Finally the great kart game is on the new Nintendo 64 and now with up to
four people playing simultaneously. The game is also enhanced with many
more obstacles in your path from a steamboat to a speeding train. The game
is going to rock because of its varied track design and character strengths
and weaknesses. All the characters from the old Mario Kart except Koopa
who is now replaced by Wario.The new enhanced battle mode is going to be
awesome with 4 people fighting simultaneously.
In this version instead of recieving items from the question blocks on
the ground you instead recieve the items from floating question blocks.
All the items from the previous Mario Kart except the feather are present
There are 16 tracks(4 for each circuit) and 4 battle mode tracks, as well
as being able to play all the tracks in reverse if a gold cup is received
in evey circuit in the 150cc mode. The circuts are once again
Mushroom, Flower, Star, and Special.
The new item fomat gives an interesting twist that the former version left
out. Now shells as well as banana peals can come in groups of 3(for
shells) and 5(for bananas). In addition to that, in you hold the
Z trigger down you can cary the shell or banana behind you to aquire an
additional item. A cool new additon is the spiked shell which seeks
out first player while hitting all in its paths. The upside down
question block has to be my favorite item of all. I have many times
messed my friend up, by placing it in a group of real blocks. The
ghost one of the best, seems to have declined in greatness. The invisibility
lasts for a short period of time, and the item stolen can rarely be determined.
The multiplayer version of this game, while fun does not live up to the
hype brought up before the game. The multiplayer levels are fairly small
and ordinary, which seems to detract from the overall enjoyment of the
game. I was expection large multilevel areas, but recieved small plain
levels instead. The other character is too easy to detect in this game,
which takes away from the greatest thrill of multiplaying, find your opponent.
Nintendo should have added more multiplayer levels, they could have even
used a few of the actual tracks for a level or two which would have been
a very cool idea. I still prefer the old Mario Kart battle mode, because
the boards while plain, provided a good sense of hunting. When Nintendo
makes another sequal to this game, I hope they will spend more time on
the multiplayer levels because they are a key part of the entire game.
The racing mode of the game was very well made. The problem with the previous
Mario Kart version, was the lack of different track designs, but this version
resolves that by numerous track setups. Each track has its own flavor and
I like the way the creators taylored one track to each of the characters
in the game. I however feel a bit cheated because there are only 4 tracks
per circuit in this game, unlike the 5 in the first game. Rainbow Road
the final track in the Special cup, I felt was the worst designed track
in the game. It was very plain and repetitive, as well as EXTREMELY long.
After viewing the beautiful enviroment of the other tracks, going on rainbow
road wasn't that exciting. The designers could have added more effects
and different textures or just have cut out the stage entirely. However
besides that the game is well planned out and varied enough to keep you
interested for quite a while.
The music in certain stages was very good, but in other, just plain annoying.
My biggest gripe had to fall on the sound effects, while they were cute
and a interesting touch to the game, Their frequent occurances soon became
unbearable. There is only so many times you can here Toad scream before
you pull out your hair or the same exact sentence evertime you win a race.
The creators should have made a few different sentences the racer would
say for winning just to add variation to the game. While I like the voices
in the games, I think they weren't as well written as they should have
been. "Peach has got it." doesn't show any great writing skills or proper
english for that matter. Don't get me wrong, I did like the music in the
majority of the stages. The songs did help to define the atmosphere, in
the stages. I even like the music enough to play it on my midi player while
writing my fun essays for AP English, so they can't be that bad.
Time trial is probably the mode I play the most if I am playing the game
alone. I never used to play time trial in the old version of Mario Kart,
but in this game it seems to be much more enjoyable. A cool new feature
of the time trial is the ghost. After playing a track you can race again
a ghost that races the track exactly as you previously did. This makes
it much easier to beat your old time because you have a frame of reference
to look off of. The only problem with the ghost is it doesn't save unless,
you store it in a controller pack. So you can use the ghost as long as
you stick to that track, but if you switch to another one and switch back,
the ghost disappears.
Overall this is a good game and I do recommend buying it or at least renting
it for a while. I however should not that without more than 1 person playing
the game it will get boring really fast so unless you have an extra controller
and someone to play with, its not for you.
| Sound | 8.5 |
Graphics | 9.6 |
Gameplay | 8.4 |
Control | 9.4 |
Score:
8.7
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The two colored controller included in the
japanese version of the game.
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