Mario Kart 64

Mario Kart 64 is a kart racing game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64, the second main installment in the Mario Kart series after 1992’s Super Mario Kart? for the Super NES.²¹⁰ It was released in Japan on December 14, 1996, in the United States and Mexico on February 10, 1997, in the United Kingdom on June 13, 1997, and across the rest of Europe on June 24, 1997.¹³ Developed by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development and published by Nintendo of America, it supports one to four players racing simultaneously.¹¹³

The game retains the formula of its predecessor: the player chooses a character from the Mario universe and races opponents around tracks while picking up power-up items and avoiding obstacles.³¹⁰ Eight characters are playable — Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, Yoshi, Wario, Donkey Kong, and Bowser — drawn from the wider Mario franchise.⁴¹⁰ There are no unlockable characters and no unlockable courses; the roster is fixed at eight.¹⁴ The game was classified by the ESRB as “Kids to Adults” on its original North American release.¹

Mario Kart 64 was the first game in the series to use three-dimensional graphics, with tracks running up and down hills and through tunnels and buildings, though the drivers and items are rendered as pre-rendered two-dimensional sprites.²¹⁰ Reviewers noted the mix of polygonal environments and sprite characters — compared at the time to Doom 64 — along with lighting effects that darken a driver in a tunnel, turn it red beside lava, and blue when it falls into icy water.¹⁰ The tracks were observed to be much longer and wider than those of Super Mario Kart, with some laps taking two or more minutes to complete, prompting the developers to place question boxes at several points along each course.¹

Races are run in three engine classes — 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc — with higher classes producing faster racing for both the player and the computer opponents.²⁴ The eight characters fall into three weight groups, as described in Nintendo’s manual: a Light Class of Peach, Toad, and Yoshi, which has superb acceleration for a strong Start Dash and loses less speed when driving over a sandy shoulder or grassy patch, but bounces off course on contact with a heavier kart; a Middle Class of Mario and Luigi, blending the characteristics of the other two; and a Heavy Class of Donkey Kong, Wario, and Bowser, which can corner without losing speed and is nearly impossible to knock off the track but accelerates slowly and loses speed quickly on sand or grass.⁵⁶ The manual notes that the maximum speed of each group is almost the same.⁵

Modes and items

The game offers Grand Prix, Time Trial, Versus, and Battle modes.¹³ In Grand Prix, the player races seven computer-controlled drivers across cups, with sixteen tracks divided into four cups — Mushroom, Flower, Star, and Special — that grow gradually more difficult, with a fourth-place finish or better required to advance for a trophy.³⁴ The Time Trial mode lets the player save a “ghost” of a best race to the Controller Pak and carry it to another console to race against an exact replica of that run.¹ The Versus mode largely repeats the original’s, with “kart bombs” added as a hazard to avoid.¹ The Battle mode pits two to four players in one of four arenas, each driver starting with three balloons and surviving as the last player remaining; a defeated player becomes a wheeled bomb able to take a final revenge.⁴¹⁰ Reviewers found the Battle mode’s four courses fewer and less well designed than those of Super Mario Kart, and noted that some items from the racing modes are absent there.¹

Item boxes scattered across each track grant power-ups including green and red turtle shells, banana peels, invincibility stars, turbo mushrooms, and lightning bolts that shrink rival drivers.³¹⁰ New to the sequel are the spiny homing shell that pursues the leading driver, the fake item box that detonates on contact, the ghost item that steals an opponent’s power-up while making the player briefly invisible, and the ability to carry three green or red shells at once as a rotating shield.⁴¹⁰ A player can also hold a single shell behind the kart as protection while a second item waits at the next box.¹ The feather of the original game was dropped to prevent shortcut exploits.¹⁴ Items are dealt according to the player’s race position, so trailing drivers receive more powerful items — stars, lightning bolts, spiny shells, triple red shells — while leaders receive mostly green shells and banana peels, a system reviewers found could be exploited by deliberately braking to fall back and collect a better item.¹

Driving technique centers on the power slide, executed with the analog Control Stick and the R shoulder button — the “Drift-Way” in Nintendo’s manual — which lets heavier karts corner without losing speed and enables mini-turbos in the higher classes.¹⁵ The A button accelerates and the B button brakes, with the Z or bottom C button activating an item, and the R button now also serving to jump.¹ Contemporary reviews criticized the computer opponents’ “rubber-banding” artificial intelligence, which keeps rivals close and allows them to catch up rapidly even after a lightning bolt or a long lead, with later guides describing computer racers that go faster than normally possible and in some cases teleport to catch up.¹¹⁴ Earning a gold trophy in all four 150cc cups unlocks an Extra Mode that mirrors every course while keeping the 150cc speed, along with a new title screen set across a golden desert landscape.¹⁴ The game also hides three staff “ghost” runs, unlocked by beating set Time Trial records on Luigi Raceway, Mario Raceway, and Royal Raceway.¹⁴

Lineage and reception

The Mario Kart concept originated around 1990, when Shigeru Miyamoto pitched a two-player racing game to Tadashi Sugiyama and Hideki Konno.²² In researching the design, director Konno read books on kart racing and the team visited a local amusement park for a day of go-kart racing.²³ The first game, Super Mario Kart, made a surprise appearance on the Super NES in 1992 and was credited with spawning an entire battle racing genre, and has consistently been ranked among the best games of all time.¹²³ Mario Kart 64 carried that proven formula forward into 3D nearly five years later, retaining the Grand Prix, Time Trial, Versus, and Battle modes intact.¹

Critics regarded the game primarily as a multiplayer experience. IGN’s Peer Schneider called it “multi-player mayhem at its best,” praising the preservation of detail and frame rate in split-screen — including ice reflections retained even in four-player play — and likening the four-player battles to Bomber Man, while noting the one-player mode was not where the game’s strengths lay.¹⁰ Schneider also observed that the fenced-in remake of the original’s Rainbow Road removed the ability to push rivals off the road, and that the game stressed item use over racing in a way that could feel arbitrary.¹⁰ AllGame’s Scott McCall rated the game seven of ten, weighing improved presentation against the questionable artificial intelligence.¹

The game has been re-released repeatedly: as a Player’s Choice title in the United States in January 1998, on the iQue Player in China in 2003, on the Wii Virtual Console in 2007, on the Wii U Virtual Console in 2016, and through the Nintendo Switch Online service beginning October 25, 2021.¹³¹⁴ It remains remembered as a couch-multiplayer staple defined by Battle Mode and the blue-shell arguments it provoked among friends.¹⁶