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I've played a lot of original Super Mario Kart. It was mind blowing when it first came out, and I honestly still find the first game to be the best. It is with a lot of nostalgia that I personally approached Epic Racers.

Pros:

• Fresh and interesting track designs, most with a new unique gimmick.
• The ranking system lets you experience the entire hack right from the start.
• Really feels like you are playing an entirely different game.
• Spend most of your time yelling "Dammit, Jesus!" at the screen.

Cons:

• It has a learning curve. I played it for the first time with a friend without reading the (excellent) included Readme and was confused by the new items and racers.
• Seriously, nerf Jesus.

Full original review in German: https://snes-testberichte.de/epic-racers/

Here the (loose) translation:

In terms of atmosphere, Epic Racers does very well, just like Super Mario Kart. The style of Epic Racers is clearly different, but absolutely successful. The characters come from all over the world and I have to admit that I have no idea who they are supposed to be, except for Jesus of course. The levels aren't as colorful and gimmicky as SMK or Parigo Kart. Instead, you have nice interesting worlds, some of which have a spiritual touch. The sky world in particular stands out extremely positively. The Dragon Ball inspired track is also quite cool.

The graphics of Epic Racers are actually better than Super Mario Kart. Both the backgrounds and the driver sprites are animated in more detail. Not only that, I rarely had the impression that the game suffered from slowdowns. Also, the complete menu navigation has simply become a bit fancier and that should be mentioned.

A total of 8 completely new drivers are available. These also drive differently. You can expect 20 completely new tracks, some of which are really innovative. These do not necessarily play as you know it from Super Mario Kart. For example, there's a track where you have to drive into a pond and then you're taken to another point on the track where you just keep going. Even the new items in Epic Racers are cool, even if they just have different graphics. But it's fun to lay or even throw a turd instead of a banana. Apart from that, it doesn't matter which place you occupy. Because for every place but the 8th you get one point. So 7th place gets one point and 6th place gets 2 points and so on. The winner gets 7 points. That's really nice, a feature I always wanted.

The music and sound effects have been completely taken over from Super Mario Kart. Therefore, Epic Racers has nothing new to offer here. Nevertheless, the SMK music is of course very good. But there is still a small deduction, because it is completely recycled music.

Oh yeah, all the things I disliked about the Super Mario Kart controls have been corrected in Epic Racers. There is less need for drifting. The controls are less wobbly, which just feels a lot more comfortable while driving. Drifting can and should still be done, of course, depending on your character, but it's not as overused as in Super Parigo Kart. The controls are also more comfortable in Epic Racers, because the complete level designs are not as tight as in SMK. You simply don't get stuck on every freaking edge and lose 4 places. There are hardly any nasty corners and edges here, which is great.

Epic Racers is definitely a lot of fun. Easy mode is actually very easy. Normal is really average and Hard is hard. At least for me. I could imagine that some of the hardcore SMK fans may find Epic Racers too easy. In general, all the ideas and the design are somehow consistent and offer a very attractive racing game. The characters, the items, everything is somehow quite funny and nicely designed. Especially the tracks and ideas actually offer something new, I haven't seen anything like this in other romhacks and even less in the original.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I think Epic Racers is a bit better than Super Mario Kart. The 3 hackers have touched up quite a few aspects of the original to my liking. A favorable coincidence! Less drift-heavy, better track design, no edges to get stuck on, points for every place. I can absolutely recommend it.

Atmosphere / Story: 4 / 5 — Graphics: 5 / 5 — Game mechanics / Gameplay: 4.75 / 5 — Music and SFX: 3.75 / 5 — Controls: 5 / 5 — Fun factor: 4.25 / 5

OVERALL: 4.46 / 5

This is by far the best SMK hack I've experienced. The graphical work is absolutely gorgeous and looks like an official game. The difficulty is amped up compared to the original SMK, but the tracks are well designed. You should definitely try it ! Now I wish a "Mario edition" of this hack was made, with custom music as the icing on the cake :D

This was such an amazing Rom Hack to play I have already completed it in one day because I've been wanting to play it so very badly. I really love the graphics and designs of the tracks and characters my two favourite characters in the Hack are Sasori and Stifu as I've played with them throughout the whole of the Hack. I wish I knew how to make the designs and graphics of the tracks, backgrounds and the characters. By far the best Super Mario Kart Rom Hack ever, really hope I play another Super Mario Kart Rom Hack as amazing as that again. Hopefully there'll be another Super Mario Kart Rom Hack Epic Racers 2 to the sequel. 10 out of 10 for this Hack because it was that very great and it was the best Super Mario Kart Rom Hack I have ever played.

I recently got done playing through all the GP tracks on Hard difficulty and made a video for it, and wrote a bit of a review with accompanying thoughts on the game.

All GP playthrough video: https://youtu.be/iNOhBnwsyNs

New tracks, new racers and new graphics make this a standout in the Mario Kart modding scene. 17 years in the making, this romhack was just released a couple days ago and after practicing the stages a bit I decided to make a video playthrough for all the new GP tracks.

The new tracks are, for the most part, very good. Some of the early tracks have a couple unusual gimmicks that will take a bit of trial and error to figure out for new players, but are a welcome variation from the vanilla track styles. The Epic cup at the end is the most polished of the bunch, and also features the fewest gimmicks as well. Many of these tracks feel like they are polished enough to be in a proper SNES Mario Kart sequel.

Battle Mode also has 4 new tracks, and all characters have been replaced with new graphics. GP mode also has scoring changes so that you don't always need to finish in the top 4 to progress, though you can still restart via the pause menu if you want, at any time.

Items also have a different coat of paint, though I feel there was a bit of a missed opportunity to nerf Camy's CPU ability. Just like Princess' Mushroom in the regular game, she just tosses it right in front of you many times, and it will make you drop to the bottom of the pack no matter what you do, requiring some miracle to get back into the lead afterwards. This makes playing as Stifu on hard mode a pain in the butt, because she will always be in second place spamming pills unless some freak accident happens to her, like the kart getting stuck or a proper knockout that causes her to finish further down the pack. Because of this, I only used Stifu on the Sapphire cup, and stuck to Sasori for the rest. Loki/Jesus' invincibility can be troublesome, just like Luigi/Mario in the original, but is far more manageable than being shrunk/flattened and the penalty that comes with it. These elements are in the original game, so it's not a knock against the romhack really, just one of the more frustrating parts of the playthrough I had.

You can toggle a rearview mirror by pressing the X button, but I recommend not doing this, as the framerate will often tank because of all the sprites on the screen. MiSTer's SNES core 'CPU Turbo' option may help with this, but I have not tried it yet. Some enemies that throw items in front of you, will also trigger the rearview camera to come up momentarily, and this is also a problem at times because not only will they be spamming things in your path, but they can also make the controls inconsistent and throw you off, because of the varying framerate at times. This was probably the worst issue I noticed while playing this romhack, but it is infrequent so not a huge deal.

Overall an excellent effort by Stifu, OK Impala! and smkDan. Congratulations to the team for getting it over the finish line after such a long development time, and the exemplary quality of this first release!

If it wasn't for the backstory provided on the hack, it could pass for an official game from back in the day.

It's indisputably better than the original game in every way. The characters are all so damn cool looking, each with their own quirks. I love Impala's look right off the bat. It really looks and feels like an original ensemble cast of characters I could get behind if it were an official franchise. Just plain awesome. I would get into specifics but I don't think I need to.

I think everyone should try this and enjoy the surprises for themselves. 17 years of work and you guys more than delivered. Thank you for sharing this with the community.

A true labor of love.

I remember seeing pics on this hack in the old Acmlm Board back in the day, and I am so glad that this hack is finally done, seventeen years went by so fast.

So I picked Stifu and played the Emerald Cup Race on easy mode, and I gotta tell you that these tracks and graphics are designed very well. The driver select screen is awesome too, the items you pick up are hilarious, too. I kept picking up the poop weapon and I just laughed.

I plan to stream this hack on my Twitch channel this weekend so my followers can see how good this hack is.

I'm going to keep checking the other courses and characters, I really enjoyed the little bit I played. So everybody jump on this hack, it's really good. Now I have two favorite SMK hacks, Epic Racers and Super Baldy Kart, now I'm inspired to make a SMK hack with my Googie Toons characters.

Congrats on giving us the final product. :)