The 10 weirdest Mario Kart clones ever from Crazy Frog to Mortal Kombat

As Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds shoots for Mario’s racing crown, we rundown the most bizarre kart racers in the history of video games.

Mario Kart might not necessarily be the first kart racing game ever made (many point to 1988’s Power Drift from Sega), but it is the series which delivered the genre to the masses.

It all began with 1992’s Super Mario Kart on the SNES, which led to a wave of imitators ranging from Crash Team Racing to Nintendo’s own Diddy Kong Racing. If these represent the successful offshoots, however, there have been many, many others which have crashed and burned in the annals of gaming history.

As such, and ahead of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds’ launch next week, we’ve dug up the weird and not-so wonderful kart racers of the past and present. We could’ve included more too, like Konami Krazy Racers or ModNation Racers, but they’re pretty vanilla in comparison to these more bizarre and obscure titles, that you may have forgotten.

Bloodborne Kart aka Nightmare Kart

An idea which originally started out as an April Fool’s joke, Bloodborne Kart eventually became a reality in 2024 – albeit with all official connections to Sony’s PlayStation 4 game sanded off, to avoid litigation. The end result is indie game Nightmare Kart, which retains the gothic vibes of FromSoftware’s masterpiece and douses it with Wacky Racers energy.

Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing

While there are some great Star Wars racing games, like 1999’s Episode 1: Racer and its PlayStation 2 sequel, their quality didn’t rub off on 2001’s Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing. It featured giant bobblehead versions of characters like Darth Maul and Yoda, for some reason, and unsurprisingly it was a sales flop – with planned Dreamcast and PC versions being cancelled after it was poorly received on the PlayStation 2.

Dragon Kart (Yakuza: Like A Dragon)

The Yakuza/Like A Dragon series is known for its great mini-games, and one of the best is a knowing wink to Mario Kart. Dragon Kart debuted in Yakuza: Like A Dragon but also appeared in Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii, where you race around the city streets, firing rocket launchers, and skirting across speed boosts, competing against the locals. It’s a pretty thin minigame, but it’s surprisingly better than most Mario Kart clones.

Garfield Kart 2

This deserves a spot because its existence implies people were clamouring for a sequel to begin with. Developed by Eden Games, Garfield Kart 2: All You Can Drift was released in September and, unfortunately for it, just a few months after Mario Kart World. Weirdly, Garfield has a long history with kart racers, having also appeared in 2022’s Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway, long after the era of cheap cash grab clones seemed to be over.

South Park Rally

While not strange considering the popularity of South Park in the early 2000s, South Park Rally was so bad it took another nine years before another game based on the franchise was released. It features the voices of Matt Stone and Trey Parker but, unfortunately, was the worst kind of Mario Kart 64 knock-off you could imagine.

Super Indie Karts

This 16 to 64-bit kart racer has been in early access since 2015, with a full release planned for 2026. Developed by One Legged Seagull, it combines characters from several indie titles, such as Burrito Bison, ToeJam & Earl, and Guacamelee, and wraps them in a 90s-inspired racer with various graphical styles.

Motor Kombat (Mortal Kombat: Armageddon)

You might think the idea of playing as Scorpion or Raiden in a kart racer sounds like a meme fever dream, but it already exists thanks to 2006’s Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. Much like Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing, this minigame features 10 characters in the giant-head style, along with some special style-based fatalities and death traps. We’re kind of surprised they didn’t turn it into a full standalone game.

Dreamworks All-Star Kart Racing

Disney has released countless kart racing games over the years, with the most recent being 2023’s Disney Speedstorm, but weirdly, rival animation studio DreamWorks released one in the exact same year. DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing feels like it’s about a decade too late, but features a stack of franchises including Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar, and How To Train Your Dragon.

M&M’s Kart Racing

The Wii was renowned for its avalanche of shovelware, and nothing says terrible quite like a kart racer based on tasteless American confectionery. M&M’s Kart Racing was released in 2007 and was torn apart by critics, and has since been regularly ranked among the worst games ever, due to its poor graphics and plain courses.

Crazy Frog Racer

If you don’t know who Crazy Frog is, or have mercifully forgotten, he was a CGI-animated character synonymous with ringtones in the early 2000s. Crazy Frog Racer was released at the height of the ‘ring-a-ding-dings’ cultural zenith in 2005 and, just like the worldwide hit single it spawned, is best left to the memory of traumatised millennials.

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