Is Mario Kart World The Best? (Ranking The Best Launch Titles Ever)
Is Mario Kart World the best Mario Kart? I have spent hundreds of hours with a lot of other titles in the series and would like to have some more time with Mario Kart World before making that proclamation. Although it’s too soon to definitively label it as such and figure out where it fits in the pantheon of the series, I can safely say that it’s in the upper echelons.
However, the question I was more interested in was if Mario Kart World is the best launch title of all time? I think you might be surprised where it ranks, but we will get to the list shortly.
Even a bad Mario Kart game is still a great game and unsurprisingly, most of the best launch titles of all time belong to Nintendo.
There are two ways we tried to determine the best launch title. To begin with, it’s important to determine how great the game was on its own, but in addition to that, you also need to try to understand how instrumental it was to the success of the system.
Let’s take a look at the Greatest Launch Titles of all time, and try to figure out where it Mario Kart World places.
BEST LAUNCH TITLES OF ALL TIME
8th place - Mario Kart World
Well, I guess this cat’s out of the bag early. It’s hard to argue against the importance of Mario Kart World when talking about the games relation to the consoles success. Nintendo Switch 2 sold 3.5 million in 4 days and there is basically no other launch titles. The only counter argument is that the Nintendo Switch is almost the best selling console of all time and people were gonna buy it no matter what. It’s also bundled in with one of the two SKU’s available, and at a reduced price, so that would inflate the sales slightly. However in Japan, the Switch 2 has sold 1.1 million units since launch and Mario Kart World has sold 917k copies in the same time, which is a nearly 83 percent attach rate, which is wild, but there is basically nothing else to play.
7th place - Wii Sports
There is no denying how many casual gamers purchased a Wii just because of Wii Sports. People you knew that weren’t into gaming bought a Nintendo Wii because of how Wii Sports was just so simple and fun to play. The reason that Wii Sports is this far down the list is for a few reasons. The first is because the Wii also launched with a brand new Zelda title with Twilight Princess that also simultaneously launched on the GameCube. Furthermore, Wii Sports wasn’t really a game as much as it was a tech demo for the unique motion controls that the Nintendo Wii was built around. Wii Sports was also packed in with the Wii for a long period of time.
6th place - Tetris
Tetris has gone on to become one of the most iconic games of all time. If something like Tetris was released today, it would easily be in the conversation for game of the year and it was packed in with the system. These days Nintendo charges you to learn about the system you just bought in game format. However, the one counterpoint to importance of Tetris to the success of the Game Boy is that the system also launched with Super Mario Land. Having one of the most iconic games in handheld format in the late 80’s almost sounds unrealistic.
5th place - Breath of The Wild
I personally think Breath of The Wild is one of the greatest Zelda games of all time. It wasn’t the first time you could go anywhere in an RPG, but it was the first time you could do it as Link, which means a lot. However, in terms of its importance to the success of the Nintendo Switch, I think the console was unquestionably going to succeed with or without Zelda at launch. The ability to have a system that doubled as both a handheld and a home console was revolutionary. Nintendo also had a solid cadence of releases, which kept momentum going including what I believe to be the best Super Mario with Odyssey just a few months after launch.
4th place - Halo: Combat Evolved
Without Halo: Combat Evolved, Microsoft might not be in the gaming business today. Not only was Halo a revolution for first person shooters on console, but it was without a doubt a system seller due to the ability to have LAN parties. I can attest to this because I didn’t buy a Xbox when it first released, I purchased mine about a week or two after because I tried Halo at a friends house and played 4 player split screen. After leaving, I immediately went out and purchased an Xbox, Halo, three extra controllers and a LAN cable. The ripple effect allowed developers to continue to support the console and for Microsoft to see the potential and continue in the hardware business.
3rd place - Super Mario 64
Unpopular opinion, but i’m not crazy for Super Mario 64. However, I do understand how much of a shift in gaming it was because I was there at the time. It revolutionized gaming and that’s not hyperbole. Moving from console to console, it was important to show people what the differences were. Having Super Mario in 3D was the easiest way to tell your customers that this is the next movement in gaming and why it was time to leave behind the 16-Bit Super Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. Unfortunately, no amount of 3D Mario was good enough to compete with the other revolution happening in the industry, which was the PlayStation and it’s much cheaper and much bigger library of games that also happened to be skewed to a more mature audience.
2nd place - Super Mario World
Now you’re playing with power was the slogan and Super Mario World was the embodiment of this statement. This was directly in the middle of gaming when all that mattered was how many bits your console was. For those that didn’t understand what this meant, all you had to do was show them how incredible the sprites, pixels and colors of Super Mario World were. Super Mario World is not only near the top of the list of best Super Mario titles, but it holds up better than most as well. The Super Nintendo had titles like F-Zero and Pilotwings at launch, both of which were great titles, but both were unknowns. Super Mario World was instrumental in making sure that Nintendo followed up the success of the NES with their second commercial hit in a row as the console would go on to sell just shy of 50 million
1st place - Super Mario Bros
Gaming was in a very dark place. Just a few years prior to the launch of the NES, Atari had collapsed the industry with non stop shovel-ware, which led to consumers feeling burned. The Nintendo Entertainment System also launched with incredible games like Duck Hunt and Excitebike, but there is no denying the impact that Super Mario Bros had on the industry, almost single handedly turning it around. In addition the expectations of an industry, it was also an incredible game for it’s time that still holds up quite well, and without Mario, the NES wouldn’t have gained momentum and went on to sell over 60 million systems.
Launch Title Data
SNES - Super Mario World - 49.1 million consoles sold
NES - Super Mario Bros - 61.9 million consoles sold
Game Boy - Tetris - 118.6 million consoles sold
Sega Genesis - Altered Beast
Sega Saturn Virtua Fighter, panzer dragoon
Game Gear - Columns
N64 - Super Mario 64 - 32.9 million consoles sold
Dreamcast - Sonic Adventure
GBA - Super Mario Advance
Xbox - Halo: Combat Evolved - 24 million consoles sold
GameCube - Luigi’s Mansion
Xbox 360 - Perfect Dark Zero
PS3 - Resistance
PS2 - Dynasty Warriors 2, SSX, Timesplitters, Madden 2001
Wii - Wii Sports - 101.6 million consoles sold
Vita - Uncharted Golden Abyss,
Wii U - New Super Mario Bros U
PS4 - Killzone Shadow Fall
Xbox One - RYSE, Forza 5,
Switch - Breath of The Wild - 152.1 million consoles sold
PS5 - Astro’s Playroom
