Mario Kart: Double Dash!! review

In the days before its released in 1992, SNES title Super Mario Kart was not much remarked upon. Non-platform titles with the Mario name were relatively rare back then and Nintendo had little track record with racing titles. The game looked silly and childish and most people were ready to pour scorn upon it or simply ignore it. So it’s funny then, that it remains today one of the most popular racing games ever made – creating a legion of witless clones and enjoying a continued popularity amongst a surprisingly wide demographic of gamers.

The mix of tight, almost simulation like control, and typically wacky Nintendo power-ups and tracks worked perfectly. Indeed the enormous effort that had gone into balancing the game was only really evident when the N64 version came out with its looser controls, over reliance on weapons and cheating AI. Although still fun Mario Kart 64 is not a fan favourite and after the relative disappointment of both Super Mario Sunshine and The Wind Waker many will have been assuming there was little chance that another home console sequel could turn the tide. But it has.

It’s a me, Mario!

Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is a more or less direct cross between Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64. It has the tight control and semi-realistic driving feel of the former with the over the top presentation and weaponry of the latter. It’s a compromise to be sure – some hardcore fans will no doubt have preferred the power-ups to be de-emphasised even further – but it undoubtedly works and will please most of the people most of the time.

The basics of the game, should you somehow be unaware, are much the same as any other racing game: be the first to finish a race over, usually, three laps. What makes Mario Kart different, apart from the Nintendo presentation, is that you can pick up power-ups and weapons from the track as you go along to further improve your position. These range from simple turbo boosts (mushrooms) and unguided missiles (green Koopa shells) to magic thunderbolts that shrink everyone else for 10 seconds and a flying blue shell that automatically homes in on and blows up the leader player.

I thought he was supposed to be a plumber?

Things are balanced so that the best power-ups tend to appear only for those dwindling in last place and nearly all of the weapons can be avoided if you know the right trick. The use of such power-ups does help though to even out a race so that even newbies have a chance against a practised player. Indeed such accessibly seems to be at the heart of most of the new additions in Double Dash!!, most notably the fact that each kart sits two characters instead of the usual one, with one driving and one handling the use of power-ups.

Since each character has a separate special item they can pick up (from fireballs for Mario to a shell so big it takes up more than half the screen for Bowser) and a different weight that effects the speed and manoeuvrability of the kart there’s a mountain of tactical decisions before you even start the game. In single player mode you switch characters at will to gain access to the greatest range of weapons but in co-op mode you have to both press the ‘Z’ buttons at the same time and co-operate on turns and special speed boosts. It’s a great way for less practised gamers to join the fun and yet still feel they are contributing something useful to the race.

Mario Kart Offline

Another problem with Mario Kart 64 was that the single player mode was surprisingly uninspired, with nothing very much to unlock and access to all three engine classes available from the off. Double Dash!! keeps the later but adds in a nice bunch of unlockable buggies, characters and tracks to ensure you always feel you’ll be rewarded for the Herculean effort required in getting a gold cup in the 150cc races. Crucially the AI is much better in Double Dash!! than Mario Kart 64, since it never magically manages to catch up with you and it is possible to get quite a lead if you do well. In fact, except for its inability to avoid bananas and fake item boxes, the AI is very good with computer controlled characters fighting amongst themselves and using various different tactics to give a reasonable illusion of intelligence.

As enjoyable as the single player mode is though Double Dash!! is all about multiplayer. It can be played by up to four players on a single console (although disappointingly only two can compete at a time in Grand Prix mode) and by chaining GameCubes together using a cross cable or a LAN hub you can actually have up to sixteen people playing together on eight consoles, if you opt for co-op mode. The only problem is that to do so you need a broadband adapter for each console, which is easier said than done because Nintendo UK have imported so few of the things.

If you do manage to find enough people with the right hardware though this really does become the ultimate party game, especially as having one chum or more lets you play the three battle mode games. There’s the classic Balloon Battle, where each character has three balloons that the others must try to pop with weapons; Shine Thief, which is basically a ‘bag tag’ mode and Bob-omb Blast, where you try to amass a total of four kills – although you loose a point every time you yourself buy the farm. Both Balloon Battle and Shine Thief can be played in LAN mode, where they can be quite accurately described as a “laugh riot”.

I'm the best!

It’s difficult to find anything to criticise with this game. The music’s rather naff and forgettable, which is odd considering how many classic tunes the company has come up with in the past, and the graphics are rather under-detailed – but that’s presumably simply to keep the rock solid frame rate at 60fps. For some reason some American sites, probably the same ones that moaned about the art design in The Wind Waker, have decided to complain that the game’s too slow. This lazy complaint seems to have arisen from the E3 demo which was indeed running at least half the speed of the final game.

It’s true to say that this probably isn’t the fastest racer in the world, but that’s really not what the gameplay is all about. You can play F-Zero GX if you’re worried about speed – it goes like you-know-what off a shovel. And, if there’s any justice in the world, that’s exactly how Double Dash!! will be moving off shelves when it comes out. It’s undoubtedly the best multiplayer game on the GameCube, easily the best non-simulation racer of modern times and, most important of all, it’s enjoyable, unpretentious, fun. And though we often loose sight of the fact sometimes, that’s what games are supposed to be all about.