Mario Kart 64

UK box art.

Mario Kart 64 is a Mario-themed racing game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 on 1996-12-14. It's the second game in the Mario Kart series, and part of the Mario universe.

Personal

I first saw this game being played by the boyfriend of the sister of a girl I was dating at the time (around 1997). 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 rubber band AI. In fact, for this very reason, I prefer Diddy Kong Racing.

Status

I own this game, but I have not beaten it. I've come in first on the mushroom and flower cups at 150 cc.

Review


6	7	6	7	10

Best Version: Nintendo 64

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

The game is pretty great looking. Each track has it's own character and they incorporated a lot of Mario elements.
Kenta Nagata's music, which appears to have been purposely made simple as to not interfere with the game, makes a wonderful backdrop for the tracks. Rainbow Road and the ending theme ("Victory Lap") are especially good.
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.
Being able to unlock the mirror mode was a good reward for beating the hardest tracks on their most difficult levels, and a nice way to give the game more life.

Bad

Unlike with AI opponents, a race won't end until all human players finish. So, if a player is performing really poorly, or is purposely refusing to finish, you're stuck waiting. Had they designed the game to automatically end a race when the seventh racer finishes, they could alleviate this problem.
The game appears to not properly maintain FPS in certain tracks with 3 or more players, like Moo Moo Farm. This is most likely due to the GPU not being able to handle all four rendered screens and the programmers removing the frame-delimiter.
The game doesn't let you end various sections prematurely. For example, you can't skip the long slow award ceremony. You also can't end a race that you're definitely going to lose, and must finish it, then retry afterward.
Over the years, players have managed to find quite a few bugs with the tracks that can be exploited in multiplayer.

Ugly

The game's AI is completely broken. I hate games where the AI gets an unfair advantage, and this game gives the AI an insanely unfair advantage. It uses a "rubberband AI" where, no matter how good you are, or how bad you damage the other racers, at least two opponent carts will always be passing you. They will constanly receive a speed advantage beyond what you can possibly achieve. It's not uncommon to hit an opponent with a shell knocking them into the water, only to see them pass you a few seconds later. And, when the AI gets ahead of you in the final round, even stars and blue shells won't be enough for you to catch up. They are also awarded items at regular intervals even when they don't get question mark blocks. This lazy approach to throttling difficulty, is very frustrating to play against, and it makes the game less about becoming good at driving, and more about being just good enough to stay near the front and holding a good item like 3 red shells in reserve until the very last section of the final lap.

Media

Box Art

The original Japanese art features a determined Mario with the names of the other drivers written on the wall of a tire in the background.
North America, UK, and Australia use this this art (Europe uses the same art, but with a thick black border). This shows Mario grinning as he takes the lead past the three heavy drivers with a nice motion blur indicating speed. I prefer this box art.