Hands-On Preview: Yes, the exclamation points are part of the title.
Kart Racing. You either love it or hate it. Nintendo birthed the phenomenon more than ten years ago with their SNES release of Super Mario Kart. Up to that point, racing games were just for racing. What the simultaneous two player actioin of Super Mario Kart did for games was make the idea of racing into an accessible yet competitive experience. The game departed from the "faster is better" mentality and introduced pickups and weapons into the mix. For the next five years, countless clones popped up all over the place with none of them ever managing to recreate the excitement that Mario Kart invoked. That is, until Mario Kart 64 hit the shelves in 1997. Now with four-player action, Mario Kart 64 breathed magic back into the genre and rekindled interest in the series. That set the stage for the GBA release of Mario Kart Super Circuit in 2001, a game that helped to define everything that the tiny handheld system could potentially be. Of course, players wanted more and the release of the GameCube had everyone clamoring for a new Mario Kart title. Finally they will get their wish as Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is due out at the end of this year.
For this new generation of Mario Kart, Nintendo is opening up the floodgates of new gameplay ideas and gimmicks. First and foremost, Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is going to be the first Nintendo title ever to support eight player simultaneous action. You might be asking, "How can this be? My GameCube only has four controller ports!" Well, the honest truth is that Nintendo is finally embracing LAN play (thank the maker). With eight GameCubes and eight televisions, you and seven friends can go hog-wild. In addition to the multiplayer mayhem, Double Dash is adding a second rider to each Kart. This second rider will be in charge of impeding the way of your opponents by manning the turtle-shell munitions. You will be able to swap the position of these riders on the fly, taking advantage of each of their strengths and, hopefully, working around their weaknesses. Of course, this opens up another new multiplayer door as you can now have two human players man the same Kart. What would be fantastic is if this meant you could get 16 players going at once, two on each of the eight karts.
After the game finally got into everyone's hands at E3 last week, there has been a lot of complaints that Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is severely lacking in the sense of speed. The thing is, the Mario Kart series has never been at the technological forefront of racing videogames. Sure, every title has looked great (and Double Dash is no exception) but the emphasis has always been on substance over style, emphasizing accessible gameplay over everything else. The series has always been made for everyone to play and even with all of the new gameplay elements, the emphasis still seems to be on the gameplay. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! handles fantastically, especially with a racing wheel, and may even be the best Mario Kart game to date. The world needs more time with this title in order to make any accolades stick and frankly, I can't wait to bring this game home.
