The Mario Kart franchise is chock full of all the traits that Nintendo holds closest to its heart: bold, brash, brightly-colored mayhem of the highest order, tempered by great accessibility. It’s a Super Smash. Bros style riot of fun. In another parallel to Smash, however, there’s a lot of hidden depth and challenge here too.
The games’ opening tracks provide a gentle introduction to the controls and mechanics, but all bets are off after that. In the history of Mario Kart, we’ve seen some truly devious tracks, loaded with complex bends, confounding obstacles, and dangerous sections that can send you plummeting into the abyss in an instance. Here are some of the most difficult levels in the franchise.
10 Lakeside Park (Mario Kart: Super Circuit)
Lakeside Park appears in Mario Kart: Super Circuit’s Special Cup. On the face of it, things aren’t too bad here: the track’s relatively spacious, and there are only a couple of fiendish u-bends. As Special Cup courses go, we wouldn’t rank this one any higher among the most challenging.
However, there are some hazards you may not have bargained for here. from the second lap onwards, those volcanoes will erupt, and you’ll have Lava Boulders to contend with. On the subject of those darn u-bends, one of them can actually send you back to an earlier part of the course if you overshoot it. These obstacles are rather easy to see coming, though.
9 Dino Dino Jungle (Mario Kart: Double Dash!!)
This track also appears in the Special Cup, making its debut in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Its prehistoric theme is territory the series doesn’t tend to tap into, making it very unique and offering up huge, toothy obstacles.
While the course looks very complex, players will find that they learn a route through the branching paths that make things much less complicated. The bridge sections, while very narrow, often don’t pose the problem you may think they would, as jostling is very dangerous for both parties. Even so, it’s a long, twisting track with stomping dinosaurs, geysers, and all manner of hazards to trip up unwary racers.
8 Tick-Tock Clock (Mario Kart DS)
Mario Kart DS’s Tick-Tock Clock is inspired by the Tick Tock Clock course in Super Mario 64. While the concept itself is a little uninspired and the track isn’t nearly as long as some others in this list, there’s just so much packed into it.
The rotating elements of the track can make it hard to shoot for the dash panels, potentially leaving even veteran players floundering as the power-ups start to fly. Gigantic clock hands, awkward jumps, and those darn gears which change the direction they’re rotating in every 45 seconds add elements that will demand split-second decisions and cause racers some major headaches.
7 Banshee Boardwalk (Mario Kart 64)
There’s no doubt that Mario Kart 64’s Banshee Boardwalk is one of the spookiest Special Cup tracks ever. This dimly lit, haunted area boasts a lot of long, narrow straights peppered with very tight turns that are almost impossible to take at speed. Not to mention those missing guardrails.
At the same time, though, most of the track does have barriers. If you’re in the middle of the pack, you’ll have a downright awful time in the indoor area, and, if you make it out of that without a shell or two flying right up your exhaust pipe, it’s nothing short of miraculous.
6 Neo Bowser City (Mario Kart 7)
Neo Bowser City features in the Star Cup of Mario Kart 7. This time, Mario’s formidable nemesis has branched out a little from the usual Bowser’s Castle tracks.
Neo Bowser City is a bit of a mixed bag, which is why we’ve ranked it in the middle of our rundown. On the one hand, it’s quite a short and relatively straightforward track, but it’s also packed to the brim with horribly tight bends and puddle hazards, thanks to the constant rain. In more competitive races in which rivals are littering the track with items in optimal areas, this one can be a real nightmare.
5 Wario’s Gold Mine (Mario Kart Wii)
Next up, we have one of Mario Kart Wii’s most infamous tracks: Wario’s Gold Mine. While it appears quite early in the game, in the Flower Cup, Nintendo were probably messing with us there. A lot of players just did not know what they were letting themselves in for here.
In terms of the layout, the track is simple enough: long straights and fairly simple bends in an almost triangular shape. Inside the rickety mine itself, though, there are tons of narrow paths to plummet to your doom from. Not to mention the Swoops, the most infuriating video game bats since the Zubat that attack you every eighth of a second in Mt. Moon.
4 Ghost Valley 3 (Super Mario Kart)
It’s clear to see where the inspiration for Banshee Boardwalk came from. Super Mario Kart’s Ghost Valley tracks are also characterized by their dark, gloomy, dilapidated bridge vibe, coupled with pitfalls everywhere that are often very difficult to see.
Ghost Valley 3, the last of them, definitely earns its place in the game’s challenging Star Cup. It’s long, littered with huge holes, even festooned with speed pads that exist only to send the player on a one-way trip to doomsville. When you take the game’s difficult kart handling into account too, this one’s super tough. Only our final three entries really top it.
3 Bowser’s Castle (Mario Kart 8)
As you quickly learned while attempting to drift around those darn bends in Neo Bowser City, Mario’s nemesis just downright hates Mario Kart players. His Bowser’s Castle tracks have been causing lava-scalded ragequits since they were introduced. For our money, the latest one is the most fiendish of all.
Bowser really pulled out all the stops this time around. A long and straight track with some disorientating u-turns and anti-gravity segments, it’s the obstacles that really make this one challenging. Numerous Fire Bars, laser-firing Bowser statues, and a gigantic sentient Bowser statue that pummels the track with its flaming fists are just some of the treats to look forward to here.
2 Donut Plains 3 (Super Mario Kart)
Back with Super Mario Kart now, we have another track that’s infamous among franchise fans: Donut Plains 3. If you played the SNES original, you’ll remember just how fiendish this course could be.
How many of those darn Monty Moles were there hiding under the ground here? Nineteen, that’s how many. They were super difficult to avoid in a way that newer players experiencing Donut Plains 3 as a retro course in later games may not really understand. In this case, it wasn’t quite the design of the track itself that was the issue—it’s relatively straightforward in that sense, all told—but the AI racers. They would utterly burn through this Special Cup track, making it the bane of the Grand Prix mode.
1 Rainbow Road (Mario Kart Wii)
Of course, a list of Mario Kart’s hardest tracks just wouldn’t be complete without a perilous trip down Rainbow Road. For the sake of variety, we’ve only picked out one Rainbow Road track: Mario Kart Wii’s.
What makes this iteration of the track a contender for Mario Kart’s most challenging ever? Well, it combines a lot of Rainbow Road’s familiar elements—no rails, narrow straights, super tight turns—into one rage-inducing package, while throwing in a few new wrinkles of its own. Some of these jumps are just designed to tempt the player into performing speed-boosting tricks, leading them to probably plummet into the abyss.