I was reminded of this. It's possible that the people were too young to remember their videogame history, or they just refused to learn it. On the other hand, I was never good at any kind of history, and I know there's some point with videogame history where I just throw up my hands and walk away (for me, that's anything before the days of the NES, or any non-Nintendo consoles up to the GameCube/Xbox/PS2 generation).
It's shocking, but probably not the worst offense out there. Although Super Mario Kart appears well-known, I remember sort of skipping over it (yeah, just like I skipped over EarthBound, Final Fantasy IV / VI, Secret of Mana, Bomberman, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and Legend of Zelda Link To The Past *facepalm*). I did play Super Mario Kart a few times and liked it a lot, my only problem with it was never getting used to the powerslide, hence I forgot about it because I quickly lost interest when I couldn't get too far in the game. As Mario Kart 64 was a smash hit and one of the early titles for the N64, it's possible that many people were first introduced to the kart series through the 64 incarnation. I didn't even know there was a Pilotwings for SNES.
I guess if you look at the titles it's obvious. Super Mario Kart, Super Mario World... similarity there. If there was ever any doubt, you could just do a search to verify that Super Mario Kart was a real game. And I don't think any N64 games had 64 in the title unless they were from an existing franchise or an update of an old game. But you know we don't pay attention to clues like that unless we don't know what a Mario Kart is.
This seems like a good
excuse time
to post this. I grabbed the pictures that appear when you come in 4th or worse for a grand prix in Mario Kart 64, combining them into one image. To tie it into this thread, I'll just say the Mario Kart cast is ashamed that anybody could be wrong on which Mario Kart came first.