Not only does it have the same great kart racing, but it boasts great graphics too (until circa 2040, anyway), which makes it just a little bit better to play in the present day.While many people are over the novelty of watching Pokemon battles take place in three dimensions, back in 2000, it felt groundbreaking. It does however mean that more recent titles like Mario Kart 8 (going to be mentioning that game a lot, aren’t we?) hold sway over Mario Kart 64.
NINTENDO SWITCH DIDDY KONG RACING SERIES
Graphics in general shouldn’t be that important in a series heavy on quirks and playfulness. It’s not major enough to adversely affect the kart racing, which remains fun as hell. Mario Kart 64 may have made the jump to 3D, but there’s still something awfully two-dimensional about the pre-rendered sprites and iffy character models, a shortcoming that becomes especially visible when turning. In fact, there’s games from around the same era and even slightly before which actually look a bit better, Crash Bandicoot and Tomb Raider among them. The danger about a game that prides itself upon its technology on its release is that that technology will soon become outdated, and boy does it show here. One thing that hasn’t aged so well is the polygonal graphics.
Probably a bad thing if, as is likely to be the case, you’re miles ahead of all the CPU racers or your badly-skilled friends. Like any catch-up mechanism, it can be either a good or a bad thing. Why have one banana when you can have three? That being said, Mario Kart 64 is also the entry that would introduce the dreaded Blue Shell – the ‘cheat’ weapon sometimes awarded to poorly-performing racers which launches forward and temporarily incapacitate the guy or gal in first place. The power-ups are severely up-scaled from its predecessor, featuring stackable weapons and drops for the first time. It is a kart racer, after all, and they’re rarely not enjoyable, especially if it’s a Mario Kart kart racer (tired of hearing ‘kart’ yet?). Just like the tracks, Mario Kart 64‘s gameplay holds up rather well too.
NINTENDO SWITCH DIDDY KONG RACING FULL
One track to visit for wintertime though is the picturesque Sherbet Land, full of snow, penguins and ice caves as it is. (Bottom line: don’t fall off.) Of course, no Mario Kart title is complete without the obligatory Rainbow Road, which might be just a tad underwhelming here, being pretty much a straight run with no quirks or inventiveness. Dodging traffic on Toad’s Turnpike and pelting down the red-carpeted hallways of Bowser’s Castle never gets old, or how about navigating the fog-shrouded twists and turns of Choco Mountain? It’s all very impressive, even if the recovery time after falling off a track is under-generous, to say the least, meaning you’re now in sixth place after having been in second. This facet is definitely one of the “bells and whistles” mentioned in the GameSpot review, and even that cannot help but admit that the game has some. However, in the event that you do like going around the same tracks over and over then that’s perfectly fine, because the ones on offer in Mario Kart 64 are pretty darn good, with a healthy array of interesting environments to race through. That figure is especially low when compared to the likes of Mario Kart 8 which offers players the choice of a staggering thirty-six, even if some of those are Metal Mario and Baby Rosalina. More to the point, there’s a fairly limited character roster with just eight racers to choose from and none to unlock (the less-acclaimed Diddy Kong Racing had ten). There are time trials and such like for those so inclined, but honestly, who bothers with those? Unless you have a few friends or slave demons who you can call around every now and then for a good ole’ grand prix, playing by yourself against the unfeeling AI is going to get boring pretty quick. Ouch! And although that somewhat damning review may be way off the mark generally, it does get one thing right when it states that, “ven with all its bells and whistles, Mario Kart 64 is very likely to disappoint you after about a week.” That’s because the replayability value in the single player is, like many racing games, rather limited. Notoriously, GameSpot did feel disappointed enough to award Mario Kart 64a 6.5/10.
Still, despite aging a little less well than nostalgia likes to think, Mario Kart 64‘s classic status is not undeserved. Whilst having a few select haters, it was for many their childhood favorite Mario Kart game, which might not be saying much given that the next console release didn’t come out till 2003.
Being a natural step up from Super Mario Kart, it was released in 1996 after an extended pit stop of four years. When you think of Nintendo 64, games likes GoldenEye 007 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time might spring to mind, not to mention Perfect Dark and, almost certainly, Mario Kart 64.
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