Powerups in Mario Kart and Capitalism

From John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed || Super Mario Kart is a racing game, first released in 1992 for the Super Nintendo, in which characters from the Mario universe squat atop go-karts, rather like I do when trying to ride my daughter’s tricycle. It was initially slated to be a game with formula one-style cars but technical constraints forced the designers to build tightly woven tracks that folded in on themselves, the kind that only go karts can navigate. The game was co-created by Super Mario Brothers lead designer and video game legend Shigeru Miyamoto, who would later say, “We set out to make a game where we could display the game screen for two players at the same time.” This split screen mode is part of what made the first Super Mario Kart game so thrilling.

In the Super Nintendo game, players can choose from among 8 characters in the Mario universe– including Princess Peach, Mario, Luigi, and Donkey Kong jr. Each character has particular strengths and weaknesses. Bowser for instance, is strong and travels at a high top speed but accelerates very slowly. Toad, on the other hand, is quick and handles well, but has a lower top speed. Once you choose a character (I recommend Luigi), you’re pitted against the seven other drivers in a series of increasingly surreal tracks. You might navigate a regular pavement go-kart track, or a ship of ghosts, or a castle, or the famed Rainbow Road, which has a many-splendored driving surface and no guardrails to prevent you from falling into the abyss below.

I was in 10th grade when Super Mario Kart was released, and as far as my friends and I were concerned it was the greatest video game ever. We spent hundreds of hours playing it. The game was so interwoven into our high school experience that, even now, the soundtrack takes me back to a linoleum floor dorm room that smells like sweat and Gatorade. I can feel myself sitting on the golden microfiber couch that had been handed down through generations of students, trying to out-turn my friends Chip and Sean on the final race of the Mushroom Cup.

We almost never talked about the game while playing it – we were always talking over each other about our flailing attempts at romance or the ways we were oppressed by this or that teacher or the endless gossip that churns around insular communities like boarding schools. We didn’t need to talk about Mario Kart, but we needed Mario Kart to have an excuse to be together –three or four of us squeezed on that couch, hip to hip. What I remember most was the incredible–and for me, novel –joy of being included

Like the rest of us, Mario Kart has changed a lot since I was in high school. In the recently released Mario Kart 8, you can fly and go underwater and drive upside down; you can now choose from among dozens of playable characters and vehicles. But at its core, the game hasn’t changed much. Mostly, you win contemporary Mario Kart games in the same way you won them in 1992, by driving in the straightest possible line and cornering well. There is a measure of skill involved – you can carry speed better through corners by drifting, for instance, and there is some strategy to passing. But Mario Kart is almost ridiculously straightforward.

Except, that is, for the question boxes, which make Mario Kart either a brilliant game or problematic one, depending on what you think games should do. As you navigate a track in Mario Kart, you pass over or through question boxes, at which point you receive one of several tools. You might get a mushroom, which you can use to get a one time speed boost. Or you may get a red turtle shell, a kind of heat-seeking missile that will go looking for the kart in front of you and hit it from behind, causing that kart to spin out. Or you might get the coveted lightning bolt, which makes all your opponent’s miniaturized and slow for a bit, while you remain as big and fast as ever. In the newer editions of Mario Kart, your question box might even provide you with a chance to transform for a few seconds into Bullet Bill, a speeding bullet that corners amazingly and destroys every kart in its path.

Once, I was playing Mario Kart 8 with my son, and because I am in my 26th year of regular Mario Kart Play, I was leading the game comfortably. But then on the last lap he got Bullet Bill from a question box and preceded the blow right past me, winning the race and destroying my kart in the process. I ended up finishing fourth.

This sort of thing often happens in Mario Kart, because the question boxes know if you’re in first place. If you are, you’ll usually get a banana peel, or a coin, which are minimally useful. You’ll never get one of those sweet bullets. But if you’re in last place – because, say, you’re an eight year old playing a grizzled Mario Kart veteran – you’re much more likely to get lightning or Bullet Bill or an infinite supply of speed boost mushrooms.

In a Mario Kart game, the best player still usually wins, but luck plays a significant role. Mario Kart is more poker than chess.

Depending on your worldview, the question boxes either make the game fair, because anyone can win, where they make the game unfair, because the person with the most skill doesn’t always win.

In that respect, at least in my experience, real life is the precise opposite of Mario Kart. In real life, when you are ahead, you are given lots of power ups to get further ahead. After one of my books became commercially successful, for instance, my bank called to inform me that I would no longer be charged ATM fees, even if I use an ATM from a different bank. Why? Because people with money in the bank get all kinds of perks just for having money in the bank. 

Then there are the much bigger power ups, like the graduating from college with no debt power up, or the being white power up, or the being male power up. This doesn’t mean that people with good power-ups will succeed, of course, or that those without them won’t. I don’t buy the argument that these structural power-ups are irrelevant. 

The fact that our political, social, and economic systems are biased in favor of the already rich and the already powerful is the single greatest failure of the American democratic ideal. I have benefited from this, directly and profoundly, for my entire life. Almost every time I’ve driven through a question box in my life, I’ve been given at the very least a red turtle shell. It happens so routinely that it is easy for those of us who benefit from these power-ups to see them as fair. But if I don’t grapple with the reality that I owe much of my success to injustice, I’ll only further the hoarding of wealth and opportunity.

Some might argue that games should reward talent and skill and hard work precisely because real life doesn’t. But to me the real fairness is when everyone has a shot to win, even if their hands are small, even if they haven’t been playing the game since 1992.