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Mario Kart 64 Game Review

Mario Kart 64 is a 1996 kart racing video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It is the second entry in the series and a big improvement upon its predecessor.

When this game was released, it was critically acclaimed. It continues to be praised for everything that it did right, though its detractors rightfully state that it’s dated in comparison to modern kart racers. When all is said and done, this was an amazing game when put into the context of when it came out.

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This was the first 3D entry in this series, though the game actually combined 3D courses with character sprites that are obviously 2D. For its time the game looked incredible. Now, it shows its age for sure, but for 1996 it looked superb. The polygons are not as rough-looking as in some other games of the period and the overall attention to detail is outstanding as most of the courses were creative and interesting.

The sound and score are fantastic too with some themes being so catchy and fun (the rainbow one was the highlight). The game controls pretty well, though the use of drifting was not great, so I ended up not using it. The voice acting is excellent and so much fun. It’s not a long game, but it’s perfectly entertaining in single player mode.

Mario Kart 64 has 16 tracks divided into 4 cups with 4 tracks each. Some are frustratingly difficult and annoyingly designed with Choco Mountain faring the worst. This type of track that is overly steep and confined makes every fall fatal, so I strongly disliked these courses. But thankfully others range from solid to downright great. Rainbow Road is too easy, but genuinely iconic in its audio-visual presentation. Kalimari Desert and Frappe Snowland were the visual highlights.

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There are eight characters to choose from, all eight being different in their driving speed and resilience. I usually played as Mario or Luigi, but all were memorable with Wario being particularly amusing in his catchphrases. When it comes to the power-up items, most were excellent. The enemies do not get to use as many of these items as you have, which satisfyingly tipped the outcome in your favor. Bananas were crucial here along with Green Shells. You can get the triple amount of shells in this game as well as store more items at once, which was a fresh addition.

There is one aspect to the single player experience that I did not love and that is of course the overwhelming rubber banding. So often in these races I would be many meters in front of all the opponents when suddenly one of them would instantly appear awfully close to me due to said rubber banding. Although this mechanic led to all races being thrillingly close, it also totally erased all of your racing achievements beforehand, which was so frustrating. The overall A.I. is pretty good and most races were fun to play, but the game was too unforgiving in terms of slipups as one fall or crash would make it almost impossible to get back in the race for first place. Still though, every race had a different character vying for first place, so the overall aggregate score would mostly favor you as a player.

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