Mario Kart is one of my favorite video game series in existence. In fact, it's probably my favorite. But within the series, I like Mario Kart 64 the most. Why is that?

1. Battle
The first time I had ever played Mario Kart, I started out with battle mode (the only one was balloon battle then). I wasn't even sure what I was supposed to do in it yet. But now I'm probably better than Waffle King at it. In the past two installments of Mario Kart, Wii and 7, balloon battle mode has turned into a point-collecting mission rather than the classic free-for-all survival mode from older games. Sure, it had to accomodate Wi-Fi so they added a timer and changed the rules a bit to make it work without having people waiting long periods of time to get into matches (battles on DS with eight people can easily go for ten minutes). It'd be great if they include a survival mode for local multiplayer on Mario Kart 8, or even for friends online. I'm glad they took out teams on Mario Kart 7, even though it still has a mandatory timer. But 64's balloon battle was and still is really fun. It's only got four stages, but they're all good (Yay Block Fort!).

2. Courses
Like in battle, the racing courses are really well designed in 64. There isn't one that I really dislike although that probably differs for some people. I was excited to see my two favorites from 64 appear in Mario Kart 7 again, and they look beautiful. Since 64 is an older Mario Kart, it doesn't have classic courses though. Just sixteen. But sixteen likeable ones. There are quite a few challenging tracks. However, the challenge can be attributed much to the gameplay...

3. Gameplay
If you haven't played Mario Kart 64 in a while (or ever), you're probably not going to be really good after the first race. The handling of the karts is different from any other Mario Kart, just like other installments. They all have their own feel, which is good. But I really like the challenging controls of Mario Kart 64. It takes time to become good at it, but that's fine. It seems like the developers accomplished what they were trying to do with 64, which was to make it like remote controlled cars.

There are some exclusive features in other Mario Karts that make them great too, like Double Dash's Bob-omb Blast and Wii's online system. Even though there's so much to like in other games, Mario Kart 64 still seems to be the most fun to me.

What's your favorite?