Choco Tracks

History:

Chocolate Island lies in the southeast of Dinosaur Land. It is not made up of Chocolate but rather called that because of its large brown mountains and bubbling hot mud that looks like the candy. Just as Vanilla Lake is named after its icy white colouring and not its actual substance, all the tracks on Chocolate Island are not actually chocolate. It is a sparsely populated region, full of wild animals and otherwise inhospitable living areas. Mario himself after exploring these worlds put forth the cash to build racetracks out of the mountains here, not to introduce economic stability to the area but rather in order to attract attention by including exotic locales for the Flower and Star Cups. He later sold these to Waluigi to cover a gambling debt he had with the Hammer Bros.

Super:

Choco Islands 1 and 2 are featured in SMK. They are difficult tracks with Piranha Plants lurking at curves and huge swaths of Mud to slodge through. Choco 1 leads off the Flower Cup and 2 is the Second Track in the Star Cup. The Star Cup is all about the exotic locales - along with these Muddy Mountains it brings us to the frosty Vanilla Lake and the sunny Koopa Beach. Choco Island 2 returns in DS in the Retro Cup whose ghost is Waluigi in the Zipper with a time of 1:01:620. Waluigi's association here really is probably just because this is a nasty, mean-spirited track, with no way of escaping mud. Grab a driver with excellent offroad and handling, probably someone light like Dry Bones or Peach.

These tracks also came back in Super Circuit, which recycled all of the courses from SMK. Instead of a 5-Track/4-Cup system though, it reshuffled the courses into a slightly more standard 4-Track/5-Cup system. Thus the ordering of the Choco Island tracks is a bit askew.

64:

The infamous "Chocolate Face."

It's interesting how indebted 64 is to SMK. Whereas many Kart games took courses from the most recent Mario game (Peach Beach, Luigi's Mansion, Maple Treeway are good examples), 64 didn't collect that much from Super Mario 64, instead they settled for spiritual successors to SMK tracks. Donut Plains became Moo Moo Farms, Vanilla Lake became Sherbert Land, Ghost Valley became Banshee Boardwalk and so on. There was no shortage of cool SM64 levels to choose from either. A Hazy Maze Cave Track could have been incredible.

Anyway, in this vein 64 transmogrified Choco Island into Choco Mountain. It again comes up in the Flower Cup. It's a cool track, but actually pretty difficult because the sides of the course often rub against a Mountain that doesn't immediately wreck your Driver but assuredly messes them up and slows them down if you hit it wrong. Likewise with all the jumps, one miscalculation and your driver is tumbling towards doom. There are also some intense turns, although no boiling mud this time around which is good. Handling is the key here again, someone a little crisper than the middleweights. I like Donkey Kong with a reliance on power sliding around the most intense lake turn.

This track also came back for the DS. The Ghost is Wario in the Dragonfly with a time of 2:15:571. Apparently the Choco Tracks have a Wario Bros. association, probably because they're the dirtiest, muddiest tracks around. It also may be some reference to their signature tracks being Dirt Stadums. After 64 we didn't see another Choco Track, probably because other Kart games relied more heavily on more recent Mario Games. Chocolate Island really only appeared in Super Mario World, after all.