[Note: This review was written to fulfil yet another review request posted in the pinned topic.]
Mario Kart Double Dash is a fairly decent Mario Kart game. It's fun to play, it's got a lot of character and originality and it's got a lot of positive elements about it, but it's unfortunately not one of the best games in the series.
For you see, its also the first step towards Mario Kart's increasingly 'casual orientated' design, the first step towards dumbing down the series to appeal to the lowest common denominator and the people who prefer party likes games focusing on luck over those focusing on skill. It's also got various other design problems I'll highlight later in the review.
However, first of all, how are the graphics? I'd say great. In fact, I'd say this is the first Mario Kart game in the series which generally looks decent enough even today that the graphics won't be too offputting for someone with no history of playing the game, since it's not blocky, its full of colour and generally of a pretty similar quality to Mario Kart Wii.
If you need some more specific showcases, just take a good look at Rainbow Road:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyauheAhAAE
Or some others:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-djEX9x7I4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjHHxZwCUSg
Looks pretty nice doesn't it? Certainly a far cry from the rather empty looking Mario Kart 64 and the 'nearly entirely lacking in backgrounds' Super Mario Kart. Both characters and tracks hence look nicely detailed.
However, there's one minor issue that may be offputting to some people, and may illustrate Nintendo's pandering to the kids market thing they had going in the Gamecube days, and that's the constantly 'cartoon' elements. Not character mannerisms, but the constant eyes and faces on every possible background object! Does the volcano in DK Mountain really need goofy looking eyes? How about the hills and trees? The various other objects? It really does look a bit strange in this game due to how over the top it is. There's also a significant shift in tone in this game towards being 'lighter and softer' than Mario Kart 64, with a massive use of primary colours and generally a cartoony style that may have sort of put off some of the more 'hardcore' gamers.
Music is fantastic. Bowser's Castle is a classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG4gyOTOnyA
And the music for Mushroom Bridge and City is so catchy its ridiculous. Really, I don't think I'll ever forget this theme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdUce-cpHh0
All the music sounds great, although a couple of themes are unfortunately reused for later tracks and the various battle arenas. This is especially problematic in Luigi's Mansion, where a great battle mode course is made a little worse by the fact you don't even have the game's theme music playing throughout it (and Bowser's Castle's Music doesn't suit it too well).
Sound effects are nice too, although I doubt anyone pays attention to them unless they're horrible on the ears like Baby Mario's crying back in Yoshi's Island.
Gameplay is generally good, but unfortunately a bit of a mixed bag.
On the positive side, content wise the game is nearly perfect. The roster is fantastic, and possibly the best roster in the series bar the Wii game, with all your favourite characters playable. It also introduces Daisy, Waluigi, Toadette, Paratroopa, King Boo, Petey Piranha, Birdo, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi Bowser Jr and Diddy Kong to the Mario Kart series, which is a definite plus, since most of them became mainstays in future games.
The items are generally good too. The normal items are almost all there, there's a wide range of interesting special items only available to certain characters and some of the rarer ones are great fun to use, like the Chain Chomp and giant Bowser Shell of death.
Battle mode is at its best here too, especially with the fantastic Bob-omb Blast mode that had you firing bombs at the other team left and right. Some nice arenas too, although Block City is unfortunately the worst.
Additionally, the controls work fine with the karts doing everything required and handling perfectly.
However, two problems rear their ugly head here. First of all is the problem of a lack of content. Just 16 tracks exist in the entire game here, with no single player vs mode or I think battle mode and no online. The latter might be obvious due to Nintendo not caring much for it, but it didn't help the game's value back in an era where Microsoft and Sony were quite heavily focusing on online play. The All Cup Tour (beat all 16 tracks in near random order) helped things a tad, although I'd have really preferred a Lightning Cup or something, especially given how certain level themes like an actual ghost house track were conspicuously absent.
The other problem however is due to the 'dumbing down' of the game. Know how people criticised Mario Kart Double Dash and 7 for being too 'casual' friendly? Yeah, this game was the undisputed king of that, it just escaped criticism due to coming out before the internet was as mainstream. You couldn't drag items behind you. Triple Bananas were gone, power slides were extremely easy to do and took little effort... Oh, that Blue Shell now flew, only targetted the leader and blew them to kingdom come upon impact. Yep, this game was the origin of our least favourite item in the series, and it was designed to pretty much turn games of Mario Kart into games of luck.
Other changes were minor but still annoying. No longer were there item boxes with certain items in. No longer could you press B after hitting a Banana to make a musical note appear and your character avoid spinning out. And most of all, there was absolutely ZERO freedom to explore. Every single wall or obstacle had a fifty foot high invisible wall on top of it to prevent glitches and shortcuts. Shortcuts were now rigid side paths with high walls surrounding them that funneled everyone in roughly the same direction and Lakitu would reset you to the path nearly mercilessly. The end result was a game which was meant to be nearly equal oppportunity for both 'hardcore' gamers and grandparents and succeeded at that greatly, only TWO shortcuts/glitches have been found in NINE YEARS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIlBtuHlZS8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0jotjUGxKc
Contrast this to Mario Kart Wii or 7 where ten or more game breaking glitches were found in mere months, or the ridiculously broken Mario Kart 64 and Super Circuit and you can tell Nintendo really did bug test this game to the fullest extent possible. No Wuhu Mountain Loop here!
Curiously, it also 'invented' snaking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7OID3wGOh4
However, I guess with the whole 'no online multiplayer' thing and everyone's likely logical fallacy based assumption that they're 'pros' simply because they beat the neighbourhood kids, no one really complained too much.
Still, Mario Kart Double Dash is a pretty damn good game. Not the best Mario Kart game ever (I'd say DS or 7 would possibly take home that title), but it was fun to play with friends and had a lot of replay value simply due to how fun it was in general. And come on, playing co-op with two people in one kart was a great experience, was it not?
Mario Kart Double Dash is a fairly decent Mario Kart game. It's fun to play, it's got a lot of character and originality and it's got a lot of positive elements about it, but it's unfortunately not one of the best games in the series.
For you see, its also the first step towards Mario Kart's increasingly 'casual orientated' design, the first step towards dumbing down the series to appeal to the lowest common denominator and the people who prefer party likes games focusing on luck over those focusing on skill. It's also got various other design problems I'll highlight later in the review.
However, first of all, how are the graphics? I'd say great. In fact, I'd say this is the first Mario Kart game in the series which generally looks decent enough even today that the graphics won't be too offputting for someone with no history of playing the game, since it's not blocky, its full of colour and generally of a pretty similar quality to Mario Kart Wii.
If you need some more specific showcases, just take a good look at Rainbow Road:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyauheAhAAE
Or some others:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-djEX9x7I4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjHHxZwCUSg
Looks pretty nice doesn't it? Certainly a far cry from the rather empty looking Mario Kart 64 and the 'nearly entirely lacking in backgrounds' Super Mario Kart. Both characters and tracks hence look nicely detailed.
However, there's one minor issue that may be offputting to some people, and may illustrate Nintendo's pandering to the kids market thing they had going in the Gamecube days, and that's the constantly 'cartoon' elements. Not character mannerisms, but the constant eyes and faces on every possible background object! Does the volcano in DK Mountain really need goofy looking eyes? How about the hills and trees? The various other objects? It really does look a bit strange in this game due to how over the top it is. There's also a significant shift in tone in this game towards being 'lighter and softer' than Mario Kart 64, with a massive use of primary colours and generally a cartoony style that may have sort of put off some of the more 'hardcore' gamers.
Music is fantastic. Bowser's Castle is a classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG4gyOTOnyA
And the music for Mushroom Bridge and City is so catchy its ridiculous. Really, I don't think I'll ever forget this theme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdUce-cpHh0
All the music sounds great, although a couple of themes are unfortunately reused for later tracks and the various battle arenas. This is especially problematic in Luigi's Mansion, where a great battle mode course is made a little worse by the fact you don't even have the game's theme music playing throughout it (and Bowser's Castle's Music doesn't suit it too well).
Sound effects are nice too, although I doubt anyone pays attention to them unless they're horrible on the ears like Baby Mario's crying back in Yoshi's Island.
Gameplay is generally good, but unfortunately a bit of a mixed bag.
On the positive side, content wise the game is nearly perfect. The roster is fantastic, and possibly the best roster in the series bar the Wii game, with all your favourite characters playable. It also introduces Daisy, Waluigi, Toadette, Paratroopa, King Boo, Petey Piranha, Birdo, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi Bowser Jr and Diddy Kong to the Mario Kart series, which is a definite plus, since most of them became mainstays in future games.
The items are generally good too. The normal items are almost all there, there's a wide range of interesting special items only available to certain characters and some of the rarer ones are great fun to use, like the Chain Chomp and giant Bowser Shell of death.
Battle mode is at its best here too, especially with the fantastic Bob-omb Blast mode that had you firing bombs at the other team left and right. Some nice arenas too, although Block City is unfortunately the worst.
Additionally, the controls work fine with the karts doing everything required and handling perfectly.
However, two problems rear their ugly head here. First of all is the problem of a lack of content. Just 16 tracks exist in the entire game here, with no single player vs mode or I think battle mode and no online. The latter might be obvious due to Nintendo not caring much for it, but it didn't help the game's value back in an era where Microsoft and Sony were quite heavily focusing on online play. The All Cup Tour (beat all 16 tracks in near random order) helped things a tad, although I'd have really preferred a Lightning Cup or something, especially given how certain level themes like an actual ghost house track were conspicuously absent.
The other problem however is due to the 'dumbing down' of the game. Know how people criticised Mario Kart Double Dash and 7 for being too 'casual' friendly? Yeah, this game was the undisputed king of that, it just escaped criticism due to coming out before the internet was as mainstream. You couldn't drag items behind you. Triple Bananas were gone, power slides were extremely easy to do and took little effort... Oh, that Blue Shell now flew, only targetted the leader and blew them to kingdom come upon impact. Yep, this game was the origin of our least favourite item in the series, and it was designed to pretty much turn games of Mario Kart into games of luck.
Other changes were minor but still annoying. No longer were there item boxes with certain items in. No longer could you press B after hitting a Banana to make a musical note appear and your character avoid spinning out. And most of all, there was absolutely ZERO freedom to explore. Every single wall or obstacle had a fifty foot high invisible wall on top of it to prevent glitches and shortcuts. Shortcuts were now rigid side paths with high walls surrounding them that funneled everyone in roughly the same direction and Lakitu would reset you to the path nearly mercilessly. The end result was a game which was meant to be nearly equal oppportunity for both 'hardcore' gamers and grandparents and succeeded at that greatly, only TWO shortcuts/glitches have been found in NINE YEARS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIlBtuHlZS8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0jotjUGxKc
Contrast this to Mario Kart Wii or 7 where ten or more game breaking glitches were found in mere months, or the ridiculously broken Mario Kart 64 and Super Circuit and you can tell Nintendo really did bug test this game to the fullest extent possible. No Wuhu Mountain Loop here!
Curiously, it also 'invented' snaking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7OID3wGOh4
However, I guess with the whole 'no online multiplayer' thing and everyone's likely logical fallacy based assumption that they're 'pros' simply because they beat the neighbourhood kids, no one really complained too much.
Still, Mario Kart Double Dash is a pretty damn good game. Not the best Mario Kart game ever (I'd say DS or 7 would possibly take home that title), but it was fun to play with friends and had a lot of replay value simply due to how fun it was in general. And come on, playing co-op with two people in one kart was a great experience, was it not?