Kart Fighter (瑪莉快打) is a fighting game for the Famicom developed by Hummer Team, likely released in 1994. The game notably places the roster of Super Mario Kart in a Street Fighter II-esque environment.
Overview[]
Kart Fighter's gameplay.
Kart Fighter uses the Street Fighter II engine, albeit slightly altered. Everyone's movesets are pretty similar overall. Every character, except Nokonoko, can throw a projectile. Also, some characters have charge attacks and some have stationary attacks. A handful of the background graphics seem to have been taken from Little Nemo: The Dream Master, Mario & Wario, and, obviously, Super Mario Kart. The music mostly consists of prior Hummer Team songs, but the songs from Peach's stage, the title screen, and the ending theme are all remixed from Super Mario Kart.
Kart Fighter has five difficulty levels to choose from. The AI, however, seems to have a predefined pattern on the second round no matter which difficulty level is selected (e.g. crouching will cause them to shoot a projectile if they have one, jumping leads to either a charge move or an uppercut, etc.) Kart Fighter also has a versus mode; to join, push the D-pad on a second controller.
Characters[]
Character select screen.
There are a total of 8 playable characters in Kart Fighter. The character's names in-game are in parentheses.
- Mario (Mari)
- Luigi (Luigi)
- Princess Peach (Peach)
- Yoshi (Yossy)
- Toad (Kinopio)
- Donkey Kong Jr. (Donkey)
- Koopa Troopa (Nokonoko)
- Bowser (Koopa)
Special Move Inputs[]
Mari (Mario)[]
- D, DF, F, a: Fireball
- B, F, a: Uppercut
- B, B, b: Flying Kick
Luigi[]
- D, DF, F, a: Fireball
- ?, ??, ?, ?: Uppercut
- ?, ??, ?, ?: Flying Kick
Peach[]
- D, DF, F, a: Fireball
- D, DB, B, b: Spin Kick
- Hold Back, b: Hair Whip
Yossy (Yoshi)[]
- D, DF, F, a: Fireball
- D, DF, F, b: Tongue Attack
- F, DF, D, b: Tail Dance
Kinopio (Toad)[]
- D, DF, F, a: Mushroom Shot
- B, B, a: Uppercut (Can only hit airborne opponents)
- F, FU, U, b: Flying Kick
Donkey (Donkey Kong Jr.)[]
- D, DF, F, a: Banana Slide
- D, DB, B, b: Uppercut (Can only hit airborne opponents)
- B, DB, D, a: Spin Attack
Nokonoko (Koopa Troopa)[]
- D, DB, B, a: Charge
- B, F, b: Shell Spin
Koopa (Bowser)[]
- D, DF, F, a: Fireball
- B, DB, B, b: Charge
- D, D, a: Tail Flop
Music[]
| Name | Description | Source | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Title Theme | Direct cover. [1] | Super Mario Kart | [2] |
| Select Screen | Ditto. [3] | Super Mario Kart | [4] |
| Ending | Ditto. [5] | Super Mario Kart | [6] |
| Score Ranking | It uses Bowser's rank theme for some reason. [7] | Super Mario Kart | [8] |
| Mari / Luigi Stage | Super Mario World | [9] | |
| Peach Stage | It plays Koopa Beach's stage theme. [10] | Super Mario Kart | [11] |
| Kinopio Stage | [12] | ||
| Yossy Stage | It's "Songs Without Words", but with a quicker tempo. [13] | Songs Without Words | [14] |
| NokoNoko / Koopa Stage | It sounds like a very off-key version of Super Mario World's Boss Battle theme. [15] | Super Mario World | [16] |
| Donkey Stage | Direct cover of the 13th BGM of Momotarou Densetsu II for the PC-Engine/TurboGrafix-16. [17] | Momotarou Densetsu II | [18] |
Reception[]
Since Kart Fighter is an unlicensed game, it doesn't have feedback from any commercial gaming magazines. However, with the ROM being available to the public, there are plenty of user reviews on GameFAQs, YouTube, and several independent review sites.
- Kart Fighter on GameFAQs has an average user rating of 3.5 out of 5 with three reviews. One reviewer praised both the graphics and sound, as well as the gameplay, and said 'Overall this is quite possibly THE best Bootleg game EVER made. And its also simply a very good 2-D fighter game as well.' They gave a score of 4 out of 5.
- Another reviewer on GameSpot stated that Kart Fighter 'is like a poor man's version of Super Smash Bros.', but is still worth a play. They gave the game a 7 out of 10.
- Siliconera said that Kart Fighter is clearly Street Fighter II-inspired, and 'As a pirate NES game Kart Fighter is fairly advanced.' Their feedback was mainly positive.
Unused Tiles[]
Unused "Game Over" tiles.
Going through Kart Fighter's tiles, one can find some that spell out "Game Over". These were left unused. This suggests Kart Fighter was planned to have a Game Over screen, but it was scrapped. The tiles are very similar to the text used for the title cards in Sonic The Hedgehog, although not entirely.
Trivia[]
- In Kart Fighter, Toad, Koopa Troopa, and Bowser are referred to by their Japanese names. Yoshi is often spelled out as Yossy in Japan. Mario's name being Mari comes from the common name used for Mario in Taiwan at the time, 瑪莉.
- The heads of Mario and Luigi on the title screen have their hat colors swapped when compared to Super Mario Kart's. Their alternate colors in-game are lighter palette swaps of each other.
- The inputs for Luigi's Uppercut and Flying Kick are undefined, leaving them only possible by the AI. Assigning the intended values for his specials shows that Luigi was likely an afterthought: back, back, punch for his Flying Kick, and forward, up, punch for his Uppercut. The latter is impossible to do reliably, since he lacks the jump-lock Toad has to be able to do his Flying Kick. Further proof of Luigi being stuck in Mario's shadow is that he is after Bowser in the internal character ordering.
- Bowser is the shortest character in the game, and a common trend of "larger" characters in Hummer Team's other fighters. This has nothing to do with the CHR ROM space, as the 32KB after Bowser is unused. It is a hardware limitation involving the OAM RAM, only supporting 64 sprites. This is meant to be evenly split between both fighters, and making him any larger without resorting to 8x16 sprites would result in graphics getting cut off from either himself or his opponent. This is unrelated to the flickering if more than eight of these sprites are on the same scanline.
- Peach wears a miniskirt and boots as opposed to her usual dress.
- The game does keep score; it'll appear on the Top 8 screen if you get enough points. It is extremely hard, if not impossible, to even achieve 8th, as you lose 2,550 points if you win without taking any damage.
- Kart Fighter can be found on the Game Boy Advance 369-in-1 multicart. It's listed twice under the names "Star big fights" and "The game Stars the big". Both titles are poor translations of the Mandarin Chinese name for Super Smash Bros. (任天堂明星大亂鬥).
Gallery[]
Video[]
