With the release of Mario Kart 8‘s second Booster Course Pass in August 2022, fans have begun discussing where the new Turnip and Propeller Grand Prix Cups rank in franchise history. For instance, every MK completist knows the penultimate Star Cup is always one of the hardest to master in the first playthrough, as it introduces new tracks in the game that must be finished to unlock the Special Cup.
Unlike the introductory Mushroom Cup that eases players into the competition, Mario Kart’s Star Cup presents harder maps to navigate, altered road surfaces, obstacles, and increased challenges for drivers to master.
MK Super Circuit
While the shaky GBA graphics are more annoying than challenging to manage, winning the Star Cup on MK Super Circuit isn’t all that tough. The drastic differences in road surfaces between the slick ice in Snow Land to start and the slowing sand in Yoshi Desert in Leg 3 can be challenging, but the most trying aspect of the cup includes the length of each track, all of which are pretty long and require intense focus more than stellar driving skills to complete fast.
While Ribbon Road features a slew of intense U-turns, the course is nowhere near as difficult as the remastered version in MK 8, which has suspended swaying roads rather than easily navigable grounded ones. The toughest aspect of MKSC‘s Star Cup is Bowser’s Castle 3, which requires players to jump over several successive lava pits and handle wicked 90-degree turns.
Super Mario Kart
For the simple fact that Super Mario Kart‘s Star Cup required five courses to complete rather than three, including five laps instead of the traditional trio, it’s slightly harder to win than MKSC. Moreover, whereas the Mushroom Cup in the game featured two Mario Circuits, the Star Cup features only one to make way for more challenging settings and road surfaces.
Featuring Koopa Beach 1, Choco Island 2, Vanilla Lake 1, Bowser Castle 3, and Mario Circuit 4, the original Star Cup forces players to navigate wet beach and dry desert sand, mud, water, snow, ice, lava, and fire, which is no easy feat for the first game in series history. Luckily, the inaugural game in the franchise features basic graphics, rudimentary controls, and easy-to-play mechanics, making the game far simpler to manage than the advanced versions of the beloved kart racing game.
Mario Kart 64
The Star Cup in Mario Kart 64 presents drivers with a major challenge out of the gate with Wario Stadium, the second-longest course in the game featuring a maze-like layout, dirt mounds, mud puddles, and derby-like jumps that are hard to stay in control of. Had it been the final leg, the cup would be much harder. The second leg includes the much shorter Sherbet Land, a fairly tricky ice course with dawdling penguins and frozen lakes that will freeze drivers on impact, with the toughest area coming in the underground tunnel full of harry twists and turns.
While Royal Raceways presents narrow turns in the cup’s third race, the pronounced straightaways make it pretty easy to handle despite the track being over 1,000 meters long. Bowser’s Castle concludes the cup, a much shorter track that, despite the gnarly 90-degree turns and obnoxious fire-breathing Thwomps, is surprisingly easy to win for Star Cup final race.
Mario Kart DS
Mario Kart DS‘ Star Cup opens with the supremely challenging DK Pass, a mountainous snow-course featuring a narrow cliffside road that is easy to fall off due to the slick surfaces. Between the twisty layout and giant snowballs rolling into the road, one false move will crash drivers into a snow bank. Leg 2 includes Tick Tock Clock, a relatively basic layout whose biggest challenge is the rotating ground surfaces that resemble gears on a clock.
Leg 3 includes Mario Circuit, the easiest course to navigate due to its paved road, straightforward layout, and easily dodge-able character obstacles like Goombas. Beyond DK Pass to start the Cup, it’s the fourth and final leg, Airship Fortress, which gives players the most trouble by dodging cannonballs shot at every turn, marking the only track to turn Bullet Bills into hazards.
Mario Kart Double Dash!!
MK Double Dash has a truly trying Star Cup loaded with diverse courses, distractingly colorful settings, altered road surfaces, and decreased visibility due to the diurnal/nocturnal dichotomy. The overhauled version of Sherbet Land opens the Cup, replete with a new underwater section to go with its already difficult-to-handle ice and snow surfaces. Next is the nighttime Mushroom City, a claustrophobic affair with low ceilings and lower lighting in its serpentine layout.
Leg 3 includes Yoshi’s Circuit, notorious for being one of the twistiest tracks in the game that requires items to cut through the maddening hairpin turns at the most opportune time to win. But like any really challenging Star Cup, the hardest track is reserved for the last via DK Mountain, a riveting uphill/downhill course set on a pair of volcanoes where drivers must traverse extremely narrow roads comprised of lava, magma, rock, ash, dirt, and other tricky road surfaces before entering a lush jungle.
Mario Kart 8
Almost solely due to the epic challenges presented in Mount Wario, the fourth and final leg of MK8‘s Star Cup and one of the hardest tracks in the entire game, fans will have a tough time coming out on top. The Cup begins with the fairly easy yet thrilling Sunshine Airport, where tarmac conveyor belts and hairpin terminal turns present the biggest challenge. After that, Dolphin Shoals is another pretty basic underwater level that is more enthralling than difficult due to the underwater caves and Mega Unagi that players perform tricks from.
However, the Cup dramatically ups the challenge with Mount Wario, a track that features three entirely different laps that make it impossible to get a feel for through repetition. Drivers begin on a downhill slope of ice, enter a cave full of rushing water, careen through a power dam, and end up slaloming through intense hairpin turns and bumpy moguls through the woods. Mount Wario feels like a real skiing game and makes DK Pass look like the bunny slopes.
Mario Kart Wii
Mario Kart Wii boasts one of the all-time best Star Cups in franchise history, with each course increasing in difficulty from the next. The ridiculously tough Daisy Circuit opens the Cup with a long looping map loaded with confusing roundabouts, low-visibility tunnels, and distracting fountains. Up Next is Koopa Cape, a long labyrinthine course with sandy roads, rushing water, narrow U-turns, steep waterfalls, and an underwater tunnel with harmful spinning turbines.
Leg 3 includes one of Mario Kart’s best tracks, Maple Treeway, and ups the ante by forcing drivers to traverse round, uneven tree logs, mud pits, and dirt roads by speeding through dash ramps before taking U-turns while dodging Wigglers at every turn. The only course harder than Maple Treeway is Grumble Volcano, a dizzying track adorned with fire pits and bounding fireballs on a road that crumbles with each passing lap due to the hot lava. The sharp corners and moving platforms are a nightmare to defeat, especially on 150cc or higher.
Mario Kart 7
Since three of the four courses feature immensely difficult underwater portions, Mario Kart 7 has the hardest overall Star Cup to defeat. Beginning with Piranha Plant is a cruel practical joke, as it’s one of the hardest courses in the game to master, especially in 200cc. Wario Shipyard is even more difficult to navigate due to its underwater anchors and crabs cluttering the path along the way, never mind the dark blue water that’s hard to see through.
Leg 3 includes Neo Bowser City, one of the twistiest tracks in the game made even trickier by the driving rain from start to finish that creates increasingly slick surfaces that make drivers fly off the roads. Saving the hardest for last, Maka Wuhu is a wildly complex one-lap course (the first of its kind) that ends and begins in different places, making it impossible to get used to the layout, and features tricky bridges, caves, lakes, castles, and altered road surfaces and flight paths that will give the most expert gamers fits for ages.
