Mario Kart 64

The Good
The controls are just as fluent as I remember them to be, there is no awkward turns or stiffness at all. Most if not all other racing games I have on the Nintendo 64 have a few control-related flaws, but I can't complain here. One thing that annoys me though (I think it has something to do with my cartridge) is that my character is sometimes hit by an invisible obstacle, costing me precious time.

There are not a lot of stages, but the ones we have are very detailed and polished. It is really cool if you know where to find all the secret shortcuts and how to avoid dangerous areas. Each stage also feels different and has it's own music, compare this to Waverace 64 or Diddy Kong Racing where every stage has the same feel to it, isn't this much better.

Fighting each other in the four versus stages is pretty cool and is still one of the most amazing memories I have from my childhood. Even to this day, even though we are now much older, we still like to get together and throw turtle shells at each other for a few good hours. Matches can take very long and the level design is quite amazing for it's time. This proves the saying: Quality over quantity, there are only four stages, but they are perfect.

The Bad
Making minor adjustments to your direction slows you down a little and the NPC's use this to catch up with you. This wouldn't be such a problem if I didn't suffer from perfectionism and could just ride with the karts normally. Sadly I always feel urged to ride perfectly straight, which is not as easy as it sounds.

Obstacles only show up when they are right in front of you and it's already too late to dodge them. A friend of mine left a banana-peel on a ramp which I had to jump over, I saw it too late and fell down, this instantly caused me to drop from second to last place. I did end up third, but I could have been first if it wasn't for the annoying pop-up.

The characters didn't look impressive than and twelve years hasn't changed that. Rather than having animated characters it looks like the characters from Mortal Kombat. The graphics just stand-out way too much against the very colorful and light level design. I also love the ceremony at the end of a race where the camera moves a little, but the characters always look straight at it and their cars also turn to the camera.

The Bottom Line
I already said at the start of this review that Mario Kart 64 is the best installment in this franchise. The level design is great and we still play this game after like twelve years. It takes quality over quantity which makes it stand-out as a racing game, especially on the Nintendo 64. Try it out if you haven't done so already before, this game is very unlikely to disappoint you.

The Good
What did I like? What didn't I like? The music is on par with all the other Mario games, in otehrword's, it's great, the graphic's are the best of it's time and even by today's standard's arn't to shabby, the control's are excellent and are easy to master, you can always improve and get better. The items are clever and cool, the levels are very well done and well designed and there are eight different character's to choose from to race is, each with their own pro's and con's. There are 16 racing levels plus 4 battle mode levels, where you shoot shells at each other or attack each other with other items and you have three balloons and lose one each time you get hit. You die when all your balloons are gone. You can play with up to 4 player's and it's a great game for people of all ages!

The Bad
I've mastered this game extremely well and even the Special Cup is easy to beat now. But whatever, it was still worth the money by far. Also, when playing with 3 or 4 player's there is no music and no GP, which sucks.

The Bottom Line
If you even kinda like Double Dash you'll love the N64 version!

The Good
First of all if you've never played Super Mario Kart, go and pick it up. Seriously, it's so cheap these days you'd be silly to not have that must have piece of nostalgic brilliance alongside Illusion of Time, Super Mario World and Super Turrican.

Conceived originally as Super Mario Kart R and featuring Magikoopa some tweaking was employed and the finished product was released to pretty unanimous praise. It's easy to see why the game was initially praised. It's incredibly addictive and you won't be able to render yourself from the Nintendo 64 controller until you have had your fill of every track the game has to offer.

I have never been so compelled to stay up to ungodly hours, a bottle of beer in my hand, my friends by my sides on the couch. Raccuous laughter until the sun came up. Absolutely magical.

That's where the magic in this game lies. It really brings people together to enjoy themselves with some of the best multiplayer gaming ever produced.

Outside of the multiplayer there is a fleshed out single player mode. There are four cups to participate in with tracks that gradually increase in complexity as you complete each concurrent one. They are based loosely on characters or places featured in earlier Mario games and while imagination in one might be quite apparent in others there is no imagination at all. In general though, they are quite interesting and fun to drive around on.

Speaking of driving. The racing mechanics are improved, obviously, over the original Super Mario Kart. Each racer, like before, has their own statistics but within weight classes the changes are more or less cosmetic.

Items are much more potent this time around with a selection of items that might displace someone from first or form a shield of shells around your racer.

The graphics in Mario Kart 64 are simple, but traditionally the simplicity of the graphics in Mario games has been charming and it is no different here. Environments are richly detailed and the bright, vibrant colours give everything that warm, cartoon like quality that Mario games exude in spades. It's hard to fault the graphics when they are so stylised, it's like calling the art director a failure for trying to make things look a little different, or in this case; consistent. Kudos.

The Bad
Mario Kart 64 comes apart in only one instance; single play. When you're playing the Grand Prix mode and you're racing on the highest difficulty the AI will constantly ruin you. It stops being fun. When you see racers you blazed past using a golden mushroom rocket up behind you for absolutely no reason you begin to resent the game for cheating.

Rubber banding is cheating, in every sense of the word. In fact, at the climax of the last few races the only way you're going to beat them is by constantly restarting, or luck. Whatever works for you. The dire frustration I felt seemingly getting absolutely nowhere despite memorising every last turn and straight of a course almost ruined the game for me.

Put the difficulty back a couple of notches to 50CC and it's a completely different game. I don't know how they ruined the AI so badly.

The music is pretty hit and miss. Most of the time you don't even notice it, but when you do it's either sounding awful or good. It's really inconsistent.

Saving a ghost run of your best times requires the use of almost an entire controller pak. Buying a new controller pak just for Mario Kart 64 is a little ridiculous. It's like Knights of the Old Republic using up an entire Memory Unit or Jet Set Radio using an entire VMU to store Graffiti.

The Bottom Line
Playing Mario Kart 64, in any context, you're guaranteed to have a good time. With friends, it is an absolute gem of multiplayer mayhem with some brilliant arena's, addicting game modes and outstanding replay value on a whole.

Single player is inconsistent and unbalanced. While fun on lower difficulties when playing on higher difficulties the rubber banding of opposing racers becomes such an issue that it begins to suck the fun right out of the experience.

Balance issues aside, this is still a brilliant game. It looks fantastic, features really solid control and is packed with features, tracks and extras.