Mario Golf is out now

[A Black Falcon]

You could downplay every single game like that if you wanted to. Warcraft is just a game where you build stuff and fight. TIE Fighter is just a game where you fly around in space and shoot stuff. Gran Turismo is just a game where you drive around. See what I'm getting at? Mario Kart is very unique (or at least it was before it was copied a billion times), and when it came out there was nothing like it.

But just like Mario Kart, Outrun, F-Zero, and Wipeout, TIE Fighter, Wing Commander, Freelancer, and Star Trek Bridge Commander are all space sims... very different from eachother, but in the same genre with clear ties. Just like those games...

Yes, when Mario Kart came out it hadn't been done before. That is true... but you make it sound like the idea of racing around a track with weapons was some radical idea. It wasn't. Its just the presentation that was really unique...

It's still in a league of its own.

Hardly.

That particular balance of weapons, yes. Try and prove me wrong.

That depends completely on what "that balance of weapons" is... plenty of games had had some weapons before that, though. I really don't know if others had had that much variety before Mario Kart, but it hardly invented the weapons-based racing game.

Oh, and I don't really see how Wipeout is taking its style of weapon-based racing from Mario Kart... I've never thought of that before, because the gameplay style and the way they implement weapons is so different...

No, what you said was that if I liked those old SNES racers then I have to like the Cruisin' games because "they're the same", which is completey inane.

Wow, you took that statement literally? I wasn't serious!

All I meant was that its a racing game in a long tradition... unlike some other 3d racing games that went new ways, Cruisn' was really going back to older ideas... and if you like that style its more likely you'd like Cruis'n... it doesn't make it certain of course, but its more likely because Cruisn' really does remind me of those games.

But yes they are different so I can see you liking the 16-bit ones and disliking Cruis'n. Though if its depth you're complaining about...