A screwed up Grand Prix mode but a great overall game
The game features all of the characters from Mario Kart 64, and their ranked either Lightweight with Peach, Toad, and Yoshi. Balanced with Mario and Luigi, and Heavyweight with DK, Wario, and Bowser. They actually did a good job on having the eight racers differ from each other.
Theres three modes in this game, Grand Prix, Time Trial, and Quick Run. The first mode im gonna talk about is the Grand Prix mode. There are 5 cups in all, Mushroom Cup, Flower Cuo, Lightning Cup, Star Cup, and Special Cup, along with the 20 unlockable SNES tracks. In my opinion, this mode suffers from a lot. First of all, I hate the coin system in this game and i know why it was never used again. Now, you star a race wuth five coins and there are a lot of other coins throughout the tracks. The more coins you collect, the faster you go. Every time a rival kart bumps into you, you lose a coin, if you reach zero, you spin out of control, and the AI is really cheap when doing this. Secondly, when you fall off the track or fall into a pit of water or fall in water, Lakitu takes FOREVER to get you back on the track, while i saw a rival kart fall off, and he was put directly back on the track, very very cheap. I also think there are way too many obstacles in this one, way too many. The turning in this game is pretty bad too, its just not tight enough.
Time Trial is a great mode, basicly what your doing is racing against the clock by yourself on any track, with no items but three mushrooms you get from the start. You can also save you replays, which is a great feature. The only complaint is that if you hit say like a wall that disapears or hit an obstacle or fall off the track, you cant save the replay or face the ghost later.
Quick Run is just racing on any track you want, the reason its better than Grand Prix mode is because you can turn the coin system off. You can watch the replays of your races, but you cant save them which is kinda unfortunate.
The items in this game are simple, i dont think there are any new ones from the previous ones, unless the spiny one is. I really like the tracks in this one, my favorites including all the Bowsers Castles, both Boo levels, Cheese Land, the DK level, Ribbon Road, and Mario Circuit.
Final Comments: A great game, but if you dont already have it, get DS instead, unless your a Hardcore Mario Kart fan.