So you’ve finally picked out your new home. It’s perfect! Four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, beautiful lattice work, great school district, flying buttresses – and the price is shockingly low. Thinking you got a steal and are ripping off those suckers at Real Estate Corp. Inc, you relocate your family across town to this wonderful new home. Everything seems perfect until a turtle shell comes crashing through your window at 2:30 AM, destroying the antique vase your aunt sent you from Portugal. You look out the window to confirm your greatest fear – that’s right. You’ve living on a Mario Kart track.
10. Toad’s Turnpike – Mario Kart 64
You think LA traffic is bad? You roll over in bed on your first day at your new job, and see that you’ve woken up six minutes late – a death sentence for a punctual, upstanding citizen such as yourself. You zoom out of bed, get dressed, and hurry to your car. Forgetting you’re supposed to be dropping the kids off at school, you speed off onto Toad’s Turnpike Ave. After a few minutes you take the exit, but it leads you back onto the turnpike. You frown. Surely you took a wrong turn somewhere? You take the next exit and come out right in front of your house again. The realization dawns on you- this turnpike has no exits. This is purgatory, and Toad is your new God.
9. Excitebike Arena – Mario Kart 8 DX
It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon. You step outside to water your begonias, but only a patch of mud remains. Confused and angered, you stomp towards your neighbor’s house – but there’s no house. Only a ramp. You turn around – your house is gone too, replaced by a floating crystalline box with a question mark inside. You fall to your knees. The mud beneath you is grass now. Your dog is now a Bullet Bill. Welcome to procedurally generated hell.
8. Ribbon Road – Mario Kart GBA
You have redefined the idea of a “Tiny House” and have up and moved into an actual dollhouse, utilizing the shrink ray technology you developed for fun. You got a great price from those Borrowers, I’m sure. Living in a toy box sounds like fun at first, but when you meet your first gigantic jack-in-the-box you’ll be running for that enlargement ray. Where did you put it? Oh god, he’s coming. You see its dumb clown face peeking in the window. Time is short. You reach for your tiny pistol. You won’t go out this easily.
7. Dolphin Shoals – Mario Kart 8
The flood insurance on this home is literally through the roof. You’ve got a big eel at the end of the cul-de-sac that would just love for you to stop watching your children for a moment, and the only way out of the neighborhood is by driving your car over an infinite abyss of upward jets and currents. You knew what you were getting into here. This one’s on you.
6. Dino Dino Jungle – Mario Kart Double Dash
The downsides of living next to a tyrannosaurus rex should be self-explanatory. I love Jurassic Park just as much as the next guy, but unless you’re standing next to an actual full skeleton right now, I guarantee you’ve forgotten how big dinosaurs are. Trying not to get stepped on is one thing, but you’ll be wishing you’d never left the city when a pterodactyl steals your wife away while you’re taking an evening walk.
5. Piranha Plant Slide – Mario Kart 7
I shouldn’t have to explain why moving into a sewer full of carnivorous plants was a bad idea.
4. Choco Island 2 – Super Mario Kart
Do you want ants? Because this is how you get ants.
Choco Island is literally just a giant chocolate marsh, and your “waterfront” home is definitely going to get you into some sticky situations. You paid extra for that gingerbread house, didn’t you? You imbecile. Thought you got a sweet deal? Good luck getting the chocolate gunk out from the exhaust system of your car. Don’t blame me when your son gets Augustus Gloop’d.
3. Twisted Mansion – Mario Kart 8
Your floor is your ceiling. your ceiling is the left wall and also the right wall. The library? Oh yeah, just take four lefts up ahead and put on your gravity boots, no problem. Even disregarding the fact that your house is upside down, whenever you have friends over they’re going to have to take extra care to make sure they don’t get literally murdered by the big hammer-swinging statues in your driveway. What the hell man, I was coming over to water you plants and do you a favor. Thanks a lot for forgetting to turn off your dumb murder alarm system. See you in Toad’s Turnpike, jackass.
2. Neo Bowser City – Mario Kart 7
This one should be pretty self explanatory as well – although the city life is nice, having access to bagels at 4 AM and such, it does kind of suck that every which way you turn you’re looking at another vanity shot of Bowser. I know they have rent control here, and that’s attractive for sure, but after four or five days you’re going to be pretty sick of seeing Bowser’s face on every billboard, bus stop, commercial and TV screen in the city. Bowser is the mayor, and he’s been known to take cash bribes to push the city council into voting for more lava. You’re pretty pro-lava yourself, or you wouldn’t have moved here, but this is just too much. Plus, every Mario enemy lives here, so your neighbor in your high rise is probably going to be a Goomba, or – god forbid – a hungry chain chomp.
1. Rainbow Road – Super Mario Kart
I think on some level you knew when clicking on this list that Rainbow Road was going to be #1. Besides the fact that you’re in space, a place where I’m told it’s very cold and hard to breathe, if you take one step off of the street you’ll be cast away into the void. Make sure to keep your children leashed to a stake at all times when outside, or they’ll meet the same fate as your husband. Some say he’s still hurtling towards the sun – others yet say his ghost still races on this very track. As Luigi passes by in a blur, giving you a little side eye, you take one last look into the distance. Out of the corner of your eye, a blue blur… and wings?
And then darkness.
Wow, that was fun and upbeat. Did we miss any awful tracks? Written any morbid death scenes taking place in a Mario Kart Course? Lay ’em out in the comments below!
