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" The excellent Mario Kart 8 is out today (May 30), and following our look at the ten best tracks in Mario Kart history, it&amp;#039;s only fitting that we look back at the worst.  Mario Kart: The 10 best tracks in franchise&amp;#039;s history 10. Dry Dry Desert (GameCube)      Look up the definition of &amp;quot;dreary&amp;quot;, and you&amp;#039;ll probably get Dry Dry Desert. It&amp;#039;s a snore and the opposite of what Mario Kart is meant to be, with dull, lifeless hues and music that make the track feel longer than it actually is. Off-road is painfully slow, then there&amp;#039;s the unforgiving giant sand pit, which will eat you up if you don&amp;#039;t stick to the narrow path around it. The hazard is not that difficult to avoid for the experienced, but for a Mushroom Cup track, it doesn&amp;#039;t seem fair. 9. Yoshi Falls (Nintendo DS)      Yoshi Falls is like a long, rubbish version of Baby Park. It&amp;#039;s one oval, but there&amp;#039;s none of the near-guaranteed mayhem you get from the classic GameCube track. Instead, it&amp;#039;s uneventful with racers simply going from one speed boost to the next. The only twist is the opportunity to cut corners by blasting through waterfalls (handy if you have mushrooms), but get it horribly wrong and you&amp;#039;ll be cursing as Lakitu picks you up from the bottom of the cliff. 8. Vanilla Lake 2 (SNES)      A bizarre track in which leading on the first lap can actually be disadvantageous. Large blocks of breakable ice impede the racers&amp;#039; progress, resulting in a ridiculous bashing match until someone manages to break through. And that&amp;#039;s before you get to the scattered blocks on the awkward start-finish straight. It was quite easy to fall into the icy water as well, especially if you were taking risks and trying to shave off some time cutting corners. 7. Lakeside Park (Game Boy Advance)      Lakeside Park isn&amp;#039;t a terrible track, except for the part where balls of lava would be randomly spat out by the volcanoes after the start of the second lap. Mario Kart has always been slightly luck-based, but generally speaking, that luck comes from the weapons rather than the courses themselves. It&amp;#039;s why time trials are a good indication of skill. So when you hit a flaming rock while minding your own business on the verge of crossing the finish line, you&amp;#039;ll feel hard done by. 6. Donut Plains 3 (SNES)      The sudden spike in difficulty when players mastered the Star Cup Grand Prix and began the Special Cup in 150cc was a bit much, and led to dozens of retries and game overs. Donut Plains 3 is arguably the hardest course in the whole game with only Rainbow Road coming anywhere near, and certainly tougher than the other three in the Special Cup by a large margin. One could point to the broken bridge and how that required a good approach and well-timed hop - otherwise you&amp;#039;d end up in the drink - but the tight hairpin turn afterwards and the narrow road made a first place seem almost impossible. 5. Wuhu Island Loop (Nintendo 3DS)      A track based on Wii Sports Resort&amp;#039;s Wuhu Island seemed a bit out of place, given the lack of relation to the Mario franchise. The execution was worse, with Wuhu Island Loop (as well as Wuhu Mountain Loop) feeling linear as the course was just one lap but split into three sections. But taking the biscuit were the easily-exploited glitch shortcuts. By driving into the sea, you could skip significantly ahead on the track, making online races particularly ridiculous. Nintendo later rolled out a patch to block off the exploits. 4. Shy Guy Beach (Game Boy Advance)      Not only are there bombs hurled at you, but the course is littered with pesky, scurrying crabs that do a great job at annoying you. There&amp;#039;s also a large amount of off-road racing, which is far from enjoyable. It&amp;#039;s this particular quirk that made the decision to remake Shy Guy Beach for Mario Kart Wii very questionable. With vehicles including an off-road stat on Wii, the track became very unbalanced and heavily favoured anyone who chose the likes of the Magikruiser bike. 3. DK&amp;#039;s Snowboard Cross (Wii)      Snowboard Cross takes cues from GameCube&amp;#039;s DK Mountain, beginning with a barrel cannon that shoots racers to the top of the mountain. It all goes downhill from there, though. Where DK Mountain is filled with excitement all the way down, Snowboard Cross is disruptive with bumpy hills and snow piles slowing the race pace right down. Tricks on the half-pipes were also unimpressive. The long hang time felt like they weren&amp;#039;t worth the effort, but they were required on the penultimate straight or else you&amp;#039;d lose several excruciating seconds bogged down by the snow. And even if you tried, there were many ways you could be eating pink snow anyway, like an off approach or being hit by a red shell. 2. Banshee Boardwalk (Nintendo 64)      Ghost Valleys on the SNES were great. Banshee Boardwalk is a poor imitation of them. A real mood dampener and all-round party buzzkill, this N64 course is overly dark, gloomy and miserable. Credit&amp;#039;s due for effectively evoking the intended atmosphere, but that was also the very reason it was hardly ever enjoyable to race on. Using a red shell on the finish line or sealing an unlikely comeback victory felt hollow, because it was hard to care on such a dour arena. Oh, and those bats can just bugger off. 1. Rainbow Road (Nintendo 64)      The most tedious racing arena in Mario Kart history. Rainbow Roads are usually a climactic finale, thrilling while testing your skill. The N64 version couldn&amp;#039;t be further from that, an overly-long snorefest taking around two minutes to complete a lap with no challenge whatsoever, except for the irritating chain chomps headed in the opposite direction. The only good part about the track was the huge drop at the start. But that&amp;#039;s just 15 seconds over the three laps. How about the other six minutes of boredom? Do you agree with our list of top ten worst Mario Kart tracks? What are your least favourites? Tell us in the comments below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/wii-u/feature/a573567/mario-kart-the-10-worst-tracks-in-the-franchises-history/>