Mario Raceway

If Luigi Raceway is an example of extremely bland course design - and it is (It doesn't even have dragons) - then Mario Raceway is the perfect example of design overkill.


The King of all Raceways. Much better than Luigi's one.


Luigi Raceway boasts a tunnel..the tunnel is so important to LR that Luigi gleefully uses his shroom out of it. In fact, without the tunnel it might as well just be a giant oval. It probably started out that way until some game-designer said "Hey..let's throw something cool in there". "What? Cooler than a featureless oval?" "How about a tunnel?" "You're a genius!". And so LR became slightly less boring. Anyway, whilst LR has a tunnel, Mario Raceway has a pipe, a giant mushroom, a massive green hill, a wall with an invisible hole in it, a chain fence, several spinning signs and some bouncing piranha plants. It's also twisty and turny, which makes it far more interesting to actually drive. It's also far more difficult to drive. I think they deliberately gave Luigi his own course just so they could completely trump it later in the game with this track. Poor Luigi. Unfortunately those same programmers put the epic bore-athon Rainbow Road at the very end. I wonder if I can somehow segway every single other track into the strat guide for this one.

Mario Raceway
...not as annoying as Moo Moo Farm
...warmer than Sherbet Land
...less fishy than Banshee Boardwalk
...easier to type than D.K.'s Jungle Parkway

Yeah, I'm not going to do that. Whilst I don't normally talk about standards in the game, Mario Raceway is famous for having the God standard that took longest to beat. It remains to this day the sternest test of your pure karting speed. If you can beat the Mario Raceway lap God standard, you have the speed to beat any other. But do you have the cojones? Cojones, whatever they are, are a vital part of your karting arsenal. Don't leave home without them.

The race starts in the usual fashion. A spinning sign with Mario encouraging you to "Go" is a welcome addition. A sign with "Stop" on it would have caused a lot of needless confusion. On laps 2 and 3 you will take this opening corner like any of the countless ones on other tracks, and just take a nice tight line around it with an MT. On the opening lap however, you will cut across the grass to the right, and pass quite close to the wall, you'll keep the slide going and work up an MT releasing it back on the road just before the shroom runs out of shroominess. It's important to release the MT on the road to gain maximum speed advantage from the MT boost which follows. It's also best to reach the road a little earlier than a little later, so don't try to ride the shroom to the edge of optimality. It doesn't really matter too much. On a fast lap - which must be done on lap 1 - you'll stay in the grass and fire your first shroom to chain with the opening one, and completely cut across this grass section all the way to the 3rd corner. The important thing to note is that you don't need to ride the wall super close with your startshroom, as it's better to fire the following shroom from a wider angle, so that you can cut in close to the wall, and have a much better angle swooping in to the left for your MT. When shrooming this grassy part, it's irrelevant whether or not you get an MT in the middle of the grass as you're already at top speed. All that matters is your angle. So..a little wide on the opening corner, then sharp in towards the wall (which you'll hit a lot), and then sharp in again to perform an MT as quickly as possible around the 3rd corner.


Mario Raceway can be quite picturesque. Here's the green hill, with a sneak preview of what's up ahead


Back to the 3lap strategy now though. You've cut a portion of grass with your start shroom, and released your MT back on the road. You glide for a very small time on the road to build up a little speed, and then hop straight back into the grass again aiming to pass just by the side of the wall. The closer you hop near the wall, the more time you'll gain and the better your angle will be to hop into the next MT. Sometimes you'll hop straight into this wall, and sometimes you'll half hop into it so that your kart gets snagged and pulled a little by the wall. This just means that the wall likes you, so keep that in mind as you press the retry button. You want to time your hops a little during this section so that you can land one of those hops on the road to start a slide/MT around the hilly corner. On a recent journey to Mario Raceway, I found that I was quicker if I was more Zen with these hops than just randomly spamming the jump button. Don't be afraid to give yourself a little breathing room between the hops. Although, having said that, when I say breathing room, I more accurately mean blinking room. You still need to get around 6 or 7 hops in in total here. So when you get to the road, land with a hop/slide as early as you can. Your final hop should bring you just to where the road and grass touch. The quicker you then do this next MT the better, unlike all those really slow MTs that I usually recommend that you do. This is hard to do if you're on a flap attempt, but also crucial. Once on this small little road, you may need to make a quick sharp adjustment to the left, to keep your kart close to the lefthand hill. This will help to avoid going wide with your next MT.

It's here where shortcutters will perform an SSMT, before turning wildly to the right, and shrooming over the wall with the invisible hole. The invisible hole is right where the wall makes an inverted T shape with another perpendicular wall. And it's only in the top few bricks. A perfectly timed jump will carry you sailing over the wall into riches beyond. The riches usually involve you toppling awkwardly into the grass on the other side. But I hear that grass is greener. We don't deal with shortcuts here though. The wall-hoppers and their magical ways can be studied elsewhere. For those of us who like the quieter life, a wonderfully easy section involving hopping through mushrooms awaits us. First, perform a nice crisp and neat MT around the hilly corner to the left.


Thar's a hole in dem there wall! Full shroom ahead!


At this point, you may question whether you've taken some psychadelic drugs or not, because a giant mushroom greets you. Thankfully it's off-road and out of the way in the grass. Unfortunately, this is exactly the path you have to take. Where we're going, we don't need roads. Whilst that giant mushroom is the real deal, those 3 little ones bouncing beside it are actually piranha plants in disguise, although thankfully they don't try to eat you in this game. The strategy is quite simple, and quite dangerous. There's a gap between the giant mushroom and the wall, and that's what you have to aim for. The ideal path for this is to jump straight through the left half of the middle plant of the 3 small ones. You need to approach it with complete confidence, as if it's not there at all, and then jump through it. Jumping before you reach it is important though, so when you're pretending it's not there at all, secretly have your eyes on it. In fact, don't pretend it's not there at all. It is. It's bouncing. It would eat you if it was scary and had teeth. It doesn't. So hop through it!


It's more scared of you than you are of it.


The ideal approach is to start an MT on the road, and arc your way in from the left between the left-most plant and the middle one, and then hop through the middle one - this will coincide with releasing the MT - and keep hopping and turning until you reach the road on the other side. Depending on your angle, occasionally you will hit the large mushroom with mixed results. Sometimes it will slow you right down, and prompt a restart, and other times it will seem to bounce you forward. That 2nd type of bouncing is awesome, and may be just as quick, if not quicker than a perfectly smooth transition through that part. When you first start out doing this track, you're going to be restarting at this point quite a bit, but it will get easier with practice. One alternative is to take a wider and safer line through the gap which involves arcing in around the left-most plant, and avoiding the risk of bouncing off those plants at all. But remember, always attempt to go through the gap. Real Time Trialers don't go around the large mushroom (except when playing multiplayer modes). The hardest part of all of this will actually be when you begin the MT on the road. The initial angle you get with your slide will almost immediately signal to you whether you're going to make it through the gap of bouncy doom or not.


The hardest part of the track. Go for it!



What secrets lie beyond the fence of mystery?


When you get through the gap and back onto the road, there will be a certain amount of relief. Quickly cast this aside though, as you must do two things with some amount of haste. These two things are two MTs, one to the left and another to the right, around the next 2 mini-corners. At the exit of the 2nd corner, another bouncing piranha plant is ready to greet you if you stray off-road. There's one at the 1st corner too, but it's rare that you will hit into him. Prove me wrong! At this point you will be able to properly glide for the first time in a while. Another sign with Mario telling you to "Go" is calmly twirling in the distance, just in case you forgot what you were doing, and decided to stop for a nice picnic. As tracks go, Mario Raceway is not a bad place to stop for a picnic. Near the castle on Royal Raceway might be another spot to consider.


Nice weather for a picnic, under the shade of some trees


It's around about here where you have to properly time an MT into the grass in order to hop around the wall to the right. It is incredibly easy to enter the grass too early and hit the wall, or go in too late and take a wide line around it. The ideal time is releasing the MT (on the road as always), and then hopping without stopping around the wall. If you have to delay your hops you've gone in too soon. When you've hopped enough, you'll see a strange red and yellow squared wall in the distance. Make sure you've hopped so that you're pointing to the right of that wall, and then immediately hop into a left-facing slide. Shroom the instant you land from the hop, and ride it over the grass/road/sand and grass again to the road that the pipe is on. Go as close to the red and yellow wall as you dare and release the MT when you reach the road. Many runs will be lost at this point, but don't worry. It's always in the last place you look.


It's cuts like these that shrooms were made for


Now you're approaching the pipe. You should be pointed at the far end of the right side of the pipe. You need to do nothing on this straight except to mentally prepare for the final corner. When you're around 3/4 of the way through the pipe, jump into a right-facing MT, release it on the road (Every MT on every track should be released on the road. If the track doesn't have a road, find a road and release it on it, and then come back to the track), then ride the green hill (beware of the shaded part) up to the highest point and jump into the air and into a right-facing slide, completing your MT when you get back to the road. At this point, you should glide across the line and finish the lap.


Anywhere along this line is good


If you're trying for a lap time, your final shroom will be used on this corner to cut as much grass as possible without hitting the wall on the right, or being slowed to a stop by the dangerous grass to the right. Start the shroom at around the point where the pipe ends, and finish it at the right-most part of the road on the start/finish straight. Occasionally your shroom will stick to the grass and this can gain or lose you a few hundreths depending on what angle you get it at.

And so concludes your time at this track. Enjoy the scenic views and the encouraging "Go" signs. Ignore all "Keep of the grass" signs, and take a leap of faith through a bouncing plant.


...Raceway is not as good as Mario's one