Atari Karts
Atari Karts — frequently asked questions
- Is Atari Karts on Steam?
- No. Atari Karts is not distributed on Steam, so there is no Steam Charts or SteamDB player count for it. Its live popularity is tracked here via Twitch viewership instead.
- What platforms is Atari Karts on?
- Atari Karts is available on Atari Jaguar.
- When did Atari Karts release?
- Atari Karts was first released on December 15, 1995.
About Atari Karts
A go-cart free for all! In Atari Karts you'll race around the track with some of the craziest creatures around. Watch out for the objects lying on the road. Some are bonuses that will help you get ahead, but those hazards can be nasty. They'll cause you to slow down or mess with your driving controls. Try to outdistance your competition and finish fourth or better to move on to the next course. Kids of all ages will love this game!
Summary via IGDB.
Atari Karts on Wikipedia
Atari Karts is a kart racing video game developed by Miracle Designs and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar in North America on December 22, 1995, and Europe in January 1996. In the game, the players take control of one of several playable characters, each with differing capabilities. One or two players race against computer-controlled characters in four cups consisting of multiple tracks over four difficulty levels. During races, the players can obtain power-ups placed at predetermined points in the tracks and use them to gain an advantage. It plays similarly to Super Mario Kart and features Bentley Bear, main protagonist of the arcade game Crystal Castles (1983).
Source: Wikipedia (text under CC BY-SA 4.0).
Game details
- Platforms
- Atari Jaguar
- Developer
- Miracle Design
- Publisher
- Atari Corporation
- Game modes
- Single player, Multiplayer
- Themes
- Action
Details via IGDB.
Collector value & authenticity
Atari Jaguar · PriceCharting sold data · Verified 2026-07-24
- Region
- NA+EU
- Released
- 1995
- Authenticity
- Med
The Jaguar's best kart racer runs on an emulation of an SNES graphics mode. Sit with that.
Two Belgian programmers, Filip Hautekeete and Peter Vermeulen, built a Jaguar demo featuring an emulated Mode 7 — the SNES tech behind Super Mario Kart — and Atari commissioned a kart racer from it, with Bentley Bear from 1983's Crystal Castles in the lead. What shipped is genuinely competent: legible tracks, decent handling, a playable framerate — three things the Jaguar's other racers largely failed at. It arrived December 22, 1995, three months after the PlayStation's North American launch, and almost nobody played it.
How it was made
Miracle Designs developed the Atari Jaguar version, published by Atari Corporation. Credited: programmed by Filip Hautekeete, Peter Vermeulen; music by Fabrice Gillet.
What the press said at the time
| Computer and Video Games | #172, March 1996 | 24/100 |
| Electronic Gaming Monthly | #80, March 1996 | 5.5/10, 5/10 |
| Game Informer | #33, January 1996 | 5/10 |
| Mega Generation | #31, May 1996 | 72% |
| Mean Machines | #41, February 1996 | 61% |
| Next Generation | #16, April 1996 | 3/5 |
| Video Games (DE) | #52, March 1996 | 72% |
| Atari Fan | #8, March 1996 | 92/100 |
| Fun Generation | #3, March–April 1996 | 8/10 |
| ST-Computer | #113, February 1996 | 85% |
| ST Magazine | #103, March 1996 | 80% |
| Última Generación | #12, March 1996 | 68/100 |
The contemporary press could not agree on this one: comparable scores run from 24% to 92% across 11 publications. Scores are printed in their original scales.
Cartridge & preservation record
Cartridge ROM capacity 32 megabit (4 MB), measured from the preserved cartridge image.
Catalogue part number J9091E
Cartridge data from the No-Intro preservation database (metadata only — names, sizes and checksums, no game data).
Worth knowing
- The studio formed by walking up to Atari's trade-show booth. Filip Hautekeete and Peter Vermeulen visited a Ghent developer working on a Jaguar game, decided they wanted to make games too, walked into Atari's booth at ECTS and applied. Atari handed them a development kit, and Miracle Designs was formed around it. Their audition piece was a demo emulating Mode 7 — the Super Nintendo's signature graphics trick — to see whether the Jaguar could do it.
- It was cut up into four PlayStation games. In 2003 Miracle Designs split this game's content across four separate PlayStation releases: Rascal Racers, Miracle Space Race, ATV Racers and XS Airboat Racing. A 2000 Nuon game, Merlin Racing, is treated as its spiritual successor. Few Jaguar titles have been recycled this thoroughly.
- Edge magazine thought it was a different game entirely. It was announced under the working titles Kart and Super Kart, and previewed as Super Karts — close enough to Virgin Interactive's SuperKarts that a 1995 Edge supplement reported that Virgin's game was being converted to the Jaguar. Internal Atari documents also called it Atari Kart. Four names before it settled.
- EGM saw straight through it. Reviewing it in 1996, Electronic Gaming Monthly's crew were unimpressed: "This game rates high in the cuteness department but low on technique. Although the scenery changes, each race is an exercise in repetition: pick up icons, don't hit anything… it looked like a Mario Kart hybrid. I just wish it offered greater variety, such as a Battle Arena Mode." A second reviewer was blunter — "Can we say déjà vu, but in the bad way? The game has some of the same power-ups found in Mario Kart, but it's quite disappointing." The Belgian demoscene team had built a competent kart racer; what the press wanted was the mode Nintendo had and they did not.
Before you buy
Scarcer than the 1994 titles — a small print run into a collapsing channel — with demand from Jaguar collectors, Atari-mascot collectors, and kart-racing completionists at once. TWO products exist: the 1995 original and a Songbird Productions reissue (which trades lower) — establish which one you're buying, and check Songbird's catalog before paying original-run prices for a reissue. Included in Atari 50.
Authenticity & condition — Atari Jaguar
Specific to the format this title shipped in
Buying a Jaguar cartridge
Cartridges are the durable half of this library — the risk is provenance, not decay. The platform has an active post-commercial scene, so the question is usually which era a cartridge is from rather than whether it still works.
- Ask for a photo of the label edge and the cartridge back. Reproductions are usually printed on adhesive photo stock and sit proud of the label recess.
- Donor shells are the common trick: sanding marks on the back, or adhesive ghosting where an older label was lifted, are the strongest signals.
- Cartridges are region-free on this platform, so a cheaper PAL copy plays on a North American console — a price difference is not evidence of a fake.
Atari Karts screenshots
Watch on YouTube
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