Coin

Coin
A coin as it appears in the New Super Mario Bros. series.
Information
Description	Pick coins up to increase your kart's speed. Not having coins may result in consequences.
Rarity	Common
First Appearance	Super Mario Kart (1992)
Most Recent Appearance	Mario Kart 8 (2014)

Coins are collectible items in several Mario Kart games.

Uses

Coins, sometimes found in Item Boxes or just laid out across the track, can be gathered by driving into them or receiving them in Item Boxes. Once you get a certain amount, your Kart will gain speed, allowing for quicker race times. If you crash into a player, depending on the game, you will lose Coins. So don't go trying to knock someone off the edge, cause nothing is more important than keeping your Coins. Well, winning is more important, but still.

Coins are also collectible Items in Mission Mode in Mario Kart DS, as you need to get a set amount to complete the mission. However, they do not boost your speed. Too bad, that would be helpful.

First in Mario Kart Wii and then in Mario Kart 7, Coins were an Item in the Battle Mode Coin Runners. Similar to the predecessor, Shine Runners, racers compete in various Battle Stages and try to get the most Coins as possible. The team with the most Coins wins, and they get an award ceremony, because they deserve it.

Appearances

In Mario Kart series

• Super Mario Kart: Coins were used as units of psuedo-health. Coins were scattered on the ground and could be driven over like Question Blocks to be collected. If a player collected 10 or more coins, they could go faster- keeping these coins was a challenge, however, as any contact with other racers or items would result in a loss of one to four coins. Having no coins meant that any contact with any other racer would result in a spin-out. The Coin item, which could be acquired by Question Blocks, gave the user an additional 2 coins.
• Mario Kart: Super Circuit: After the absence of the coin in Mario Kart 64, the coin returns in Super Circuit, where it works roughly the same way as in Super. However, there are some differences in the value of coins: the amount of coins collected after a Grand Prix is used to calculate rankings, and the coin limit per track has been raised to 55. This high coin limit made for insane snowballing capabilities- at max coins and speed, characters could drive faster than Red Shells.
• Mario Kart DS: Although coins were not used in racing gameplay, they still appeared in several missions. These missions usually consisted of barriers set up around an area of a track with scattered coins, with the goal being to collect all of them before time runs out.
• Mario Kart Wii: Again, coins were not used in races. However, the battle mode Shine Runners from the DS title was adapted to use coins- it was fittingly called Coin Runners.
• Mario Kart 7: After an absence of the coin in racing, they return in Mario Kart 7. They work similarly to the ones in Super Mario Kart, although they now float on the course rather than laying flat on the ground, and now respawn after a short amount of time instead of disappearing for the remainder of the race. The coin limit is now 10- collecting any extra results in a short speed boost. Colliding with racers no longer takes away coins, but items may still strip coins off racers.
• Mario Kart 8: Same as Mario Kart 7. Also the Coin item returns from Super Mario Kart.

Trivia

• Half of the Mario Kart games have the coin, with only a quarter having the item.
• Coins are replaced by Rupees when playing Hyrule Circuit.