Grand Prix Mode

Grand Prix is Double Dash!!'s primary racing mode, encompassing four different Cups, with 16 tracks total. When you first start the game, you'll have to take each Cup individually, but eventually you'll earn the right to put together a truly Grand Prix, consisting of all 16 courses strung together. There are three difficulties to start with: 50cc, the easiest; 100cc, a more challenging affair; and 150cc, where all of the artificial speed caps of the earlier modes are removed, thus allowing every kart to travel at full clip. You'll notice that your maximum speed increases as you move up in difficulty, but so does that of all of the other karts, meaning that the heavy racers like Donkey Kong and Wario will become quite formidable in the 150cc mode.

After you unlock it, Mirror Mode is considered to be a fourth difficulty setting. Although it's about as difficult as 150cc mode, all of the tracks in Mirror Mode are flipped, thus changing all right turns on a course into left turns, and vice versa. The main obstacles in Mirror Mode are your own habits; after playing through the tracks a dozen times or so in the normal difficulties, adjusting to the sudden shift in the cosmic equilibrium can take time, and you'll likely find yourself ramming into walls now and again before you get used to the new paradigm.

Finishing a Cup in first place unlocks a new kart, or other feature, but this is, of course, easier said than done. There are seven other karts in any given race, and the number of points you gain after each contest is based on where you finish:

1st place: 10 points
2nd place: 8 points
3rd place: 6 points
4th place: 4 points
5th place: 3 points
6th place: 2 points
7th place: 1 point
8th place: 0 points

It's obviously best to win every race, but that often isn't possible, especially in the later difficulty modes. The thing to keep in mind is that, in most Cups, you'll have one other kart that will continually challenge you for the lead, while the rest of the pack jostles around in the lower spots. If you want to win, you have to assume that this other kart (usually a heavy kart, often Donkey Kong or Wario) will come in second place every time you win a race, and will win every time you don't. In this worst-case scenario, you'll be able to grab a Gold medal in the Cup if you: win all four races (obviously); take three 1st places and anything down to 4th place; or take two 1st places and two 2nd places. These latter two options are based on the fact that a tie for first place at the end of a Cup will net you a Gold medal, just as surely as it would if you won outright. This setup allows you to have one or two "bad" races in a Cup, and still have a chance to take home the unlockable for that tournament. If you're extremely lucky, your primary competitor will run into a mishap in one of the races and finish out of second place, thus giving you a bit more leeway.

In addition to the four primary Cups, there's also an unlockable All Cup Tour, as mentioned, which consists of all 16 tracks in a row. The number of possible permutations in this race is far too many to be elucidated individually, but, suffice to say, the same rough math from the individual Cups apply. The order in which the tracks appear is random, save for the fact that Luigi Circuit is always first and Rainbow Road is always last. Luckily for you, there's a much better chance of you having two main competitors in an All Cup Tour, who will hopefully manage to shuffle between second and third place often enough for you to take a huge lead when you actually win races. By the 12th race or so, you should have a pretty good idea of whether or not it's going to be possible for you to win the Tour. If you're ever mathematically eliminated, just quit and start over; as per usual, there's no prize for a second-place finish.