Mario Kat DS has the same good gameplay that the other Mario Kart games had. It also features old techniques like drifting and mini-boost that make the gameplay seem cooler. Great items are back like red, green, and blue shells, and there are new ones like the bullet bill. The grand prix mode is better than ever featuring 8 cups, 4 cups with a total of 16 brand new tracks, and 4 cups with 16 retro tracks that have appeared on Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, Mario kart Super Circuit, or in Mario Kart Double Dash!! Mario Kart DS also has a brand new mission mode. The mission mode is is 6 levels of 8 missions and a boss level. These missions are simple tasks which can get quite tricky but they are helpful to master some of the game's techniques. Online game play is AWESOME. You find other players around the globe and play 4 races. The winner is the one with the most points at the end of the four races. In online games not al the tracks are available. Only half of them are available. There are rumours that there are people who can play all tracks online.
This game has some cool graphics. The characters are somewhat polygonal but they still look cool. The karts look superb. The tracks are intact but graphically they are better.
Mario Kart DS has good music. The retro tracks have the music intact. It sounds as good as if you were playing these tracks in their original games.
Mario Kart DS is one of the best racing games and the best game for the Nintendo DS. I really recommend it to all the DS owners.