Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Best in series"

Mario Kart started on the SNES in 1992. From there, the Nintendo 64, Gameboy Advance and GameCube got their fair share of the franchise as it continued to evolve. 2005, Mario Kart came to the DS and evolved even further. As the first game in the series to go online along with over a dozen missions to complete, highly competitive A.I. and enough unlockables to keep you going, Nintendo went all out on the DS and did it deliver. Join the original cast of the first Mario Kart along with Donkey Kong and Wario, plus four unlockable drivers in your quest for the gold.

Like any arcade racer, drive through various tracks in a specific cup with three (or sometimes five) laps ahead of the pack and win. Thankfully, the controls on the DS are easy to understand and use. The only part of the game that may feel awkward is the drifting. In Double Dash, one spark from the wheels will ignite a speed boost while a second one increases the power and length of the boost. Mario Kart DS, the first spark does absolutely nothing and requires a second one in order to gain the necessary boost to get ahead of the competition. It's a little tricky to get use to that, but as time goes by on the track or practicing in Time Trials, it will come down in time.

Not much has changed in the presentation of Mario Kart. Grand Prix sets a single player against seven A.I racers on either 50CC (easy), 100CC (normal), 150CC (hard) and Mirror (very hard) in an attempt to earn the gold cup in eight specific events. Also, this Mario Kart becomes the first to introduce the "Retro" Cups. 16 tracks from the SNES, N64, GBA and GC are brought back to life on the DS with some minor tweaks to implement the hardware and it is a blast to go to the past again. Getting the gold cup is not easy though, as the A.I. is even tougher and can be quite formidable at the worse possible time. Other features include the standard Time Trials to practice on those rather annoying tracks that you constantly fall off of and Versus for specific races to your choosing or offline gaming with friends.

However, the one thing that makes Mario Kart DS stand out is easily the online mode and mission mode. The ability to show that you are as good as you brag to be to the entire world is here and mission mode adds more replay value to an already good game. Plenty of them start off rather simple such as collecting coins and racing through gates within a specific timeframe. Now the more challenges that are beaten, they get even harder along the way. Completing all the mission in one level will unlock a 'boss' mission which is a bit longer than the regular missions and a bit tougher as well. Also, these boss fights also have a knack of scratching your nostalgia bone with appearances of the Big Bully and Stone Hand bosses from Super Mario 64.

Amongst the other presentations of Mario Kart DS, the game looks pretty damn good and sounds well, despite some of the voices being repetitive (which is understandable) and one of the more rewarding Mario Kart games for its time. This franchise has been going on for twenty years now and with the content that the DS version has, this just may be the best Mario Kart game of them all.