Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

"It's good, but its quality swerves."

Introduction
This game, Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is a good game, but my feelings toward it swerve. At first, when I played it on the big demo machine at K-Mart, I loved it so much that I just went and bought it from my favorite video game store. Soon, the game became frustrating as I went up to the harder modes. Soon, as I got better and better, this game rocked again but now that I've done everything and unlocked it all it's just old. Then again, it's that way with any other game, eh?

Graphics 9/10
Stupendous. This game is made with such explicate detail and there are all those things you'd see in real life. When sharp turning there are sparks that look real (and get more intense as you go), when you do a boost there is fire coming out of you're exhaust pipes, water is good, blue, wavy, the sand is good (and also creates friction) but the grass seems a lot like a rubber surface.

However, even though there are some lacks of details, the style is what most people would like. If you want some screenshots, go elsewhere. Or try this game!
Or you could go over to Gamespot and look at screenshots there.

Gameplay 8/10
It's ok. As mentioned in the introduction, it swerves. If you can take while of frustration between the high points of this game, you'll like it. At the end, like any other game, it gets old. Hey, we can't ask for a game that doesn't do that.

Anyway, you gotta choose two characters from Mario games and then put them on cars that can old the heaviest persons weight (there are three weights, light, medium and heavy). You must strategize what two characters go best together to suit your strategy (like each character gets a useful special item and you must choose which go together best) then you must choose a car with the best statistic combination (that again is for you to decide) and what track you're playing on (what cars drive best on what tracks?). Some of these characters you may have not even knew existed, but they all do.

Soon you'll unlock more courses, and then all the courses bundled up into one tournament. It can, however, be hard to find a difficulty that suits where you are in the skill. Easy (50cc) and Medium (100cc) are almost the same thing, but then it leaps strait to hard as heck in Difficult (150cc). This can mean frustration when you find 50cc and 100cc too easy but you aren't quite up there enough for 150cc. Soon, however, you will unlock the Extra Difficult mode (Mirror Mode, where you play each course with everything on the opposite side it is supposed to be on. This is additionally as hard as the imaginary 200cc). But even that gets too easy eventually. Lot's of difficulties, but they did a bad job of balancing the intervals out.

So once you get the characters, you must now start racing. While racing you could have a sandy course, which slows you down with friction, a standard course, anything. Courses on a cruise ship, rainbows, evil castles, all the way down to a standard go-cart track, and the standard oval you find in most amusement parks (WHICH is why that course has an amusement park in the background).

As you collect items, your character in back launches them while your character in front sort of holds the item like a backpack, so that when the back person has used his, the front one will the be ready to use his (after an auto-switch).

Most courses are three laps around, but one is only two because it is incredibly long, and one incredibly short one is actually seven. There are things like traps, in-game hinderers, places to fall down and boost floors.

If you hit a boost floor, you get an instant boost. Sometimes though, the boosts may be your curse. On some stages, like Rainbow Road where you play on a rainbow with no rails a boost could result in you falling off. I often found my sister whispering to herself "Avoid the boosts... Avoid the boosts..." Most often, though, they will help you.

There's also a starting boost. To get it, you press A just as the race starts, and you get a boost. Even better, on Co-op mode, where you play with your friends on a single cart, if you BOTH get the boost, then you will get a DOUBLE BOOST, so both of you try pressing A together. It is not only very pretty, but it will put you WAY into the lead. However, it may be a mystery the way your computer rivals still manage to stay ahead of you even though they DIDN'T get the boost. It is an example of bad game programming.

There are up to four players on a single cube, paired or rivaled, or you can hook some gamecubes together and go eight! Sixteen players at the very most when pairing people up on Co-op mode.

There is also a whole new style, battle mode, where you hop some karts and don't even race- you drive around a big stadium and try to either a) hit your opponent for a star, b) smack your opponent with an item to knock off balloons or c) hit your opponent with mass bob-oms! They are all fun and can add an entire section to the game.

Sadly there are no minigames (aside from the battle mode) but what would you expect with a racing game?

There are unlockables, but they are almost all characters or tracks, and EVERY SINGLE ONE is done the same way. Do X set of tracks at X difficulty. You don't have to go finding them, just beat every course on every difficulty and you have it all.

Sound/Music 8/10
Music is actually pretty good. It all fits in, like if you have a standard course there's standard music. Racing on a boat cruise? The music is vacation-like and relaxed. How about Wario's twisted colosseum? That has twisted music. Sounds are pretty good.

When turning sharply, you can hear the wheels grinding against the road. This sound changes if you grind dirt, screens, etc. The sound of you driving also changes realistically with what surface you drive upon.

However, in my opinion the sounds of the character's voices are sort of screwed up. They are mostly high voices, but some low ones for the bad guys. It can get annoying after awhile, every time the front character switches with the back, they say a corny phrase like "It's a-Mario time" "Baby Weegi (Luigi), ehehe" (it is kind of funny how he can't pronounce his own name, though), or my personal least favorite, "Hi, I'm Daisy!" The sound is pretty good if you can stand that.

Most characters say, "It's <insert character name here> time!" Most of the good characters (the light ones in my opinion) have high voices. Those are hard to deal with.

Control 9/10
Control is very, very good in this game. Almost all of the actions can be done with the touch of a single button. Although you can't pull off combos like this, it actually makes this games seemingly endless array of actions a lot simpler.

I read a review in my magazine (not Nintendo Power) and I thought I wouldn't like it due to this complication, but it's actually very simple. It won't take long to learn these controls, but if you ever need to learn more, you can just hit Start and pull up the menu, where you will see a huge controller that has labels on what the buttons do. Definitely no problems here.

Replayability 2/10
It's fun while it lasts, but once you unlock everything you will not go erasing your file and doing it all again. You'll just sit there with a complete file and play something else.

Overall 9/10
This game is very good. Some things you may have to deal with, but if you are a very flexible gamer you will find plenty of enjoyment out of this. Or, if you are looking for a good racing game, look here. I can't really imagine a NASCAR racing game or a game like Burnout being the same as this. Try it if you are in to go-carts (I actually tried go-carts because I was into this).

Very good if you can handle all this, but sometimes if you can't handle all this you'll find this all fun anyway, so go at least rent/play the demo at your local store. This game deserves a try!

Rent or buy?
Rent first, and then buy. Or better yet, go to K-Mart and play a free demo like I did. If you like it, keep in mind that this is one of it's high points, and it will get worse, then better. If you still insist on buying, then try it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/10/05, Updated 01/13/05