THE GOOD:+ Good courses
+ Good music
+ Fun multiplayer
+ Nice 3D courses...
+ Cool items
+ Cool battle play
THE BAD:
- ...however the characters are ugly and pixelated
- Nothing to unlock
- Not enough characters...
- ...or courses!
- Gets boring if you're on your own
- Computer AI is terrible
- Some pointless text popping up
SUMMARY:
Mario Kart 64 is by far the worst Mario Kart in the series. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game. It lacks all the spit and polish that made all the other Mario Karts so great. With stupid cheating computers, poor character visuals and high repetition, Mario Kart 64 falls flat on its face.
GRAPHICS
MK64 has nice and detailed courses but the characters? Bleggh.
Mario Kart 64 does not put the Nintendo 64's graphics to superb use. The courses in MK64 are in gorgeous 3D, with nice texture and brilliant colours. However all this is let down by the look of the characters. They look ugly as hell. They are EXTREMELY pixelated and turn with the camera, making them look 2D. And these ugly pixel visuals DO NOT in ANY way cross over with the graphics of the wonderful 3D courses. Dissapointing.
GAMEPLAY
Don't expect the best MK play from MK64.
Mario Kart 64 is the traditional Mario Kart gameplay. You select a character and race him against the other 7 computers on any course. You get many wacky items from all MK games, like Speed Mushrooms, Banana Peels, Red & Green Shells and much more. The multiplayer in MK64 is fantastic. In 3 player and 4 player modes players can test their speed in a VS match or duke it out karting-style in the amazingly fun battle mode, where players have to hit each other with the many items and make each other lose all 3 balloons. The last person standing wins. But 2 player is the best. You get VS, Battle and a two player Grand Prix. How awesome! This is also very fun having a co-op GP with mates. But, however, MK64 has many spoils in its gameplay. I'll get to that in the BAD section.
MARIO KART 64 HAS NO STORY, SO STUFF THAT SECTION
BAD
MK64 is the black sheep of the MK series. Many bad sides.
Mario Kart 64 has many negative sides which made me give it a 3.7. Let us begin. First of all, there is NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING, to unlock in this game. No characters, courses, cups, NOTHING! Thats why this game is very boring with only one player, because doing all the races is pointless. I think you get a new title screen but that's about it. Rubbishness. Secondly, Mario Kart 64 has hardly any characters to play as. Only eight, in fact. And it only has 16 tracks, and mixing these two key bad sides gives you a high repetition level. This game really needed to include more characters from the Mario universe. Oh well. Thirdly, the computer AI in this is just so awful. The computers cheat like nutz. Even if you use 3 mushrooms, they still zoom right past you! And they seem to drive into obstacles on purpose and throw stuff like bananas in front of them and drive into them. WHAT? This is by far the best game for crappy CPU AI. Just dreadful. Also, MK64 has pointless and very annoying text coming up. When you try to do a power slide these weird letters come up (I think its E's?) and every time you jump it says BOING! And every time you land it says POMP! Look, Ninty, we know whats going on. We can see that we're boinging and pomping. No text. I have already talked about boring on your own and the ugly characters so that about covers it.
OVERALL
There above sits the black sheep of the Mario Kart series.
Mario Kart 64 should be enjoyable for die-hard MK fans. But simple Mario fans will be dissapointed with the lack of unlockables, cheating computers and high repetition. A dissapointment to the Mario Kart series.
FINAL SCORES
Neoscore------------3.7
% Score-------------73%
/10 Score-----------7/10
Grade---------------C-
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