Mario Kart: Double Dash!! review (GameCube)

You can have up to four players on a single GameCube in any of these multiplayer modes, and in Double Dash's most unique gesture, you can play with up to eight players using the GameCube's broadband adapter. Those who are truly committed to multiplayer Mario Kart but who carry a deep-seated loathing for the split-screen presentation will probably appreciate the LAN mode the most. The LAN mode is ridiculously easy to set up, requiring virtually no configuration, though it does come with some caveats. The most irksome restriction is that you're unable to pick which characters or kart you'll be using in the game--they are instead assigned to you randomly. It's nice to see Nintendo using the broadband adapter in any sort of capacity, but the way it's implemented reduces the LAN play to little more than a novelty.

There's something rather specific about the visual language of the Mario universe, with its intensely cheery color palette and the almost creepy placement of eyes and noses on inanimate objects, and Double Dash does good by that aesthetic, with most tracks feeling like a direct homage to levels found in past Mario games. The characters are rendered beautifully, and the subtlety of their animations lends a lot of personality to characters that you're generally only seeing from the back. The karts themselves each have a unique look, adding just a bit more character to the proceedings. There are lots of small touches that really make the visuals in Double Dash work, such as the focus effect that gives a blur to objects in the distance, the sparks that fly off the wheels as you powerslide, the heat wash in the desert level, and the clouds of dust that you kick up when going across off-road terrain. The game is quite sound technically, and the only time the frame rate in Double Dash takes a hit is when you go into four-player split-screen mode. Aside from that, it's rock-solid.

Ever since Mario first said "It's-a me, Mario!" everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom has decided to start chatting it up, and all of the drivers in Double Dash certainly have plenty to say--actually, they only have a handful of things to say apiece, but they sure do say them a lot, over and over again. The quality of the voice work is fine, but the repetition is unrelenting, and eventually you'll just tune it out or go crazy. The background music that accompanies the action is uniformly upbeat, occasionally taking on some ska, swing, and big band flavor but always retaining that distinct Mario style. A lot of the in-game sound effects are pulled directly from old Mario games, and they work perfectly fine and really help entrench the game in the Mario universe. Some of the new sounds, such as the engine noise and the different track texture sounds, are nicely executed as well.

Despite the fact that it's still essentially the same game as Super Mario Kart, there is no denying the innate quality of the production of Double Dash. The game looks and moves great, the controls are responsive, and there's a nice variety of gameplay modes available. Still, considering the seven-year gap since Mario Kart 64 was released, it's hard not to be a little disappointed with the limited scope of the game. All of the items on the "things you need to make a Mario Kart game" checklist have been marked off, but the envelope hasn't been pushed, and in some respects, it feels as though Nintendo is just going through the motions. While this might trigger a nice little fit of nostalgia for players who had a blast playing Super Mario Kart in its heyday, it probably won't do much to seduce newer generations of gamers who have more exciting, inventive racing fare to choose from.