PC Gaming

Mario Kart is a great game. It’s fun solo and with friends.

Unless you like fun.

That's debatable. There are many games I do not consider to be good, but sold many copies / licenses. Same is true for the other side, where lot of good games sold poorly. So therefore I wouldn't say it's bizarre. The game is just not for you (and me).

Mass appeal and quality are not necessarily the same thing, though with Mario Kart and Red Dead, people will say both qualify.

If my favourite games ever wind up on a top 10 list by sales, I've done something wrong. It's fine to like what everyone else likes. Most things "everyone" likes were manufactured to be liked by the greatest number of people. You're not wrong for liking a popular game, it was marketed to you. The new Taylor Swift album was fire, and I'm not even a Swiftie. No shame there, it's a mass marketed product. It would be weirder if a mass market product didn't connect with you.

But if you don't have favourites that not everyone likes... well, that makes for a very boring person. Again, there's nothing wrong with liking popular things. It's only weird if you don't venture out into the darker corners of, in this case gaming, and find something you like that not many other people do, or at least not a majority. A lot of people like the first Deus Ex game, it has kind of a cult following, and it was Game of the Year in 2000, but, it's still not a best seller. Unreal Tournament (the first one from 1999, also a GOTY) was an amazing multiplayer shooter that does not get enough love today. It's currently called "Fortnite" and it's very popular, and it gets a lot of shit for being overly commercialised... but I also like that my UT'99 skills translate directly to it. I'm way better at Fortnite than I have any right being, and better than I'm proud to admit. I don't build, I don't buy skins, but I will circle strafe around your walls and double tap you with a pistol or SMG just like I did 26 years ago in the OG. (Notably, before most Fortnite players were born.) (And no, I don't play Zero Build, I just play the regular mode, let people waste time building, if they're building they're not shooting, and if there's an opponent on my screen, that's all I'm doing.)

Mario Kart isn't even the best kart racer. That would be Sonic All-Stars Transformed, not least of which because it's playable on non-Nintendo platforms. The OG Mario Kart was the best Mario Kart that I've played. It's quite dated, but I think, still good.