Mario Kart 64

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UK box art.

Mario Kart 64 is a Mario-themed racing game produced by Nintendo and released for the Nintendo 64 in 1996.

I first saw this game being played by the boyfriend of the sister of a girl I was dating at the time (around 1996-97). I first played it at the house of some friends who I played Magic: The Gathering with. Though I was quite terrible, I was rather impressed with the game. I've now gotten pretty good at it, and can E-slide fairly well. However, I haven't made much of an attempt to beat the game because I despise the rubberband AI.

Status

I do not own this game, and I have not beaten it.

Review

  • Overall: 6/10
  • Best Version: N64

Good

  • The game is pretty great looking. Each track has it's own character and they incorporated a lot of Mario elements.
  • The music, while not that great by itself, makes a wonderful backdrop for the tracks.
  • The variations of driver attributes accommodates different play styles nicely.
  • The several modes (race against the AI, race against a friend, battle more, and time trials) give the game more life. And having a mirror mode was a great idea.

Bad

  • The game appears to not properly maintain FPS in certain tracks with 3 or more players, like Moo Moo Form. This is most likely due to the GPU not being able to handle all four rendered screens and the programmers removing the frame-delimiter.
  • Over the years, players have managed to find quite a few bugs with the track that can be exploited in multiplayer.

Ugly

  • I hate games where the AI gets an unfair advantage, and this game is pretty awful at it. It uses a "rubberband AI" where, no matter how good you are, or how bad you damage the other racers, two opponent carts will always be on your tail because they will receive a speed advantage beyond what you can possibly achieve. This is a lazy approach to throttling difficulty.

Media

Box Art

Documentation

Maps

Links