You could have a Mario Kart clone up and running in Blitz3D in a few hours.
The landscape is incredibly easy because it's completely flat and uses a smallish square texture - place this onto a cube or quad and then all you need is a single sprite representing the kart. Add some very simple physics for this (just acceleration, braking and turning) and you could drive around. There would be no sliding the kart, but that doesn't matter I think.
Add some simple AI paths around the track (just arrays of points) and you can easily add a few AI karts that whiz around. Again they won't be reacting to the player etc... but it will look pretty good.
The Matio Kart level graphics and sprites are all available online so you could borrow those :
Sprites:
http://tsgk.captainn.net/index.php?p=showgame&t=sy&sy=8&ga=344
Backgrounds:
http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/index.htm
scroll down to the Mario Kart section...
The landscape is incredibly easy because it's completely flat and uses a smallish square texture - place this onto a cube or quad and then all you need is a single sprite representing the kart. Add some very simple physics for this (just acceleration, braking and turning) and you could drive around. There would be no sliding the kart, but that doesn't matter I think.
Add some simple AI paths around the track (just arrays of points) and you can easily add a few AI karts that whiz around. Again they won't be reacting to the player etc... but it will look pretty good.
The Matio Kart level graphics and sprites are all available online so you could borrow those :
Sprites:
http://tsgk.captainn.net/index.php?p=showgame&t=sy&sy=8&ga=344
Backgrounds:
http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/index.htm
scroll down to the Mario Kart section...