N64 Review: Mario Kart 64

Review by: wiifan001

Mario Kart 64 is exactly how you would imagine it: 16 racetracks, 32 if you count the mirror stages, along with 8 Nintendo characters- Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Wario, and Bowser. There are 3 modes of difficulty- 50 cc, 100 cc, and 150 cc (plus the the mirror courses). Afterwards, you choose your character and enter the Mario Grand Prix. There are 4 cups to enter- Mushroom, Flower, Star, and Special. Each have 4 race tracks. You'll be on beaches, on ice, in Bowser's castle, through the highway, through the jungle, and plenty of other various courses. Each race track has 3 laps you must complete. To get to the next race, you must finish 4th place or better. If you don't get at least 4th, you'll be asked to try the race again or quit.

One amazing thing about the game is drifting. Drifting takes time to learn. But once you master it, you'll be catching and accelerating along the curves. Two people can enter the grand prix. Among each race holds items. You'll see a row of flashing questions marks on the road and running through will give you an item to use. You can get mushrooms and green shells and red shells in groups of one and three. Green shells will go straight on and then bounce off the walls back and forth. Red shells will often home in on the opponent, but once it hits a wall, it disappears. There are a few more items such as stars which increase your speed and make you temporarily invincible and banana peels which you can cause one to slip and lose control.

One problem with the game is that none of the CP players will ever have red shells or green shells making giving you sort of an unfair disadvantage. The joy stick on this game is a tad jerky when coming to the curves. Furthermore, being in first place and way ahead of everyone else, they will catch up to you unless if you finish.

Another mode of game play is time trial. You race solo and complete the race with the fastest time. The top five scores on each race will be recorded. Then there's Battle and Vs. mode in which up to 4 people can play against each other. Vs. mode is pretty much Grand Prix without the computer players and everyone has access to all the items. In Battle mode, each person has 3 balloons. Whenever someone slips on a banana peel, gets hit by a shell, or rammed over by one wielding a star, they lose a balloon. When all 3 balloons are gone, you are out of the race. However, it there is more than 2 people, you will be transformed into a yellow bomb in which you can chase other players and you won't get destroyed unless you collide with someone who is invincible. They have 4 seperate race tracks that you won't find anywhere else. It's fun at first, but gets boring kind of quickly, which can also be said about the Vs. mode unless you have 2-3 other people that are at your skill level, this game can be pretty lame and boring.

Graphically, Mario Kart 64 looks pretty nice. Generally, it's clean. A few levels are foggy looking up. The characters look pretty good. There's nothing too detailed about them. The backgrounds look pretty nice. Mario Kart 64 is not that great compared to other N64 games, however by itself it's good enough not to bother too much. The sound tracks and sounds coming from the karts sound great. Not too many voice effects from the characters. You'll only hear 3 to 4 different types of voice effects during the race. I just wish that there was more to be heard.

After owning the game for 6 years I'm still coming back and playing this game. It's still pretty fun. I would imagine for most people that they would grow tired of it long ago.

Mario fans and racing fans should own this game. Heck, you could say that this is a family game. Just be prepared to see pretty much everything this game has to offer within a week or two.