkey Kong Mountain make the series exciting, but N64 Bowser’s Castle is not outstanding and SNES Mario Circuit 3 is plain uninspiring. Although it’s not the best Mario Kart Grand Prix Cup, it’s certainly not the worst, which I am going to expand on through my next few posts.