Ack wrote:I hate Diddy Kong Racing.
On that note: Crash Team Racing is the best kart racer of the 32/64 bit generation. Given that about 85-90% of kart racers were made during the PS1/Saturn/Dreamcast days, that's saying a lot.
I haven't played Mario Kart 7 or the Sega&Sonic All stars racing-series, but I can say that atleast before those two games came along, Crash Team Racing was the kart racer game of all time.
I wonder what happened to the whole kart racer genre? During the 16-bit era (counting 3DO, CD32, Jag, 32X etc as 16-bit here) there weren't that many games like this given how new the genre was and the limitations of the Genesis and SNES. B.C Racers and Atari Karts are probably most famous games from that era besides Mario Kart. Then came the PS1&N64 and the genre just exploded. Speed freaks, The Land Before Time: Great Valley Racing Adventure, Toy Story Racer, Diddy Kong Racing, Wacky Races, Muppet Race Mania, Crash Team Racing, Mario Kart 64, Chocobo racing, Micro Maniacs, South Park Rally, Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour, Looney Tunes space race etc. During the PS2-generation there were signifcantly less games, but the genre was still alive thanks to titles such as Mad Dash Racing, Cartoon Network Racing and The Flintstones: bedrock racing. But during current console generation Mario Kart Wii was pretty much the only kart racer there was before S&S ASR was released.
It's kind of the same with 3D platformers. Every one was doing it during the PS1 generation, on the PS2 the genre existed but there were a lot less games compared to the previous generation and during the PS3 generation the genre was dead.