For the longest time I can remember, Mario Kart 64 is usually declared the best in the series, often wrestling with Mario Kart Double Dash for favorite among fans. Given the success and appeal of the N64's 4-player controller ports, Mario Kart 64 was a choice party game in the mid 90's and one of the choice titles on the platform. I've talked about how I feel Mario Kart Super Circuit on the Gameboy Advance is one of the best, most unspoken Kart games in the series, its predecessor here borrowed a lot of its gameplay.  

Developed by Nintendo's EAD, Mario Kart was initially released in Japan in 1996 and hit worldwide retailers in 1997. The roster remains the same as SNES Mario Kart, the only change is Koopa Trooper has been replaced by the increasingly popular newer character Wario. The courses are bigger, there's more of them, and unlike most games per this era, it didn't have that odd, blocky look that most games suffered from in the polygon era.

You don't play Mario Kart seeking a robust racing simulation experience, but for the insane, arcadey mayhem that feels a little more like a fighting game than a racer. Mario Kart 64 is very good at this, with a few changes to its core. At the same time, a few tiny things were removed in this sequel that I personally liked. While similar mechanics like weight classes were retained (I remain sad it's been seemingly removed in favor of customized karts), some tiny things like character themes playing after winning first place were dropped. Characters also used to have signature attacks (Bowser had a fireball, Peach used a poison mushroom, etc.), granted mostly the CPU used them, but it added some personality to the roster. Heartbreak...

Going back to Mario Kart 64's visuals, because the Mario universe doesn't rely on overly detailed character designs and cater more towards a colorful aesthetic, it's not completely laughed out of the room for looking like mildew covered lasagna by 2004. The courses are rendered and textured in polygons, while the characters and weapons/items are pre-rendered sprites to give the ability to view them from multiple angles. This same technique has been used in games like Killer Instinct, Cruis'N USA, and the Donkey Kong Country series. It's primitive, but like rendered actors in games, it's a look I have a bit of a soft spot for all these years later. While the limitations of the hardware left the courses looking vibrant, but feeling a little empty, like Wario's Stadium, which is just a giant bowl of dirt. On the plus side, memorable courses like Toad's Turnpike, Yoshi's Island, and Bowser's Castle remain pretty cool.

Gameplay feels largely the same, with some tweaks to how drifting works by introducing slipstreaming to make actual racing a touch more satisfying. The arsenal of weapons saw some shifts, mostly the addition of the Blue Spiny Shell, which when acquired and launched, automatically struck the player in 1st place. This weapon began the growing usage of rubber band mechanics to make the A.I. less hard, but also means the overall skill level would get gradually reduced into just firing shit at each other.

They got rid of the feather from SNES Kart, which was a super jump used to clear red shells fired at you or to find shortcuts. The weapons end up being more emphasized to just hit people with, rather than used creatively, and the overall meta to Mario Kart 64 just feels a little more dumbed down by comparison to SNES Kart. 

The sound. The music and sound effects are good, the in-house Nintendo band put together some solid scores for Mario Kart 64. That, I won't argue. I do, however, hate that from this point on, I'd have to listen to the obnoxious squeaking, yelping, and screeching of these Mario personalities, who can't form a coherent sentence. Voices in Mario games remain a unappealing to me. I don't care how iconic Charles Martinet's performance is, I've never liked the Italian stereotype Mario and Luigi voices. Not because they're stereotypical, but because they sound like handing a live mic to an individual who was supposed to give a dissertation on nuclear fusion, but suffered a grade three concussion beforehand. I miss the performances of Captain Lou Albano and Danny Wells as Mario and Luigi from the Super Show. All the "Ok!?" and "Select-a your player!" every time you go to a menu, it eats away at my audio receptors.

Mario Kart 64 does have a ton of replay value. After finishing the Circuits on 150cc, the game reboots, rendering all the courses backwards, which is pretty cool. Battle Mode does have 4-player options, but I really wasn't that much of a fan of 64's stages, they cater towards the multi-tiered design, but there was something a little bland about them, and other than vanilla Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U, is probably my least played Battle mode in a Mario Kart game.

Kart 64 is solid, plays well, has some great nostalgic value for an N64 library I felt was thin at the time, and shines the most with its multiplayer. But overall, I feel it was a step backwards from the first one.