Mario Kart (DS) Review

Overall Rating

Addictive, very good 3D graphics, moderately simple controls, weapons, online play and mulitplayer with 1 or many game-packs.

No use of touch screen while in play, except changing the view of the map. Random selection of players online.

As the Mario Kart game for the Nintendo DS, Mario kart DS has a lot to live up to. And, fortunately, it was a great success. With online play and multi player support, Mario Kart DS has brought high-quality racing into your hands to travel anywhere and also race with anyone anywhere, as well.

Like previous Mario Kart games, Mario Kart DS has a single player racing mode, called the Grand Prix mode, where you race against 7 other computer controlled karts in hope to win the hold trophy after 4 races. There are 8 cups, 4 with new maps, 4 with old maps from previous games. In total, you have 16 new maps and 16 classic maps to race and rampage on.

There are also some new weapons in Mario Kart DS, like the inky Blooper, who can squirt ink onto other player's screens, Boo, who can steal items from your enemies, and the powerful Bullet Bill, who will race you along the track at fast speed, knocking anyone in his path far away! There are also the classic weapons, like the banana peel, the shells, the mushrooms, and the almighty blue spiny shell.

Also new is the mission mode, where you complete tasks and eventually fight the boss of the stage. The tasks vary from collecting coins to braking boxes to racing giant monsters!

There are new carts for all the characters and each has 3, once you unlock them! They each have their own specifications from speed to acceleration and weight to handling. Once you unlock to be able to use different characters in karts other than their own, you'll see that even the character's themselves have effects on the carts like Bowser in a really light kart will make it much heavier than a light character like dry bones.

The handling of the karts makes up for the lake of speed, making it easier to use techniques which were hard in other games like snaking, where people keep powersliding so they are never at normal speed.

The graphics are very detailed for a game on a handheld system. The karts are detailed and the map looks nice itself.

The audio may be a bit frantic, but it is still very good and takes use of the left and right speakers of the Nintendo DS.

Once you get online, I'm afraid to say that it isn't as simple as hosting a game and people joining. It is done by everyone being in a category (Worldwide, regional, etc...) and people randomly joining each other. The online racing itself it very fun, knowing that your racing against human brains instead of a computer chip. Unfortunately, there is a case of 'quitters'. It's where someone quits a game they know they'll lose by turning their Nintendo DS off, and it won't count as a loss on their online record.

The Mario kart series has been on every system so far and the one for the Nintendo DS is another landmark.