by majormitch
This list is exactly as it sounds: my personal ranking of games in the Mario Kart franchise. It's one of the few long-running franchises where I've played basically every game, and thus feel qualified to rank: I have played all the "main" home console releases. Just no arcade games, mobile games, or whatever you call Mario Kart Live. This ranking is based on my personal, subjective preferences alone (especially relevant for a series like Mario Kart that doesn't change all that much), and I will amend it over time as new Mario Kart games come out. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!
Last updated on February 18, 2026 (initial list creation)
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I always think of Double Dash as being the first Mario Kart game that got the feel right. The three before it don't hold up that well today, but Double Dash still feels great to play all these years later (and like many GameCube games, it still looks good too). It also had many of my favorite tracks in the series, some of my favorite music, and multiple unique features that have never returned. Different characters had their own unique items, the game had an official "All Cup Tour," and the two-person karts allowed for co-op play. I spent countless hours playing Double Dash both competitively and co-operatively, and it almost certainly remains my most played Mario Kart to date. Hence why it's my favorite, too.
Mario Kart DS remains, easily, the best single player Mario Kart game. With its unique Missions mode, there were dozens of fun single player challenges to complete across the games numerous courses. It was also the first online Mario Kart game, making it arguably the best multiplayer game in the series up to that point as well. And it was the first Mario Kart game that was able to put together an excellent suite of 16 classic courses, in addition to its 16 excellent new courses. Mario Kart DS was the complete package, with multiple firsts, all on an excellent handheld, too. It remains a hard one to top.
The great Ryan Davis' Unified Mario Kart Alpha Theory posited that "a person’s first Mario Kart game will always be their favorite". While that is not quite true for me, it's pretty close. Super Mario Kart has certainly aged in the 30+ years since its release, but not many of its many sequels have captured that initial joy for me. It was such a novel concept at the time, and one of the first endlessly replayable multiplayer gems I experienced on a home console. And really, the series hasn't evolved all that much since. Sure, newer games look and control better, but all the core tenants that make the series fun were there from the start.
Generally speaking, Mario Kart games have iterated and gotten better over time. Sometimes modes or features come and go, but the look and feel of Mario Kart only gets better without changing drastically. Mario Kart 8, then, may be where the series peaked in that regard. It just felt great to play, and looked fantastic as the first HD Mario Kart game. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe only expanded it with a better battle mode and tons of extra content. After decades of Mario Kart games, I had lost the enthusiasm for the series by the time 8 came out, and it didn't have much new to pull me back in. But if you want the Mario Kart fundamentals done extremely well, this was about as good as it gets.
World was more of a step sideways for the series. It controlled just as well as Mario Kart 8, but didn't have the selection of courses that made 8 such a lasting hit. Furthermore, its titular "world" had pros and cons, the biggest con being its role in perhaps the worst Grand Prix mode in the entire series. On the positive side, its new Knockout Tour was one of the best modes Mario Kart has ever had, leveraging the open world to create an exciting new way to play that was a valid replacement for Grand Prix. It would have been better to have it all, but World was still a good Mario Kart game. Also, it has easily the best soundtrack of the series. Just incredible stuff.
Mario Kart Wii was about the time I started checking out of Mario Kart as a go-to multiplayer game. Part of that is likely that it came out the year I graduated from college, and thus didn't have tons of people to play with on any given day. But also, after Double Dash got the feel right, and DS added online multiplayer, there weren't many big steps left for the series to take. Mario Kart Wii controlled well and had its share of good courses, and was another perfectly good kart racer. But I mostly came away from it thinking "yep, this is just more Mario Kart".
Given how I felt coming out of Mario Kart Wii, I skipped Mario Kart 7 entirely; I only checked it out for the purpose of writing this list. And similarly to Mario Kart Wii, 7 strikes me as a perfectly good, if not cromulent entry. It did the basics perfectly well, its courses are fine to good, and it was a nice visual update on handhelds. But there wasn't much really new or exciting about it.
I'm a millennial, which means I'm supposed to worship at the altar of Mario Kart 64. But while it's easy to realize today that, as the first 3D entry in the series, it didn't control the best, I always felt that way; even in 1997. 64 was always overly slippery (even compared to Super), and the act of racing wasn't all that fun to me as a result. I still played a lot of it, as the ability to play with 4 players on a single screen counted for a lot at that time. It's the most I ever dabbled in battle mode, too. But it's the Mario Kart game I was the most ready to move on from.
I completely skipped Super Circuit at the time, likely because before the time of online Mario Kart, playing it on a handheld never made much sense to me. (And even with online play, it's always been better as a local party game anyway.) I went back to take a look at it for the purpose of this list, and I don't think I missed much. It didn't control any better than the only other 2D entry (Super), didn't seem to have many inspired courses, and didn't have anything to help it as a single player experience. Being the first handheld entry may count for something, but from the perspective I have, it doesn't seem like it was worth it if you had any other version of Mario Kart around.
