I recently went to target and saw a dvd collction of a cartoon I used to watch a long time ago called The Super Mario Bros Super Show 4 dvd set. Anyways I ended up buying it because it was to good of a deal to pass for $15.
Ive been watching it for a couple days now and recently saw an episode called 'The Great BMX Race'. Half way through the race Mario and Luigi had to fend off all of koopas troops that were in the race, by throwing different obsticles at each other. This reminded me of Mario Kart for some reason.
So I decided to look up when the first Mario Kart game came out and that was in 1992. The Super Mario Show was out in 1989. It made me think for a moment, could nintendo have gotten the Mario Kart ideas from the Mario cartoon or is that just a coincidence?