Mario Kart: because life is serious

 We used Christmas as an excuse to introduce our son to the world of Mario Kart. Which had the same result as introducing him to chocolate or French fries. Instant hit.

Someone once described Prince of Tennis as Dragonball Z as middle-school tennis and taken up to eleven. Well, Mario Kart is Dragon Ball Z as go kart racing and kept at ten. (Because Prince of Tennis is INSANE)

Mario Kart combines go kart racing and open warfare and drops the cast of the Mario franchise (and now some other Nintendo characters) It is silly and frenetic and random as all get out.

I am aware that there are some very realistic, very detailed racing simulators out there. Because I am one of those people who actually reads the editorials in Penny Arcade. Mario Kart is the opposite end of the spectrum. Even gravity is optional (although physics is always required) 

I am pretty sure that the video game that I logged the most hours on is Animal Crossing. Mario Kart, while it has a vastly faster tempo, fulfills a similar function for me. It is decompressing. I know some folks take it very seriously but the fact that I don’t have to is very nice.

Mario Kart is not as insane as the Smash Bros franchise because that is a mascot explosion. However, I honestly think it’s more casual gamer friendly. It has found a happy home in our home.

Nintendo’s Clubhouse Games... is actually really good

 As a Christmas gift for ourselves, we got Clubhouse Games for the Nintendo Switch.

I can already tell that it will be a great source of play and blogging material.

Back in the days of yore, you could find game collections on floppy disks for ridiculously low prices. And they were always hot messes that, despite the bargain basement prices, you still overpaid for. Well, Clubhouse Games provides an answer for ‘what if one of those collections was good?’ Of course, it costs more than ‘fifty games for five dollars’ tag but that’s the price you pay for quality and actually working.

Of course, there’s a lot you WON’T get. Anything that is a licensed product is not going to be a part of Clubhouse. No Euros, no War Games, no Ameritrash. If there’s a copyright attached, it’s not there. Abstract strategy games and card games and party games. If those aren’t your jam, this isn’t your clubhouse.

What you do get is an eccentric, eclectic collection of games, ranging from century old classics to things like tank fights and toy boxing. There are even games like darts and bowling that are callbacks to wII sports. 

It would be fascinating to see the process Nintendo had of selecting the games. I’m surprised there isn’t a form of Poker, let alone Go (Even a 9x9 board would have been something). Euchre would have been nice too. But you still get a wide selection of family games for a variety of occasions. 

But the real star is the interface. There has been an endless history of game collections in the digital world and most of them have ranged from meh to terrible. Clubhouse Games works because it has an exceedingly clean and user-friendly interface. You can actually learn how to play and then actually play the games. It’s easy and it’s not easy to achieve that kind of easy.

Clubhouse Games is not what I think of when it comes to gaming on the Switch or gaming online. But... it’s good.