Ah Nintendo DS. It wasn’t doing much for me initially - none of the games seemed interesting and that phat original hardware wasn’t very appealing at all. On the other hand, the PSP looked cool as fuck and had Wipeout Pure, which basically the instant I saw, completely sold me on getting one. I got that in Japan on September 15 2005, when the white model came out, although Wipeout had to wait until I returned to Australia since I couldn’t find a copy over there! Anyway, I was firmly in the PSP camp in those early days.
Ah well. Looking at the dates, Mario Kart DS was known to be coming and everything, but I had my heart set on that PSP. I don’t recall exactly when I got the DS actually. Usually I keep receipts for this kind of thing! I recall getting the system with Mario Kart, Animal Crossing and Metroid Prime Pinball in some 3 for the price of 2 dealio at Toy’s R Us. I can’t recall the exact date, but that would place it sometime after Dec 2005 - probably pretty close. I don’t think I’d even let the dust settle on my PSP before i … let the dust settle on my PSP. Dec 2005 was pretty much the turning point for DS wasn’t it; once Metroid Prime Pinball came out!
Jokes aside, Metroid Prime Pinball is actually goddamn awesome but that’s not why we’re here is it. Mario Kart returns to normal after Double Dash and following in Super Circuit’s footsteps, the game is packed to the brim. 16 new courses, 16 old courses, and online play. You can basically stop there but there’s more to it!
This is an interesting one to revisit and review, since it’s probably the first in the series that is still pretty much universally remembered fondly. There won’t be any rants against the children in this review. For me personally? Yeah it’s as good as the day it came out.
Controls wise we still have mini-turbo charging as introduced in MK64. This is the first one where it’s on the Dpad though, and I remember wondering how that’d be - because it always seemed like something that’d only work on the analog stick. I was wrong, it works insanely good on the dpad. You have the same kind of immediacy as the original SMK and hardly any issues with mis-inputs, although which model DS you’re playing on can impact it somewhat.
They perhaps went a bit too far with the ease you can pull them off though… it’s time to talk about Snaking. The act of alternating left/right mini-turbos down a straight to gain speed wasn’t exactly new - you can do it in MK64 and DD, but it’s taken to a whole other level here. You can start your alternate direction skid immediately and with such responsive controls, get a chain of them going in a nearly straight line in no time. Playing online it was basically a prerequisite if you wanted to win.
Is that a good thing? I could do it fine, so it never bothered me, but it does take a toll on your thumb! Against my friend who couldn’t do it, I felt like I had to handicap myself to regular racing to still have fun (sneaking in a few snakes in here and there to make sure he still didn’t win!).
One thing I like about it is, it makes all the tracks interesting to race on. Not just every corner, but every straight, you’ve got to squeeze out as many of these things as you can. Even on 50cc, where the tracks would otherwise be slow and boring, it’s a challenge to be on your game for the whole race. But it definitely creates a skill divide that changes competitive play.
Was it ruined though? No, competitive play was still a blast. This game was a hit at my workplace during lunches, each of us had our own machines and copies of the game - a first. It’s a bit hard to gauge how long I played for. Against my friends there’s a bit over 100 races each, but not all of them would have been more than 2 players. Even still, the hours seem way less than my memory would believe. It feels like we played the game every day for months. I also had a bit of online time logged but not a whole lot really. From memory, it was fine enough, but when we could play locally there wasn’t much point, and as good as I was at snaking - the world was better.
I think on the whole, snaking did become an issue that needed to be resolved, but I think the course correction in MKWii and onwards - removing the left/right/left mechanic altogether, hurt the series. It just leaves you with a lot less to do on the courses while you’re racing. If you’re behind in a modern Mario Kart, you can catch up with good basic driving and items, but when you could pull of more mini-turbos than another person, you could really close the gap quickly! And it also meant the karts were more erratic in the turns - it was harder to keep the ideal line, which kept things interesting too.
I guess there’s no point complaining it’s gone, when I can just play the old games with it intact if I want to play like that, but I do feel like a better middle ground exists where it could have stayed in future games.
I remember people debating whether snaking was intentional or an oversight, but I can’t see how the developers couldn’t have known it was in the game. They chose to leave it in there, for better or worse. I think you can even tell some of the tracks are straight up designed for it, so lets get into it! Reference at Mario Wiki
Figure 8 Circuit
It’s no more obvious than on the first course with its long and wide straights, as if to say “how many mini-turbos can you pull off?”. This track has all the hallmarks of being a pretty boring track otherwise.
Yoshi Falls
A simple course surrounding a lake, the main feature is the waterfalls, which in 3 places tempt you to take the faster route at the risk of falling into the lake. The soft curves and wide track encourage snaking again.
Cheep Cheep Beach
Starting out on a pier, we head to the beach and head towards an S bend littered with crabs. Mushrooms can scoot right through the water or you can sometimes cut the corners when the tide is out
Luigi’s Mansion
Driving into the mansion you take the stairs down and round 3 90ยบ corners before heading out into a haunted woods. The road is windy so again you cut off large chunks with a mushroom or similar. Continuing on we have a wider windy section that’s covered with slippery mud. Moving trees attempt to block your path, you’ll want to time your mini-turbos to dash through the mud to each island before pulling off another.
Desert Hills
Another course that is predominantly windy S bends. This time they’re banked though, so with the right angle you can really pick up some speed, or shortcut over the top of the hills. You have to be fast fingered to keep a good line though. Later on some fire snakes bounce around to get in your way.
Delfino Square
A sweeping first corner turns into a tight road surrounded by walls. There’s a fork in the road where the left side is a little trickier but beneficial. Heading outside we cross a bridge and head around some more buildings. A small path to the right can allow you to cut this corner but it’s covered with mud, so you’ll need some speed. Finally we have a bridge that raises and lowers which can launch you across the river to the last few corners.
Waluigi Pinball
A long course full of long curves, you need to watch out for the pinballs rolling down the track or stuck in the bumper area. Also watch out for the flippers at the end!
Shroom Ridge
Might we have our first decent traffic course here? There’s lots of drifting around blind corners, but most of the time the cars and trucks don’t seem to get in your way too much, so it’s pretty fun for once!
DK Pass
No canons here, we’ve got to climb the mountainside with good old powerslidin’, while watching out for tumbling snowballs. Once we reach the summit it’s predictably, all down hill! The last corner of this track is littered with snowmen. Do you go for the risky inside line to try and take the win?
Tick-Tock Clock
A course where the main hazards are all clock pieces; we’ve got pendulums, gears and hands. You have to think quick as you approach, to avoid them, but otherwise it’s not particularly challenging.
Mario Circuit
We’ve got to avoid Goomba walking across the track, and spitting piranha plants before reaching an offroad section. The final two turns are hairpins but they’ll pose no trouble with the sharp turns you can make in this game!
Airship Fortress
Lots of hazards here. Bullet bills threaten right from the start, Rocky Wrenches straight after that, and then fire burners moving across a tight deck area. Hop into the canon and shoot across to a tower reminiscent of both MK64 and MKDD’s Bowser Castles. On the exit half the road is blown away so be careful not to fall off!
Wario Stadium
This seems like take 2 of the Waluigi stadium from Double Dash. It’s a bit tamer, as the jumps aren’t actively trying to ruin your corners here! Lots of turbo panels to hit help you scoot over mud or over ramps and up hills.
Peach Gardens
A pretty simple square layout for this track, but flower beds, chain chomps, monty moles all conspire to screw you over. There’s poor visibility going uphill to some corners too, so you need to memorize a bit more than normal.
Bowser Castle
The start seems like it was nicked from a section of Double Dash’s Bowsers Castle with the climb up the stairs, but then you’re lead into a circular room with the floor fighting against you. Watch out for more fire burners and a thwomp, then take a sweeping left around a thin road, avoiding the inside death. On the exit we have a rotating barrel section so manage your left/right to stay on top. The end of the course has several jump downs to moving platforms followed by some corners over lava.
Rainbow Road
This is a little reminiscent of Double Dash’s Rainbow Road - you can still get pushed off on the banked turn at the beginning if you’re unlucky, but the boost pads are easier to hit now. A few loops and twists afterwards seem simple, but you can fly off the track if you get hit while traversing those.
It's a good selection of new courses. There's no real stinker here except for maybe Figure 8, but that's the first course so we can cut it some slack.
The Retro Courses are for the most part very similar to the original games so I wont cover them in detail. I will say the selection is a bit weak. The flat SNES and GBA courses feel out of place and they’re made a bit wider, so they don’t have the speed and intensity of their original appearances. The GBA Peach And Luigi Circuits are both too long for their own good … were they like that before? In flat 3D everything just looks the same and so it’s harder to know where you are on the course.
The N64 track choices do make some sense - they were chosen so as to not be too similar to some of the new DS courses - but they wouldn’t have been my first choice. I’d really have loved to race 64’s Mario Raceway, as it would have matched the controls perfectly. For GCN they went with odd choices too - Why Luigi’s Circuit when it’s pretty similar to the new Figure 8 Circuit? GCN Baby Park was a good Double Dash course, but it’s now only 5 laps for some reason and without the character-specific specials making chaos, it just isn’t the same. Mushroom bridge sucks as always, but Yoshi’s Circuit at least rules as always too. I get that it’s 4 courses from each of the 4 previous games, but if we’d have had a selection of just 64 and Double Dash courses, I think it would have been better.
New to this game is a Mission mode. Now this is often lauded as a great inclusion… yet i had no memory of it. Checking my cart, it seems I played one whole level before moving on back in the day! What a bozo. So i rectified that for this review and played through the lot, 3 star ranking them all. Honestly, it’s a nice inclusion but i don’t think it’s as great as people say. There’s 56 missions, so even with some similar tasks like driving through gates, collecting coins, there’s a decent amount of variety, and a good few hours worth of playtime to be had. Most of them are pretty easy even to 3 star though. I guess that was the point for handheld play, but still. The boss levels are unique, but they can be some of the more frustrating to rank well on too.
Battle mode returns as does my inability to review it. If we played this back in the day, I can’t remember it at all. Four new courses and 1 each from 64 and DD make for a decent selection.
All this stuff, coupled with Staff Ghosts in Time Trial (did I forget to mention these in 64 and Double Dash’s review? I think i did…) all add up to a very meaty offering even for the single player. It was definitely the most well-rounded of the Mario Kart games to this point. The 2 screens even bought back the map like the SNES game had, but now we have a full screen! Almost everything from modern Mario Kart seems to have been solidified from this release as well, which I’m sure is why it occupies that spot where everyone still remembers it fondly.
I think I mostly remember it as the game that justified the Nintendo DS for me, and had me questioning if buying that expensive PSP first was worth it! It was, but as cool as Wipeout and all the other great games it had were, there ain’t no Mario Kart on PSP!
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