Mario Kart 64 LINK

Mario Kart 64[a] is a kart racing video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. The game is the second main entry in the Mario Kart series and is the successor to Super Mario Kart (1992) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was released in Japan on December 14, 1996; in North America on February 10, 1997; and in the United Kingdom on June 24, 1997. It was released for the iQue Player in China in 2003. It was released on the Wii and Wii U Virtual Console in 2007 and 2016, and on the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack on October 25, 2021.

Mario Kart 64

Mario Kart 64 is a kart racing game in which the player controls one of eight selectable Mario characters in several racetracks that vary in shape and theme. During a race, the players can obtain random items from special boxes placed in different areas of the track that are used to impede the opposition and gain the advantage. For example, Koopa Troopa shells and bananas allow the player to attack opponents and slow them down, and Mushrooms grant the player a temporary boost in speed and jumping ability.[5] In a change from the previous installment, players can carry more than one item at a time.[6] Mario Kart 64 has 16 racecourses and 4 battle courses.[7] It is the first game in the Mario Kart series that supports slipstreaming.[8]

Mario Kart 64 features eight playable characters: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, Yoshi, Bowser, Wario and Donkey Kong.[13] The characters are divided into three weight classes: lightweights, whose karts have the highest acceleration and top speed in trade for low weight; heavyweights, whose karts have higher weight to knock around players and lose less speed while turning, but suffer from slightly lower top speed and acceleration; and middleweights, who have mediocre acceleration and the same top speed as the heavyweights, but have much better control of steering.[14][15][16] The game was originally to feature the character Kamek, a villainous character from Yoshi's Island, before being replaced by Donkey Kong.[17][18]

The gameplay did have supporters, who noted its large amount of courses (West, GamePro, and Electric Playground),[56][48][62] found its track designs more detailed and impressive than Super Mario Kart (Schneider and Diillard),[11][37] and thought it had a lot of replay value (Caron and GamePro).[53][62] Hyper's David Wildgoose and Jonathan highlighted the flexible turning control with the multiple-angled joystick, calling it "perfect" and true to real-life karts.[52][54] Jonathan enjoyed the amount of focus and fast reflexes required for the player.[54] Wildgoose reported having many unexpected moments while playing the game due to its "ingeniously fiendish AI" and the boxes containing different power-ups each time they're collected.[52] Reviewers, even those lukewarm towards the graphics, positively noted touches such as the 180-degree turns in Bowser's Castle, the train tracks on Kalimari Desert, the trucks in Toad's Turnpike, the cows in Moo Moo Farm, Peach's castle on Royal Raceway, and the sliding penguins in Sherbet Land as highlights, as well as smoke puffs coming out of the kart.[52][54] Critics found the multiplayer mode to be better than the single player,[63] with Schneider calling it "multi-player mayhem at its best".[11] Electronic Gaming Monthly named it a runner-up for "Multiplayer Game of the Year" (behind Saturn Bomberman) at their 1997 Editors' Choice Awards.[64]

Mario Kart 64 is a racing game that is part of the Mario Kart series, originally released for the Nintendo 64 in 1996 in Japan and 1997 worldwide. Being an upgrade from its predecessor, Super Mario Kart, it features a similar base to that game in which players select Mario cast members to drive in karts, employing a weapon-based system to benefit the player and hinder opponents, though it has expanded gameplay, such as the introduction of Mini-Turbo boosts from drifting and four-player support. It is the first Mario game to let more than two people play simultaneously. It is also the first game in the series to use three-dimensional graphics for its environment design, such as the addition of elevation, advanced collision physics, expanded camera controls, real walls that can obscure views, and increased aesthetic fidelity; however, the characters, the items, and some track obstacles in-game remain as two-dimensional, pre-rendered sprites, which are rendered for game optimization. Additionally, the game contains unique track designs rather than multiple variants of the same track, and it introduces various track tropes that would later be reused in later Mario Kart installments, such as Luigi Circuit being the first track. Other elements would become series mainstays, such as its racer weight classification, the introduction of Wario and Donkey Kong as playable characters, and several new items such as the Spiny Shell and triple variants of Green Shells and Red Shells.

Players can hop if they press the trigger, allowing the kart to turn around tight corners. If they hold the trigger after a hop, they perform a slide, which allows them to handle tight corners while losing less speed; the smoke generated first resembles V's and then E's. Introduced in Mario Kart 64 is the ability to perform a Mini-Turbo. While players are sliding, if they steer in the opposite direction while they are steering and back, the E's change into a yellow color, and if the action is done again, the E's turn red; releasing the slide causes a small speed boost and the character to exclaim. However, if the Control Stick is held down too long in the opposite direction while sliding, the character spins out and loses the Mini-Turbo charge.

Mario Kart 64 introduces auxiliary features that take advantage of the increased number of buttons on the Nintendo 64 Controller. Pressing changes the camera angle from the standard angle to a wide-angle lens view. When players press , they have the option of various screen displays. By default, the screen displays a map on the right, where each player character is represented by a kart colored to the corresponding character color, while purple dots are represented by CPU players. Elements on the map that flash indicate that they are in first place. When the elements are changed, players can view a speedometer or a display where the character's UI laps around the screen, with line color indicating what lap they are on. Finally, pressing sets different volume levels for the background music, from on to half to off.

When deciding how to develop the game, Miyamoto stated that he wanted the game to adhere to a wide audience, and therefore not much was changed upon developing a sequel to Super Mario Kart.[20] Four-player mode was one of the team's development themes, and the game was designed with how to handle it in mind. Miyamoto noted how challenging it was to balance the four-player Battle Mode, as he wanted it to be as accessible as the racing mode and four screens mean quadruple the processing power required to run, as well as addressing smaller resolution that causes the display quality to suffer. Mario Kart 64's ROM compilation format allowed eight different karts, four different players, and 16 tracks at once, as well as character animations and voice samples that can be accessed real-time. Hideki Konno had stated that the team liked cars, and if "were left to our own devices, I'm sure we would create a game that would be way too hardcore and niche for general audiences," and had to suppress that desire throughout development. Mini-Turbos were added to increase the gameplay depth and were, at first, hidden mechanics; the team wanted to give players a visual reward for racing well, which is how color was then added to the smokes. The team also made enemy AI take advantage of the drift system as well. Mario Kart 64 had a no-items mode to appeal to F-Zero fans at some point, though it was dropped because everyone who demoed Mario Kart 64 did not play the mode. Tadashi Sugiyama, the visual director of the game, stated that the 3D graphics were the biggest change from Super Mario Kart; one of the reasons the game does not offer a view beyond the third-person camera was that the game would otherwise be too shaky or rotate too much. Sugiyama admitted the game did not change much from Super Mario Kart, though in order to differentiate further, the team added many little details to the tracks, such as the train in Kalimari Desert. One of the courses the team had to drop was "a big, multi-story parking garage-like structure which you'd race around and around as you ascended it," since it made players feel sick. Another track that got cut was a big city track "with a castle, and a nice pond, where you got to race around all these different houses and buildings," due to it being too large and too time-consuming to race through. Masato Kimura, the main programmer of Mario Kart 64, admitted that collision detection was the most difficult part of development, as Mario Kart 64 operated on 3D graphics with very complicated maps as opposed to Super Mario Kart's 2D graphics. He was proud of how the shells performed in the game, as they required a lot of CPU power and collision detection had to be performed for every shell. Kenji Yamamoto, a programmer who handled the kart handling, said that the team at first simulated physics of real cars, but it was dropped to the standard kart-racing model as it was not as fun. Yamamoto had stated that he wanted the drifting to be done by just manipulating the Control Stick, but it made the controls too difficult.

Tomoaki Kuroume, the character designer of the game, had stated that Mario was the most difficult character to render. While he already had Mario's model from Super Mario 64, translating his pose to make him sit on a kart and grasp the steering wheel required a lot of tweaks, on an individual body part-to-body part basis to be made to the model. Kuroume has mentioned that other characters have their own quirks that are uniquely difficult, such as having a tail or wearing a dress. One of the ideas for Yoshi was to have his tail stick through the back of the kart, though Kuroume settled on a slightly bent posture with his tail sticking up. Kuroume has also noted the difficulty of creating animations, as it meant that with the use of multiple angles, thousands of different animations had to be made and those had to be checked and rechecked constantly. He noted that an accident happened in development during a decision for the Player Select screen, where characters were initially static and had no animations, though the team wanted to implement animations. A hard disk got corrupted, and while the team had back-ups, some data could not be recovered; around 80% of the character models ended up getting remade twice. 041b061a72