We're all used to seeing kart racers copying the tried and trusted Mario Kart formula these days, but here's a quick blast to the past that proves game developers were busy mimicking Nintendo's style right from the off.
Emora Kart is a mouse-controlled Super Mario Kart clone that was developed exclusively for Macintosh in 1994, just a couple of years after Nintendo's own effort hit the market. In a blog post, Matt Sephton has shared details on its gameplay after stumbling across the game on a CD-ROM supplied with the January 2002 issue of Japanese magazine, MacLife.
Sephton explains that the game kicks off with a tutorial-style qualifying course, before opening up four more courses once you earn a first-place position. These new tracks are more challenging, but finishing first on all of these unlocks a final special course.
Your racer (the titular, dinosaur-like creature, Emora) automatically accelerates, leaving the steering to you. You control Emora's kart by trailing the mouse pointer in front of the kart, which Sephton says "gives the feeling that you’re almost pulling them around the track."
Just like Mario Kart, Emora Kart has coins littered around the track and even the circuit shape above feels reminiscent of Super Mario Kart's iconic Donut Plains, don't you think?
If you're interested in checking this out for yourself, you can play the game in your browser here (expect it to run slowly, though), or download it here to play on real Macintosh hardware.
[source blog.gingerbeardman.com]
Comments 22
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Looks more like a super-sprint style arcade game than Mario kart.
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It doesn't look fun
Street Racer from 1994 and on SNES is a more obvious clone than this IMHO, I mean if you're going to talk about clones of the time. Or something like BC Racers, also in 1994, from Core Design on competing Sega and 3DO hardware.
Removed - unconstructive
Why are so many comments being removed here for being unconstructive? I respect the right to mod, but almost half the comments, all from different people?
@andykara2003 Yeah I'm kind of curious as to what's being said. Seems to have been a surge in these sorts of comments lately.
Clearly the removed comments are a conspiracy. Likely they are pointing out the hypocrisy as Nintendo life is an obvious clone of cnn.com
@andykara2003 @StarPoint yeah i'm also wondering whats being said, comments have been removed a lot lately
It's almost like articles of the last few months have revealed how utterly vile some nintendolife regulars are. I'm not surprised at the increase in moderation.
That said, stuff like this fascinates me because this was the original "indie gaming". Before games exploded into the stupidly profitable market they are, There was mountains of hobby projects like this. Granted, there still are, but there were less Cave Stories and Hollow Knights and more of this.
NCS/Masaya made a much more blatant Mario Kart ripoff on the Super Famicom called Bike Daisuki! so much that the similarities seem to have toned down between an old EGM preview and the final released game.
I also recall my brief time playing feeling Atlus' Kat's Run was a similar attempt, but with very anime girls driving cars. (certainly going for a couple markets there )
@RudyC3 Atlus' Game Boy version of Wacky Races feels like a top-down Mario Kart attempt, but the game ran so slow it almost felt like a turn-based game and I can see why they left it in Japan (as much of a waste of a license I get the impression it is to sell a non-Disney American cartoon IP over there ).
By no means was this considered state of the art at the time, it was something that I think I would have seen as pretty cool. As mentioned above, maybe the equivalent of a cool indie game. Amazing how far we have come.
This is like a flash game I would have downloaded to a USB stick to sneak games onto my school computer. And I would have been so proud of it.
Judging by the menu in the screenshot above, and the usage of monochrome patterns, I'm almost certain this was made with HyperCard.
Love a look back to weird niche gems like this. Also I despise censorship.
@Meteoroid I should have stated in the blog post (I'll edit it) that it was the author of the game that referred to it as a clone. Who am I to argue with that or change their words?
@farrgazer it is indeed made using HyperCard! It's also moddable using HyperCard (so you can kick the game into construction mode and create a new course). See my blog post for details.
i dont think its a mario kart clone not near the mario kart to snes
its more r.c. pro am then
character in-game not look any of nintendo-character ive know
and start 1-2-3 every racing game from 90s and 80s have it
Just wanted to throw out there that the Secret History of Mac Gaming book at Bitmap books was just re-released! I wonder if this game is mentioned in there.
https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/the-secret-history-of-mac-gaming-expanded-edition
@Nitwit13 I don't think it's mentioned in that book as it only includes games that were released in English. So it's an incomplete history in that regard.
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