I have a confession to make. I never particularly enjoyed the original Super Mario Kart or F-Zero. These were the flagship SNES titles showing off its hardware scaling and rotation through Mode7 to give a 3D perspective, and were treated as technological milestones. But when I compare it to the older technique of using raster tricks to give the impression of 3D tracks and terrain, seemingly regarded as more technologically primitive, to me Mode7 just comes off as very hamstrung in what you're allowed to do visually and design-wise (When I say Mode7 I don't really strictly mean the particular SNES technology either. It has just become a sort of universal name for anything applying the same principles for the same effect, like Wacky Wheels on PC, or BC Racers on the 32X).
The one distinct advantage of Mode7 I can think of is the fact that the camera can be freely rotated to display the track at any angle, while raster engines are locked to a fixed angle in order to maintain the illusion. This sure sounds like a big deal on paper, but whenever I play these games it's never something that actively enters my mind nor does it have any meaningful integration into the gameplay beyond some fancy camera tricks once the race is over.
There are a couple of things that really bother me when playing Mode7 racers. First is the unnatural flatness of the world which seems to be due to a number of factors. One is a distinct lack of prop objects placed in the scenery. Super Mario Kart is the only exception I can think of on the SNES which features some pipes here and there. Dunno if the general lack of these were due to technical limitations.
The second is how the perspective just doesn't feel right, where the horizon feels very squished making it hard to see what's coming up in the distance (this seems to be a combination of the height of the perspective and the quality degradation of the vertical scaling. Or is this also due to an ortographic view or something? I'm not really schooled enough in that subject to be able to tell.
Third is how the tracks themselves don't feel quite as nuanced in their raw layout, relying much more on sudden sharp turns and such, which kind of ties into the feel and fluidity of the driving and steering which I never really got a feel for either.
All in all, raster-based racers just seem to have a lot more going for them. Apart from the immediately obvious like having a lot more scenery props like lampposts, bushes, checkpoints, etc, one of the things I like the most is their ability to convey slopes through elevations and descents. They also frequently feature tunnel segments which does a lot for variety, and some of the later ones even manage to convey things like cliff edges. All of these things make Mode7-based racers just feel downright regressive in all the ways that count. I don't think I've seen a single Mode7 racer with these kinds of features.
