Mario Kart 64

aka: Mario Kart R
Moby ID: 3535
Nintendo 64 Specs
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Description official descriptions

Mario Kart 64 races eight familiar faces, including Mario, Bowser and Yoshi, on four progressively tougher four-track circuits. Wide curves and gentle banks mark the Mushroom Cup tracks. Your commute gets notably tougher on the Flower Cup, though. The player will have to dodge semis rumbling on Toad's Turnpike and bounding boulders on fogbound Choco Mountain! Star Cup tracks range from the icy surfaces of Sherbet Land to the lava lakes of Bowser's Castle. The true test of karting competence, though, comes on the four tracks in Special Cup. Zip through the dark caves and green hillsides of Donkey Kong's Jungle Parkway, cling to the sheer cliffs of Yoshi Valley and hustle over haunted Banshee Boardwalk before tackling the longest track in the game: neon-lit Rainbow Road.

The game offers two camera angles and three engine sizes: 50cc, 100cc and 150cc. You can gain even more speed by mastering the power slide technique or grabbing Super Star power-ups. Each kart has distinctive handling, acceleration and top speed capabilities. Light karts like Princess's smoothly steer through tight corners, but run the constant risk of getting flattened by heavy karts, like Donkey Kong's. Shells that you fire at rival racers, Bananas that make them skid out and Lightning Bolts that make them small and very slow are just a few of the game's unique power-ups.

Spellings

  • マリオカート64 - Japanese spelling
  • 马里奥卡丁车64 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Nintendo 64 version)

54 People (43 developers, 11 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 85% (based on 56 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 169 ratings with 8 reviews)

Great multiplayer game but a bit of a bore while playing by yourself.

The Good
It's a great multiplayer game. The courses are wonderfully designed and they have cool special items. The battle mode is also fun with 4 people. You can't go wrong with Mario and Bowser racing each other.

The Bad
The single player game becomes boring after a short while. If you play with 3 or 4 players there aren't any computer opponents. I think it would be a huge plus to have computer opponents in the 4 player mode.

The Bottom Line
Don't get this game if you don't plan to play it with your friends.

Nintendo 64 · by Attila (553) · 2001

Still a ton of fun to play

The Good
Very solid racer, great tracks

The Bad
Getting hit by many items in a row.

The Bottom Line
Part of me was dreading replaying this. I have a lot of fond childhood memories of Mario Kart 64, but is it’s something that still holds up today? Mario Kart has changed so much since then.

After actually playing Mario Kart 64 again, the amount of changes to Mario Kart over the years actually keeps Mario Kart 64 still hugely enjoyable – the newer games aren’t simply better, they’re all quite different. The simplicity of Mario Kart 64 really helps it stand out from the others, and the handing still feels great.

My biggest criticism of Mario Kart 64 is the lack of singleplayer modes, just GP races and time trial, you can’t even pick single races, but most Mario Karts have similar issues. There is a mirror mode to unlock (which has the true version of Toad’s Turnpike) by completing all GPs on the highest difficulty, but that’s about it.

Mario Kart 64’s true wonder is in the multiplayer mode, which is still a lot of fun. The weapons make it hectic, but also allow people to catch up. You can spend hours and hours just playing races and I really like that you just pick a race and play, you’re not forced to do a tournament or anything like that.

Battle mode was also amazing in this game, and has not been properly replicated since (with newer games favouring points-based rather than elimination). When a player has been eliminated, they turn into a bomb and can try and screw over a player of their choosing. This wouldn’t work in a more serious setting, but for Mario Kart, it’s perfect.

Mario Kart 64 is still an immense joy to play, and is still worth going back to due to how different other Mario Kart games are. It really does deserve a re-release with widescreen and nicer textures, but without changing too much.

Nintendo 64 · by Cube1701 (1) · 2024

Feels like a more pretty, but slower version of Mario Kart.

The Good
Hey, is that Mario Kart? No way, dude! It's Mario Kart 64!

I should begin by saying that I once owned a Super Nintendo, and the only game I owned was Mario Kart. It was my all-time favorite game (well, at the time) and my friends and I would play it for hours on end. When we got bored with just racing, we'd play erm... "house". We'd pick a place in the level to declare our kingdom, and place a banana peel on it. Then we would leave our kingdom and attempt to "take" each other's peels. It was like a really weird capture the flag.

Ahem. We were only nine years old, I should point out. Maybe nine. Maybe older? I forget. Somewhere around that age.

But anyway, when the Nintendo 64 came out, I knew Mario Kart 64 would be there somewhere. It had to be. It had to come out, with its glorious 3D graphics and ten times the fun Mario Kart was.

Did Mario Kart 64 deliver? Well, in some ways. The graphics are, unquestionably, better. 3D this time around, with some neato course tricks. Like jumping over the river in one level and stuff. And, like in Mario Kart, there were levels that brought on the essence of the "home world" of some of the characters who were racing.

Four player multiplayer! Woweezowee!

New weapons! Whee!

The Bad
I once saw a video of "Mario Kart 2", which showed awesome graphics and a level in which took place entirely in one of those green pipes. The video featured the ability to drive up the walls of the pipe and down different passageways, into water, down waterfalls...it was sheer beauty, all taking place within one of those infamous blue pipes.

What the hell was that video anyway? Probably a hoax or something, because I never heard of it again.

Well, you can imagine my sheer disappointment when MK64 neither did not have those AWESOME graphics, not the pipe level, and certainly not the speeds of the video I saw. Instead, I got this nice-graphics-but-not-that-nice game, with very slow kart speeds and no awesome pipe level. In fact, most of the levels suck. Sure, they're 3D, and we're not stuck within its bounds by odd looking square blocks, but MK64 lost the charm it had with Mario Kart. It was just a prettier, but slower version of the classic.

Also, this was the first time I heard Princess Toadstool called "Peach". When the hell did that happen? Until that point, I always thought "Peach" was some odd sexual innuendo for Princess Toadstool.

The weapons were similar, with some improvements, but at the same time there were some disappointments. Like the fact that you couldn't drop bananas behind you. What gives? And some of the level design just plain sucks.

The Bottom Line
Mario Kart 64 is just a prettier, slower version of the original Mario Kart. It lacks the charm and replayability that made the first one such a classic. And the karts are disturbingly slow. Boo!

Nintendo 64 · by kbmb (415) · 2003

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The N64 version of Mario Kart 64 appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by EDGE magazine's then General Editor Tony Mott.

Bonus courses

If you complete all the tracks in the 150cc class, the game opens up new tracks. The new tracks are actually reverse images of the original set.

Japanese version

In Mario Kart 64 in the Japanese version lots of the signs are take offs of brands, the only one apparent in the western version is the Koopa Air (Nike Air), but one interesting one is a sign that says MarioBro which was changed to Mario Bros. This of course was originally a takeoff of Marlboro cigarettes.

MagiKoopa

Originally, MagiKoopa (an enemy from Super Mario World) was intended to be one of the racers. However, he was later replaced by Donkey Kong before the game was released. You can still see MagiKoopa in some of the earliest screenshots of the game (back when it was still called Mario Kart R)

Title change

The game was originally going to be called Mario Kart R but was changed because Nintendo felt it was to similar to Sega's upcoming racing game Sonic R.

Virtual console version

For the Wii Virtual Console version of Mario Kart 64, the Ghost Trial Data, (which allowed players to race against a ghost kart of their best times), has been disabled.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • March 1997 (Issue #92) - Game of the Month*
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #49 (Best 100 Games of All Time)
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #5 (Readers' Top 10 Games of All Time)
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Multiplayer Game of the Year Runner-Up
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Racing Game of the Year Top Write-In (Readers' Choice)
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Multiplayer Game of the Year Runner-Up (Readers' Choice)
  • Retro Gamer
    • September 2004 (Issue #8) – #80 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Chris Martin, Guy Chapman, MegaMegaMan and Warlock

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Chris Martin.

Wii added by Corn Popper. Wii U added by Michael Cassidy. Nintendo Switch added by Kam1Kaz3NL77.

Additional contributors: Warlock, Unicorn Lynx, Attila, Alaka, Deleted, Eric Smith, Patrick Bregger, Thomas Thompson, gingerbeardman, Alsy, FatherJack.

Game added March 29, 2001. Last modified March 27, 2024.