Mario Kart 64

"The amount of fun that this game brings is nearly unexplainable."

Nintendo lives and dies by its Mario games. While every Nintendo console has featured Mario in a traditional "adventure" setting, Mario has been portrayed doing many other activities. Mario Kart 64 features Mario and his friends driving go-karts - a genius idea that became an instant classic. In the late 1990s (during the fifth generation of gaming), MK64 was one of the most satisfying video games. However, this begs the question: does the game hold up over time, or does childhood nostalgia give gamers good memories of the game?

Answer: The game indeed holds up. Even today, it remains one of the most fun video games to play. The gameplay is simply too fun to not enjoy. You can pick between eight characters in the Mario universe, ranging from the main man, Mario, to the villain, Bowser. You drive around racetracks and simply try to finish in first. This would be fun enough, but then the tracks are littered with item boxes - and there are plenty of items! You can shoot koopa shells - some that just bounce around the track forever if they miss, some that are homing, and some that hit the racer in first place, destroying any other racer in its path. Need a boost? You can pick up mushrooms, saving them for a straight away. Better yet, you can get a star, which speeds you up and plows through anyone in your path. What if you're in first place? You can keep the other racers at bay by deploying traps in the form of banana peels or the explosive fake item boxes. I won't ruin every single item for you, but the items create an incredible amount of replay value. It takes a skilled player to know when to shoot off an item, or to deflect an item coming toward you by shooting your item backwards. You can even use your shells as a shield, blocking many incoming obstacles in your path. The combat-based racing creates an unlimited amount of fun. There are only sixteen tracks (which are divided into four different cups), but somehow, none of them are boring - from the simple oval of Luigi's Raceway to the two-thousand meter trap-laden Rainbow Road. Grand Prix is the focal point of the gameplay. You pick one of four cups, and the person with the highest score after four races wins the gold cup. If you get sick of playing Grand Prix (or need practice), you can go to Time Trials, seeing how fast you can complete a course. You even race against a ghost, so you can know how well you were doing the last time you played. This was a great touch by Nintendo, I'm glad that they included this mode. While the gameplay shines, it isn't without its flaws. While you can play from 50 cc (slow) to 150 cc (fast), 50 cc is mind numbingly easy and 150 cc is frustratingly difficult. This is exacerbated by the ridiculous scoring in the Grand Prix - 9 points for first, 6 for second, 3 for third, 1 for fourth, and absolutely nothing for scoring lower than fourth. It sounds fair.. until you consider that a racer that gets a first and three eighths will actually end up getting more points that someone that gets third twice and fourth twice. The AI is cheap and catch up - prepare to get hit by plenty of items while you get banana after banana when you're in first place. And there are no statistics for the characters. It just seems like the lighter characters are faster, making it much harder to race if you prefer using Bowser. But despite the inherent flaws in the gameplay, something keeps you coming back. It is so enjoyable when you win, and even when you lose, you know that you were one good break away from winning.

Maybe what keeps gamers coming back is the multi-player. You can play Grand Prix with two players, and battle or versus with two to four players. Versus is simply head to head racing. It is a little less fun than a Grand Prix, but it is still highly competitive and highly wild. You never know what can happen in any given race, and of course, it is fun to smack talk your opponents. You can also play battle mode. Battle mode is genius - you start off with three balloons on your kart, and every time you get hit with an item, you lose a balloon. The last man (or woman) standing wins. While simplistic enough, you will find yourself wanting to battle again and again. There are four courses in battle, ranging from a simple donut to a huge three-layered course. The multiplayer is possibly one of the most entertaining gameplay experiences in history. I'm currently enrolled in college right now and I'd have to say that Mario Kart 64 is the third most-played multiplayer game here - behind Brawl and Halo 3! If that doesn't make this game a classic, I don't know what will.

If you're worried about the graphics of this game, you probably shouldn't be reading this review. It's unfair to rate this game graphically by today's standards. But by the standards of early N64, the visuals were sharp. The courses are colorful, and dotted with trees, snowmen, and many other obstacles that are appropriate to the course. It is pretty well detailed, and authentic Mario. The characters are actually sprites, but you never see more than the back of the character anyway. The game does have a lot of lag for a cartridge. With four players, the gaaaammmmeeeee plllllayyyysssss realllllllly slllllooooooww... but yet it still manages to be just as much fun. There are no jaggies and not many glitches, so at least that isn't a concern.

Sounds are very, very entertaining. You haven't lived into you've heard the squeal of a player after he or she hits a banana. The sounds even add to the frustration! Anyone that has played this game can tell you the frustration associated with the sound that the game makes when you fall into the water, or run into someone after being shrunk, or spin out at the start. All the sounds are way overdone, but for a cartoony game, they should be overdone. The music is great also. Who doesn't know the tune of Luigi's Raceway? I don't think you had a childhood in the 1990s if you have never heard this tune before. Some of the other courses that have great music are Toad's Turnpike, which has a very futuristic and majestic sound. It definitely brings back a few good, personal memories for me. Rainbow Road also has a memorable tune, it really matches the colorful course.

The point is, if you don't have this game, buy it. It should be sitting right next to GoldenEye and Super Smash Bros, ready to be played. Screw Mario Kart Wii, screw Double Dash (even though it's still fun) and skip Crash Team Racing - this game is probably the best kart racing experience ever. The multiplayer in MK64 was and is one of the main reasons why people buy an N64. The game is a gem, and inconsistent AI avoided the game from being in the discussion for best title on the console.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/15/08

Game Release: Mario Kart 64 (US, 02/10/97)