Mario Kart vehicle aesthetic tier list

The Birthday Girl is a pretty shoe with ribbons and laces on it, and so making my favorite character drive on it is hilarious. I mean, the Mario tier is kind of a joke tier and since I use Mario a lot (surprise, surprise), he has to be paired with those kinds of vehicles. It's the same reason I make Mario ride the pink female balanced horse with the girliest decors on her in Sports Superstars.

I didn't rank the Dry Bomber so high because it's marred by system limitations. From the back it looks like a cardboard box with wheels. It doesn't have the hulky imposing feel a real tank should have, and if they attempt a tank again, it should be like the one General Winter rides in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed IMO. Really, the Banisher feels more like a tank than the Dry Bomber.

With characters turned into kart karts, I think for some of them, they sometimes have more thought put into them than the normal. Dolphin Dasher does seem to be the exception though, and I don't know why I do like the Dolphin Dasher, but it's probably because it's based off an enemy I really like, same with the Wild Wiggler. Dolphin Dasher also sounds cute when its horn is honking, and it's a great middleweight inward bike, as the Mach Bike can get boring and the Sneakster shows your characters' asses too much. You *do* notice that most enemy-based karts hover pretty low in the list, if you pay attention.

But the Shooting Star is even more generic than the characters-turned karts. And I mean, it's quite literally generic. It's just a star with some trails and wheels. There's positively nothing that tells me it's a Mario kart. The reason the Shooting Star is ranked lower than those boring enemy karts is that it can fit in any bootleg game quite nicely while those character karts aren't generic since they're derived directly off a nongeneric franchise. Sure, you might argue that things like the Zip Zip and Bit Bike seem generic, but it makes up for not being ugly. The Shooting Star is both generic AND ugly. I don't think there's any kart that fills both criteria, so it's at the bottom of the list. To add insult to injury, it's Mario's unlockable kart in a game where literally every other unlockable kart looks good and worth the reward.
 
Usually I don't like the kart designs that too closely look like real cars. I don't mind the 'character turned into a car' karts because it's meant to be silly to me. I don't like any of Mario Kart DS's carts. Maybe its the graphical limitations but I can't stand how 99% of them look. On the flipside I like or at least tolerate how every cart in Mario Kart Wii looks. MK7/8 have about a fifty-fifty cool to ugly ratio.

Fav of all time: Blue falcon, parade cart, Circuit special, pipe frame, piranha pipes (ironically because it's dumb, lol)
 
I'm sure LGM ranked the Blue Falcon way lower than other karts because she's tired of Mario Kart making F-Zero teases while she waits for a new F-Zero game.
 
Maybe that's true, but I couldn't get over how great it looked in MKWii considering it was a light weight only kart.
I forgot to mention before, but I didn't like MK7 reusing several karts exactly from previous games.
 
Mechayoshi said:
Usually I don't like the kart designs that too closely look like real cars. I don't mind the 'character turned into a car' karts because it's meant to be silly to me. I don't like any of Mario Kart DS's carts. Maybe its the graphical limitations but I can't stand how 99% of them look. On the flipside I like or at least tolerate how every cart in Mario Kart Wii looks. MK7/8 have about a fifty-fifty cool to ugly ratio.

Fav of all time: Blue falcon, parade cart, Circuit special, pipe frame, piranha pipes (ironically because it's dumb, lol)
Click to expand...
I feel there are few things sillier than Mario characters parading around on a Mercedes Benz SUV, a downscaled one. I also think from a design standpoint, cars just jive better if you want to look nice on the track and not like an idiot. They tend to have more complex designs, as none of the car based ones came off as really generic to me, so more thought has to be put in them rather than take an enemy and stick wheels to it, and they usually have personality such as the cute Power Flower to the hulky Streamliner to the positively simple yet badass Wild Wing to the sleek Sports Coupe to the sports car lover, yet recognizably Mario designed P-Wing. And besides, if you really want to look like an idiot, just use roller tires or cushion tires. Which reminds me, I need to make a tier list on tires and gliders. Maybe some cars don't feel Mario y in some aspects but they tend to look good and none look like they too similar to each other; the P-Wing is that perfect middle between directly Mario inspired and car-like; fantastic looking car. And if you want to look like a stat whore and offend the aesthetically inclined, stick some roller tires, and you look like you blew all tires on it.

Blue Falcon in Mario Kart Wii kinda looked dumpy and juvenile (is it battery powered!?) and doesn't sound too great from what I remember. Mario Kart 8 did it far better.

Not sure why you'd rip on Mario Kart 7 for reused kart parts when you do love the Blue Falcon and Pipe Frame, two which were reused twice, and Pipe Frame was in Mario Kart 7. Most kart parts are new, but we got Pipe Frame, Egg 2, B Dasher, and Barrel Train, Pipe Frame and Barrel Train were welcome.
 
The pipe frames is a favorite only for the throwback. It certainly doesn't actually look the best. The blue falcon looks different on MK8 so I honestly forgot they reused it. MK7 choices for repeats weren't bad of anything if I implied that. I just thought they could have came up with something else. Yes, I know the parade cart came from double dash while on the subject.

I liked that you mentioned the tires because I forgot how that can completely ruin some looks. My unpopular option is that I liked karts being one entire item with one set of stats instead of interchangeable parts making up and overall vehicle stat but that's another topic I suppose.. (Remove character hidden stats too while we're at it and to it only to weight class)
 
I think they wanted some throwback as well, and besides, the Barrel Train was fine because we didn't have any other train karts. I personally didn't like the Egg 1 or the B Washer at all, but I think it's whatever returning them because they don't need to put thought into designing new bodies from scratch.

Yeah, I also prefer the Parade Kart more than the gold parts honestly, and its gold looks nicer too. The Gold parts in Mario Kart 8 look super ugly.

I'm not sure if it's that unpopular, but I kinda think we should go back to one entire item, but it can be modded. So each kart has its own set of tires, but you can also do cool things like paint jobs, replacing tail pipes, adding stickers, swapping out wings, adding wings, changing headlight colors, idk but each body has its own ways of changing it appearance wise. A lot of car games let you do this, why not have it for Mario Kart? We can also try to kill the roller tires for good.
 
You are a biased and inaccurate Yoshi fan and thus you do not surprise the correct and unbiased me by very objectively wrong.

I think there are better ways to shake up stats, and I also find it a disgrace that it got blessed with great stats, or at least that's what people think, that stats actually matter in anything other than Time Trials.
 
LeftyGreenMario said:
I think they wanted some throwback as well, and besides, the Barrel Train was fine because we didn't have any other train karts. I personally didn't like the Egg 1 or the B Washer at all, but I think it's whatever returning them because they don't need to put thought into designing new bodies from scratch.

Yeah, I also prefer the Parade Kart more than the gold parts honestly, and its gold looks nicer too. The Gold parts in Mario Kart 8 look super ugly.

I'm not sure if it's that unpopular, but I kinda think we should go back to one entire item, but it can be modded. So each kart has its own set of tires, but you can also do cool things like paint jobs, replacing tail pipes, adding stickers, swapping out wings, adding wings, changing headlight colors, idk but each body has its own ways of changing it appearance wise. A lot of car games let you do this, why not have it for Mario Kart? We can also try to kill the roller tires for good.
Click to expand...

Customized aesthetics would be cool. I didn't like choosing between a good looking part and one with good stats.
 
DS did the vehicles best in my opinion. You could drive a Tank, Tractor or Plane, use the vehicles with any character, and not have the stats be affected by the character you was using. Even though you had to unlock the ability to use the vehicles with any character, at least it existed and was done well.
 
I'm not a huge fan of the tank's design, mostly because it looks very bland to me. i've seen better tanks-as-karts.

the hurricane is pretty awesome though
 
A wooden crate with Rambi's head on it, like someone killed him and attached his stuffed trophy on a "kart". Sad sight. Rambi deserves better.
 
LeftyGreenMario said:
A wooden crate with Rambi's head on it, like someone killed him and attached his stuffed trophy on a "kart". Sad sight. Rambi deserves better.
Click to expand...
i kinda want an april fools "did you know" saying dk did exactly that on the main page
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back