Mario Kart 64
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 "Welcome to Mario Kart!"
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Mario Kart 64 is a racing video game released by Nintendo in 1996 in Japan, and 1997 worldwide for the Nintendo 64. It is the sequel to Super Mario Kart and the second main installment in the Mario Kart series.
Why It's Welcome to Mario Kart
- Awesome graphics for its time.
- The first game in the series to feature three-dimensional graphics (except for the character and kart models which are 2D pre-rendered sprites).
- Luigi's debut in an N64 game as well as Wario and Donkey Kong mark their first appearance in the series.
- The game introduces seven new items:
- The Spiny Shell (Later known as the Blue Shell): A shell that automatically follows and targets the racer in first place.
- Super Mushroom (Later known as the Golden Mushroom): Allows numerous speed boosts for a period of time.
- Fake Item Box: An item that appears similar to a normal Item Box. When collided with, however, the racer will be launched instead of getting an item.
- Triple Green Shell, Triple Red Shell, Triple Mushrooms, and Banana Bunch: Each summons 3 of those items (Except for the banana bunch that has 5 bananas behind you.) that surround the player and can be used at their own accord.
- The Fake Item Box is better in this game than it is in any other Mario Kart game it appears in. Not only does it look almost identical to real Item Boxes (the only difference being an upside down question mark), but it can also block items.
- Tons of power-ups, including Mushrooms, Banana Peels, Green Shells, Red Shells.
- The addition of a four-player mode, so everyone can play together.
- Eight playable characters to choose from.
- In the Royal Raceway track, racers can turn off-road and arrive at Princess Peach's castle, exactly as it appeared in Super Mario 64, which is impressive as it's a side element of the track and only a portion terrain in the track.
- Incredible soundtrack, namely the Raceway theme, Moo Moo Farm/Yoshi Valley, Koopa Troopa Beach, Toad's Turnpike, Frappe Snowland/Sherbet Land, Choco Mountain/Battle, Rainbow Road, and Victory Lap.
- This game is much easier to play and beat than the original Super Mario Kart, even in 150cc mode. This is mainly due to the improved drifting system, more responsive turning, larger tracks, and more exploitable computer-controlled characters, even with the rubber-band AI.
- If you get any place lower than 4th, the game will allow you to retry the course again with no penalty. This is extremely helpful in beating the 150cc races.
- The game is programmed to give better items to stragglers than to those in first place so that you can make a comeback if you're falling behind.
- All the characters have great voice-overs, especially Toad and Wario (with Toad's voice sounding alot more youthful and Wario sounds intimidating).
- Because each course was brought into 3D, each course has their own environments to get around, without repeating themes like "Mario Circuit 1", "Mario Circuit 2", etc., like Super Mario Kart did.
- The pre-rendered sprites look pretty good, the characters being in carts was going to downgrade the poly on models, so this was their best solution.
- A fan hack known as Mario Kart 64: Amped Up is a massive improvement to this game, featuring newer and better tracks, music, cheats, and especially brand new game modes such as elimination races and balloon races that make the original game not worth playing at that point. On top of that, some of the issues were fixed as well, such as CPU's using the item boxes and not overly rubber-banding to the point where they are halfway ahead of the player.
Bad Qualities
- While this is the point where the series largely evolved to its final format, Nintendo was still working out on some of the gameplay mechanics.
- The lightweight characters (high acceleration/low speed) are actually faster than the heavyweights (high speed/low acceleration). Using the lightweights (Peach, Toad, and Yoshi) properly can break the game, as not only are they faster and can pick up quickly after crashing, they can also drive off-road better than the other drivers. The only advantage that the heavyweights in this game (Bowser, Wario, and Donkey Kong) have is that they can bash the lightweights and the middleweights off the road or make them spin out.
- The original advantages and disadvantages that were present in Super Mario Kart for each weight class were reverted back in later games, starting from Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. And on another note, like Super Mario Kart, you still can't advance to the next race if you place 5th or lower.
- Visually, it's the only Mario Kart game to run at 30 FPS, and that's with the Sprite/Polygon Mix that has not been seen in subsequent proper-3D Mario Kart games.
- Rainbow Road in this game is not the infamous contorting final obstacle course that Mario Kart players are accustomed to, but instead a long, flat, leisurely breather course which is fully guide railed and only has the occasional incoming Chomps as obstacles.
- The controls can be a bit slippery, and have aged somewhat.
- The powerslide/drifting mechanic is convoluted, powersliding can cause you to spin out.
- The Red Shell requires you to have an unbroken line of sight with the next opponent (and ideally a long stretch of track), otherwise it'll just run into an obstacle and do nothing.
- Normal mushrooms are basically useless for any purpose, except accessing shortcuts or hidden items, as the speed boost you get is pretty small, and the rubber-banding AI will quickly cancel out any gains from it.
- Players cannot use Mushrooms, the Invincibility Star, and/or Boo while under the effects of Lightning, invincibility, or being invisible while stealing items. However, the Mushrooms are the only items that can be used under the effects of invisibility while still unusable under other effects.
- The AI is sometimes unfair.
- When a player is in 1st, drifting or not, there will usually be one or two CPU drivers that trail behind the player, ready to take the lead once they wipe out. It becomes jarring when the player plays as a lightweight and has a heavyweight in either the first or second CPU positions who are able to reach speeds they otherwise can't achieve without drifting.
- If you have a cheat enabled that allows a human player to be controlled by a CPU, you can see that the computers get almost permanent drafting bonuses while they drive, and the ability to use Bananas, Fake Item boxes, Boos, Stars, and Thunder without driving over an Item box (in fact, players must manually trigger a CPU-controlled human's item box if they obtain an item).
- On 100cc and 150cc, you'd better not let the first CPU driver get too far ahead, or else they speed up so quickly that you'll never have a chance of catching up, short of very fast corner-cutting or Lightning.
- If off-screen, the CPU-drivers appears to recover from falls, obstacles and weapons faster than any human player can.
- The 2D character sprites/models can be misleading when you turn, as it usually seems as if the kart model is taking a sharper turn than the kart really is.
- The only unlockables in this game are Extra Class (known as "Mirror Mode" in later 3D Mario Kart games) and an alternate title screen, which the latter isn't really that special.
- The item balance in this game is really bad, because you can actually get a Lightning and Triple Red Shells in 2nd and 1st place respectively.
- Saving ghost data in time trials requires a controller pak due to its large file size. Because of this, you can't save your ghost data in the Virtual Console version on the Wii due to its inability to emulate a controller pak.
- In the 150cc engine class, if the player drives erratically with or without hitting any obstacles, a screeching sound will be heard at any time possible and cause the player to spin out. Fortunately, the only way to escape from this effect is to use the brakes at the right time and a musical note will appear above the player for a second, which the same applies if after hitting a Banana while at full speed.
- While the courses are much better than the ones on the SNES, these new courses come with their own problems:
- Toad's Turnpike itself is pretty straightforward, but the course also has various-sized cars that share the road with you in traffic, ranging from a small four-door to a huge double-decker bus. If you so much as touch one of the cars, you're wiped out to a dead stop every time, no matter what size the car is. And there can be cars blocking both lanes, requiring you to squeeze through a narrow gap to avoid getting wiped out. On Mirror Cup, not only are the turns reversed, but the traffic is now oncoming traffic, making it much harder to avoid it. Even the high-level CPU racers have trouble getting out of the way of the cars on Mirror Mode, and it's not uncommon to get hit by two or three cars in a row before being able to keep going. Expect to retry this one a couple of times if you're going through it in Grand Prix.
- Choco Mountain is widely considered one of the most infamous maps in the game. There's a banister in 50cc so it should be easy to play the first time, but it disappears and unlucky players may drive off the hill and will have to go up the loop again, wasting lots of time. Using a Mushroom incorrectly or getting hit by something like a Red Shell can spell the difference between first place and fifth place (being in any place below fourth meant you would have to try the track again), especially in the final lap. The AI also gets an unfair speed boost over the camel humps right before the finish line, allowing them to easily scoot by while you lose speed driving over them. Safe to say, the energetic bluegrass music fits with how horribly wrong this stage can get.
- Wario Stadium has a huge jump in the middle of it which if you manage to fall in the middle by screwing up or getting hit by something while jumping, Lakitu doesn't carry you back to the other side and instead you're forced to race back into the ramp to do another jump. It'll screw you up so badly in the rankings that you've pretty much automatically lost the race.
- Royal Raceway has many narrow turns that are easy to fall off and one of them leads to the water. Thankfully it made much easier in the update for Mario Kart 8, albeit the 200cc update made this track a bit of a headache to some players.
- Bowser's Castle has a massive array of hazards in the first half of the track up to the short lava bridge. Get hit by any of them on 150cc or Extra while racing computers will easily allow one of them to not only take the lead, but stay in the lead thanks to the inhuman top speeds they can reach when you can't see them.
- Yoshi Valley is a huge labyrinth on narrow cliff sides, and no fencing makes it very easy to fall off, and if you fall off, unlike the other courses where if you fell, you only fell for a few seconds and they Lakitu picked you up, in Yoshi Valley if you fell, you fell for a long time before Lakitu picks you up, this no doubt severely hurts you and puts you back several positions. Worse, there is a huge egg near the end that can crush you. Finally, there's some Interface Screw with just this course, where the positions and rankings of everyone is hidden. The only way you can find out what place you finished in is by crossing the finish line. It's somewhat easier in its return in Mario Kart 8, which not only evens out the routes, but also adds railings to many of them, and also shows the positions.
- Banshee Boardwalk is easily the hardest course in the game, lots of very sharp turns and drop offs, with very little room for error. Literal Goddamned Bats really don't help, as they can slow you down by bumping into you.
- Among the Battle stages, Skyscraper is far and away the hardest course to navigate through, no thanks to the narrow pathways and almost invisible bottomless pits without guard-rails. It's entirely possible for players to completely lose without ever managing to get an item, let alone use it.
- The character voices can get very repetitive, specifically in the the Japanese version where it is on varying degrees of quality. In that version, Luigi sounds annoyed, Wario sounds too deep and Peach and Toad's voices are downright terrible.
- The soundtrack for DK's Jungle Parkway can be a bit stale and boring, as it is simply a 15-second loop of random kalimba playing. Mario Kart Wii did almost nothing to improve it.
Reception
Mario Kart 64 received generally positive reviews, garnering an 83 in Metacritic based on 15 reviews and an 87.01% based on 20 reviews on GameRankings. Much of the praise is directed on how fun the game is, especially its multiplayer and its longevity, though common criticisms include its derivative nature from Super Mario Kart, the rubber-banding AI, and its repetitive single-player Grand Prix mode. On Metacritic, the user score averages 8.6, with it being generally praised for being a classic, though a common point against the game was its comparison to later Mario Kart titles.
This game is also popular in the OverKart community, which creates mods such as new tracks, gamemodes, and music, and also fixes common problems with the game as well.
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