Cart racing games seem to be everywhere nowadays, but that certainly wasn't the case back in 1992, when Nintendo unleashed Super Mario Kart on the masses. Gamers fell in love with the wild and crazy racing game starring Mario and company and it was responsible for starring the genre of the cart racer. As you could expect, other companies tried to cash in on the success Nintendo had by releasing their own cart racers. Some were able to put two and two together and came up with an even better way to make money off of cart-racing games; by making them based on a famous license. However, despite the quality of some of the knock-offs, no one forgets their influence.
In 1997, Mario Kart hit the N64 and proceeded to sell like hotcakes. Four years later, the portly plumber took his racing game on the road with the GBA Mario Kart game entitled Super Circuit. Now, Nintendo's powerhouse racing franchise has hit the Gamecube with Mario Kart: Double Dash, but this one differs a bit from the past Mario Kart titles.
The biggest change in Double Dash is in the character selection. The entire Mario gang is here, along with some new faces, but unlike the previous games, where you chose one character to race as, you must choose two characters here (that's where the "Double Dash" comes in). Experimenting with different character combinations is encouraged here for many reasons, the paramount one being the racer's abilities. For example, Toad is in the lightweight class, which is known for fast acceleration, but has a tendency to get knocked around by bigger characters. Bowser is obviously a heavy character, so racers like him have poor acceleration and off road traction, but excellent top speed. Then there are characters that have average abilities. Depending on the characters you select, you get access to different go-karts that have different handling, acceleration, and speed stats. Each of these traits will be balanced out accordingly depending on the characters you select, so again, it's all about experimentation.
Another thing to note is that each character has their own special item that can be obtained when they're on your two-man (or woman) squad. Yoshi can throw giant eggs at enemy cars, Mario throws a fireball wall ahead of him, and Bowser can hurl a huge spiked Koopa shell at foes, to name a few. You'll probably also want to take this into consideration when you select your characters.
As far as the game itself is concerned, it's broken down into a couple of modes. In the single player game, you can run Time Trials or enter the Mario Kart GP. In the Grand Prix mode, you select an engine size (the higher the number, the faster your car will go, but the AI will be more tenacious, as well), characters and carts. You'll race through a selection of four courses depending on the Cup race you select, and you'll attempt to come in first through each of the races so you can win the GP.
You'll do this by racing, of course, but you can also pick up items that you can use to attack your opponents and help you get ahead. Koopa shells and banana peels can be thrown or dropped so other cars will hit them, but you can also pick up various other items, like the invincibility star, the speed-boosting mushroom, or the item stealing Big Boo. The game does a nice job of balancing the playing field by making the appearance of certain items more common or rare depending on your current position. This helps to keep each race close and unpredictable.
Helping you even more is the power slide, which when mastered, will help you blast through tight turns and even gain a small speed boost for your effort. If you mastered the sliding in the N64 Mario Kart game, you'll do fine in Double Dash, seeing as the control mechanics are exactly the same in both games.
Speaking of controls, they're very tight and intuitive in Double Dash. The sliding is performed by using the analog R button on the Gamecube controller in conjunction with the control stick, and it feels just right. The player will feel an unparalleled sense of connection between the turning actions they're performing on the controller and the in-game curve that they're trying to navigate. The big A button is perfect as the acceleration button and you'll have no trouble jumping into the game and learning the basics. The term "easy to learn, but hard to master" applies in Double Dash.
However, there are some niggling control issues. The little Z button on the top of the controller is used to switch between the two characters selected (one is the driver while the other rides on the back). This is a useful technique to learn, since each character can hold their own item, but the problem is that the Z button's position is too close to the Y button that uses your items. I found myself wanting to switch character positions and instead using my useful item and vice versa, with things being particularly annoying with the former situation. To be fair, the game does allow you to use X for items, as well, but reaching over to the right side of the controller where that button is located doesn't feel as natural as hitting Y, which is closer to most of the other buttons you'll be using for this game. To be honest, this is really the fault of the somewhat awkward Gamecube controller itself and not the game's developers. On the other hand, both products are made by Nintendo, so if some of the guys involved in the making of this game were in on the Cube controller development meeting, then it is their fault. I was also kind of disappointed that there wasn't a rear view looking option in here to help you aim shells and bananas behind you. I mean, come on; even the Super NES Mario Kart had that!
The graphics are very clean and colorful, and the courses are very well designed. There are many crazy hazards on each one and they really jump out at you and make you remember them. However, upon closer inspection of many of these elements, you'll notice that they seem to look worse than they did from afar. The character models are pretty low-res for a Gamecube game and there are some of the clipping problems are so laughably bad, that you have to wonder how they got past Nintendo's QA department. For example, in the Donkey Kong Mountain course, there's a huge barrel that shoots your cart over to the other side of the track. When you have either Peach and/or Daisy on your team and they're riding on the back when you are blasted from the barrel, you see them kicking their legs in the air. Sounds fine, right? Well, the girls' legs moving around look so stupid; they're the video game equivalent of rendered wooden pegs. The animation of the kicking looks terrible, too, and the legs are constantly clipping through their dresses. I guess these graphical issues help keep the framerate locked at 60 frames per second, but that's no excuse, especially considering that Super Smash Brothers Melee, which was more or less a Gamecube launch title, looks far better and still runs at 60 fps.
In the audio department, things are kind of mixed, as well. The voices are excellent and do a great job of capturing the liveliness of the race and the characters' spirits. The sound effects are also pretty good, but my "developer laziness sense" tingled as I noticed that most of the sounds (like the sliding) were ripped directly from the old Mario Kart 64 cartridge. It would be one thing if it was paying homage to that game, but I didn't get that feeling. The music is the real bummer in this package, though. Although some of the tunes sound pretty good (including a remixed version of the Rainbow Road from the N64 game), the others weren't nearly as memorable as the previous Mario Kart games. I was also kind of dismayed that Nintendo didn't use live orchestral music in this one, like they did with Super Smash Bros Melee. They didn't seem to make use of many real instruments, either, and that's something that even Super Mario Sunshine did better (remember the light guitar accompanying the French sounding accordion in Deflino Plaza? I would have loved to have similar instrument use in this game).
One thing that I really liked about Double Dash was the deeper, more challenging and more rewarding single player game. The Super NES and GBA games did this really well, but the N64 single player was borderline pitiful, seeing as I finished everything it had to offer in less than 3 days and there were hardly any unlockables. Thankfully, Double Dash makes up for that blunder with the addition of new carts and characters to unlock. Some of the cars are really cool and useful (like the little Bullet Bill train) and I love the new characters, especially Toadette; she's so cute and adorable.
So, overall, Mario Kart: Double Dash is a really fun and great game, but it has some annoying technical problems that should have been ironed out before the game's release. Also, do I even need to mention this game's biggest flaw, which is the complete lack of online play? That's ridiculous, but I thank The Warp Pipe Project for stepping up to the plate and giving the gamers what they want. The Warp Pipe Project, by the way, came up with a way to hack the system and the network adapter to make it think it's playing and going online with LAN enabled games like this one, Kirby's Air Ride and 1080 Avalanche. That issue aside, multiplayer is still great and it'll keep you playing for quite a while and when your friends go home, you have a more meaty single player experience to enjoy than before. I give Mario Kart Double Dash a 9 out of 10.
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