Mario Kart is a series of kart racing games and a spin-off Mario franchise developed and published by Nintendo. Players compete in go-kart races while using various power-up items. It features characters and courses mostly from the Mario series as well as other gaming franchises such as The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing, F-Zero, Excitebike, and Splatoon.

Mario is a Japanese multimedia franchise created by Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto for video game company Nintendo, which produces and publishes its installments. Starring the titular Italian plumber Mario, it is primarily a video game franchise but has extended to other forms of media, including television series, comic books, a 1993 feature film, a 2023 animated film, and theme park attractions. The series' first installment was 1983's Mario Bros., although Mario made his first appearance in 1981's arcade game Donkey Kong and had already been featured in several games of the Donkey Kong and Game & Watch series. The Mario games have been developed by a wide variety of developers, including Nintendo, Hudson Soft, and AlphaDream. Mario games have been released almost exclusively for Nintendo's various video game consoles and handhelds, from the third generation onward.