Mario Kart 64
Mario Kart 64 is a Mario-themed racing game produced by Nintendo and released for the Nintendo 64 on 1996-12-14.
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 rubber band AI. In fact, for this very reason, I prefer Diddy Kong Racing.
Contents
Status
I do not own this game, and I have not beaten it.
Review
7 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 10 |
Best Version: 74%
— 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 tracks on their most difficult levels, and a nice way to give the game more life.
Bad
- 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.
- Over the years, players have managed to find quite a few bugs with the tracks 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
- Mario Kart 64 - N64 - Manual.pdf
Game manual.
- Mario Kart 64 - N64 - Operation Card.pdf
Operation card.
- Mario Kart 64 - N64 - Manual (Australia).pdf
Game manual (Australia).
- Mario Kart 64 - N64 - Manual (Europe).pdf
Game manual (Europe).
Maps
Graphics
- textures-resource.com/nintendo_64/mariokart64 - Textures.
Videos
- youtube.com/watch?v=gGI8YXKW3G0 - Son of a Glitch.
- youtube.com/watch?v=ASWgJvuQhTA - Longplay, 150cc,
Titles
Language | Native | Transliteration | Translation |
---|---|---|---|
Chinese | 马里奥卡丁车64 | Mario Kart 64 | |
English | Mario Kart 64 | ||
Japanese | マリオカート64 | Mario Kato 64 | Mario Kart 64 |
Links
- Pages with broken file links
- Video Game Rating - 7
- Video Game Graphics Rating - 6
- Video Game Sound Rating - 7
- Games
- Video Games
- Video Game Prime Order - Action, Strategy, Adventure
- Game Mechanic - Cheating AI
- Game Mechanic - Dynamic Difficulty
- Game Mechanic - Playable Female Character
- Game Mechanic - Unlockable Content
- Nintendo 64 Games
- Action
- Driving
- Racing
- Favorite
- Favorite Games
- Multi-Player
- Multi-Player Versus