"Mario Kart Double Dash!! - A Nintendo triumph or yet another flop?"

By now most Nintendo fans have more than likely played at least one Mario Kart game in their Nintendo gaming life. We’ve seen the series progress and evolve over the Nintendo consoles, starting with Mario Kart on the SNES that was one of the best gaming experiences back in its time. Then the series jumped to the N64, bringing even more fun and a great multiplayer mode. Then Mario and his driving pals drove their way to the GBA, with combined SNES and N64 graphics, to bring a great portable Mario Kart experience. So after that where does that leave the series to move to next? Ah yes, the GameCube.

So with its great new superior power, Nintendo decided to give Mario Kart a facelift so they could bring a new original Mario Kart experience to the Nintendo gamers. So what did they do? Well they changed the style of play, from one driver to two people on one cart. One of the characters would drive and the other would be on the back throwing weapons, then you could switch if you wanted. So in turn the carts are more like cars in this game than anything else. Items were removed, but some new ones were added. Also there are a few new faces in the game that make their debut to the Mario Kart series.

So have Nintendo done a good job? Or have they produced an awful flop? Read on to find out.

Graphics

Now I don’t particularly want to harp on about the graphics for MKDD. The graphics are what they’re supposed to be, vibrant, colourful and extremely pleasing to the eye. The characters are now fully rendered and not just sprites, which is a bit of a shock to the system, but does the game some favours. The courses are well laid out, as it’s a cartoon style game; detail isn’t really the key we’re looking for. Which is fine, but in parts it does look a bit rough around the edges, which could have been ironed out.

But overall I’ve got to say the graphics do the game some justice.

Sounds and Music

I really don’t know what to say about the music in the game, apart from the fact it’s got some of the direst, boring and repetitive music a Nintendo game has ever had. The music does not fit in to the tracks it’s meant to portray, and it seems quite odd on some of the tracks. Fine music in a racing game isn’t all that important, however, when you don’t recognise it’s there is another matter. This is only due to the fact that the music is just plain dull (e.g. I’m driving along and I feel like trundling along due to the music). But I must say in its defence that some of the tracks are okay, take for example the tune to Rainbow Road, the background music for that track is a little re-mix of the original music (as heard in previous MK games) and has been executed well. But it’s an old music track; couldn’t Nintendo do the same for its new music tracks? It’s a question they could consider.

There are some voice samples in the game, but they’re nothing too special and can get a bit annoying after hearing the same sample for the 50th time. On a whole the music and sound is a bit of a yawn fest really.

Control

Now the control system for MKDD, is a simple affair. A to accelerate, B to brake, control stick to steer, X and Y buttons to use the item and Z to change characters. There’s not much logic for you to get to grips with the control system. However, the controls are sometimes unresponsive, but that’s a minor point and doesn’t happen too often.

Overall Look - Other bits not mentioned

Now this is where I’m sadly going to have to rip this game apart. As much I wanted to enjoy this game, I found a repetitive, boring chore that needed to be done but can’t be bothered to do. It is that bad.

First the gaming system itself stinks. The game is split up into 3 cups which in turn have 4 courses each, and then there are the difficulty levels, 50cc, 100cc and 150cc. It’s all fine and done. However, there’s one thing that seems to be overlooked by many and that is the sheer repetitiveness of the whole experience. There’s a fourth cup for you to unlock but you only get it once you’ve completed the 2nd cup on 100cc, but of course most people will play the game on 50cc first time round, so you’ll have to go through all the tracks again on 100cc mode. By that stage you can’t be bothered to go onto the 150cc mode, so you try out the new cup you’ve just unlocked, once completed you’ll stare at the screen wondering what to do next and questioning if you should actually bother with the 150cc mode. So just out of curiosity you play through the game on 150cc mode (all four cups) and then once completed you get a new mode. Is it a new cup? Hah! Is it? NO of course it isn’t! It’s the all cup tour! You can now race through all 12 race courses in one big cup and so by this point the game goes back on the shelve never to be played on ever again. This seems like one of the cheapest tactics Nintendo has come with in recent months (Wind Waker was also a cheap creation by Nintendo), of course their cheapness doesn’t stop there, they added a mirror mode! YAY! So you can also play the repetitive tracks again, but backwards! When will Nintendo stop this madness and actually deliver the goods?

Of course there are other things to mention and on a good-ish note, there are quite a few unlockables in the game. Carts, Battle mode arena’s and a few drivers, but to be brutally honest, the game is so boring that I doubt you’d want to continue to play just to unlock the extras.

Now can someone please tell me why Nintendo has gone a broken a perfectly good system of one driver in a proper cart to two drivers in a stupid looking car? The system is pointless, fine now you can have two sets of items in your hand, but that’s all. I have yet to see much difference from Baby Mario driving to then switching to Bowser, it’s just a case of “Wow now Bowser is driving and Baby Mario looks so funny on the back!”. Nintendo it’s time you stuck to the good old ways, I know I’m sounding like an old Nintendo gamer who doesn’t like to see game series being ruined, but I’m sorry the system they had before hand was good.

Now onto the multiplayer, which to be honest is okay…well at least for a small while. The battle modes can be enjoyable, but still they’re small and aren’t as good as they were in Mario Kart 64. It seems that the fun can be had for about 20 minutes, but after that you’ll be turning off to play on another game. Which again is a shame, because as it’s a Mario Kart game you’d expect it to have a better wealth of multiplayer fun.

Mario Kart Double Dash is a bitter disappointment and one of the worst games Nintendo has developed in recent years. It’s cheap and far too repetitive to any of a great game. And what’s a shame is that it feels more like a mini game than a Mario Kart game of good standard.