by Vinson Chen

Created on: August 17, 2009

Video game racing has never been made so much fun before the release of Mario Kart 64, a racing game created by Nintendo for the N64. It was the sequel to the original Super Mario Kart for the SNES, but in Mario Kart 64, race tracks included 3D graphics and four player compatibility. Overall, due to its entertaining racing features, Mario Kart 64 managed to rack up decent scores among video game reviewers.

Gameplay

There are four different types of gameplay available for play in Mario Kart 64 and they include Versus, Time Trial, Battle, and Grand Prix. Versus is the most commonly played as it's the standard version of racing set on 16 different playable tracks. Up to four players are able to choose from 8 different characters to race with. Next, the Time Trial mode is where players can ride freely on the race track while trying to complete their best time on that specific track. Thirdly, Battle is where two to four human players compete against each other in a battle arena. Here they each carry three balloons on their go-kart and search for item boxes to obtain red or green shells. Then with these shells, the players attempt to hit each other dead-on and when hit a player loses his/her balloons. When all three balloons are lost, the player loses. Finally, the Grand Prix is where one or two human players compete in a race with all 8 characters. Of course the characters not chosen by the humans will be controlled by AI.

Two things noted earlier were the 16 unique race tracks and the 8 different racers. Although the 3D imaging gives race tracks the ability to have bridges, pits, hills, and walls, the characters are still 2D pre-rendered sprites. The characters found in Mario Kart 64 are Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Wario, Toad, Yoshi, and Donkey Kong. They are then separated into different weight categories which include lightweight, medium weight, and heavyweight. The race tracks are all altered locations found in the Mario series. Although the combination of 2D sprites with 3D backgrounds does make some racing aspects a little awkward in a sense, the most important of a racing game is still its racing.

Finally, the racing in Mario Kart 64 will be judged and praised. Having played many serious racing games before Mario Kart where cars were always the fanciest sports car out there, it was a nice break to just sit back and relax with a bunch of friends to enjoy a goofy racing game. As usual, the whole point of the racing game is to finish first, but now instead of trying to play it safe by not crashing into other racers, the exact opposite is encouraged. Now racers can obtain items from mysterious boxes that respawn in certain areas of race tracks that range from koopa shells, mushroom speed boosts, lightning bolts, and even the hilarious banana peel. With these, players attempt to knock one another off the course or even to just send another spinning in circles. All of this is done just to finish as number one. Also, the addition of weight classes allows heavier characters like Bowser and Wario to simply run into a lighter racer like Toad or Peach to easily push them aside. With all these creative and fun additions to its racing, Mario Kart 64 easily passes other racing game to finish as the top game of its class. Yes, the pun was intended.

In conclusion, Mario Kart 64 deserves a 9/10 for its unique and amusing racing features. The graphics are the only chink in this racing game's great gameplay armor, but that still doesn't affect it enough to decrease this score by much. The Mario Kart series will forever stay as one of the top racing series for the Nintendo platform.

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