was made after the development team when observing how one kart looked to another driving past it, decided to see what it would look like with Mario in the kart. Thinking that having Mario in the kart looked better than previous designs, the idea of a Mario themed racing game was born. Notable in the development of Super Mario Kart was its use of Mode 7 graphics. First seen in F-Zero, Mode 7 is a form of texture mapping available on the SNES which allows a plane to be rotated and scaled freely, achieving a pseudo-three-dimensional appearance. 1UP.com have credited the use of Mode 7 with giving the game graphics which at the time of release were considered to be "breathtaking". Retrospective reflection on the Mode 7 visuals was mixed, with IGN stating that the once revolutionary technology now looks "crude and flickery". Super Mario Kart featured a DSP (Digital Signal Processor) chip; DSPs were used in SNES games as they provided a better handling of floating point calculations to assist with three-dimensional maths. The DSP-1 chip that was used in Super Mario Kart went on to be the most popular DSP chip to be used in SNES games. The music for the title was created by composer Soyo Oka, who previously composed games for Nintendo such as Pilotwings and Ice Hockey. Reception Super Mario Kart received critical acclaim and proved to be a commercial success; it received a Player's Choice release after selling one million copies and went on to sell 8.76 million copies worldwide, becoming the fourth best-selling game ever for the SNES. In Japan, it was the top-selling game in September 1992 and became a multi-million seller in 1992, eventually selling a total of in Japan. In Europe, it was the top-selling game during the first quarter of 1993, above the Sega Mega Drive titles Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Streets of Rage 2 during the same period. In the United Kingdom, Super Mario Kart was the top-selling Super NES game in February 1993, and it went on to be the seventh best-selling game of 1993 with more than 250,000 sales in the country. Aggregate scoring sites GameRankings and MobyGames both give an average of more than 90 percent. Critics praised the game's Mode 7 graphics. Another aspect of the game to have been praised is its gameplay, which Thunderbolt has described as the "deepest [and] most