Mario Kart Tattoos

My life can be divided into two categories: before Mario Kart 64 and after Mario Kart 64.

It was not the first game that I ever played, far from it. I’d been polluting my brain with video games since the days of Atari and I had dedicated an entire summer to scoring 100+ points on Tecmo Super Bowl (which I achieved with the a hail Mary from QB Bills to James Lofton on the last play of the game.) I still hum the Tetris theme whenever I try to organize anything. So, I was already a gamer by the time Mario Kart 64 came along, but nonetheless, it completely blew my mind. 

The ability to play against three other people at once was a game changer. Sure, there were multi-player games before, but they always involved two people playing while the rest of your friends milled around waiting for their turn. Now, if you happened to be only marginally popular, as I may have been, you could play with all of your friends at once. 

For the longest time all we did was play Mario Kart 64. Naturally we dabbled in other games like Goldeneye, but the cheerful fun of Mario Kart always brought us back. I’m pretty sure that if you were to stack all of the hours we spent playing together it would have been at least a couple of months out of our lives. And I wouldn’t take back a second of it. 

I was a Wario guy when given my druthers. Yoshi was acceptable in a pinch. But dear god was life miserable if you ended up having to play as Luigi. For those who may not remember, Luigi was, as he is in pretty much all of the games in the Super Mario Universe, worthless. Hell, even Waluigi is better than normal old Luigi, and he is a known POS. 

It’s been a couple of decades since that first glorious summer playing Mario Kart 64, I still find myself yelling “WAAAAAH!” in the Wario voice at even the slightest inconvenience. But you’re not hear to listen to me reminisce about my youth, you want to look at some sweet Mario Kart 64 tattoos. So, let’s start this out the way we all love….

The Whole Mario Kart Crew

Mario

Luigi

Wario 

Bowser

Toad

Yoshi

Princess Peach

Donkey Kong

The Spikey Shell of Death! (I have no idea what this is actually called, but this name is appropriate) 

The goddamned banana peels…

See you all again further down the Rainbow Road.