Despite all its faults, you'll love it no less
Mario and co need no reason as to get toegther to race, they just go along and do it. This is actully good as if they put a story in it would have been pointless so high five Nintendo!
Anyway when you load up you pick how many people are going to play, we'll start with the single player experaince. From there you pick either Grand Prix or Time Trials, time Trials explains itself. When you pick Grand Prix you are given a choice of 3 classes, (50cc, 100cc, 150cc and you can also later unlock EXTRA class which lets you race on the tracks backwards!) when you have chosen that you pick your character. There are the same character's as before, except they have replaced Donkey Kong Jr with Donkey Kong and Koopa Trooper for Wario. Then you will be happy to note that all tracks are availble from the get go, this may annyoy people who wished for a challange but whatever, it's time to race!
Ok so I'd guess I'd better state here and now that one of the biggest problems Mario Kart 64 has is that your Kart is magnetic, let me explain. In the race there will always be 2 characters who are "Magnetically attracted" to your Kart, no matter how fast you go they will always catch up to you very quickly and go alot faster than all the other karts. And when they finnaly do catch up to you they slow down and just hover infront and behind you at the same speed as you go, ofcourse if you go far to slow they will go ahead but for the mostpart they'll stay with you. This can ruin people's experaince of the game because this can make race's predictable to a certain extent and can also make the game incredably easy, however some people enjoy it as it always makes the game feel tense and a photo finish, I'll leave it up to you to decide.
There is a total of 16 tracks to try out, so thats an extra 4 from the last one. One big gripe which people have is that the tracks have been noticable increased in tersm of width, this can make people belive it's not as hectic as before. And to a certain extent this is true, but for the most part it can still be very hectic and get quite intense. Unlike normal racing games most tracks here have enemie's lurching on them, be carefull and try to avoid Monty Mole's, Thwomps, Bats and many more creatures that try to stop you from victory.
As with before items play a big part of winning a race, if you don't use them your almost garenteed to lose. You have all the same items as before (Minus the Feather) but the game also introduces many more items at your disposal. You can try out a blue shell which goes after the person in 1st place, a fake items box and a Boo which turns you invicable and can steal other peoples wepons. Also you'll now able to pick up three red and three green shells at the same time. All of this combined cause massive mayhem which is what makes the game so fun, the items are suprisablely well ballanced and you shan't be bombarded by blue shells and lightning bolts as they are rare, so you need'nt worry about the balance syetm in tersm of items. Its as I said before the magent's which will cause most of the problems.
On a graphicall front the game is simple, some tracks look a little dull (with not enough detail) and too "pilotwingsy." But some tracks like Rainbow Road are truely a sight to behold. (even though Rainbow road is compltly ruined as they decided to put barriers all round and make it extremely long, astleast it looks good.) As long as you don't get to close the characters look good, but get any closer than far away you'll not be most pleased. The drivers are all pre-rendered sprites, and look pretty good unless you get too close... But the use of sprites didn't stop Nintendo from implementing lighting effects: When you drive into a tunnel, your driver gets darker, when you drive by lava you turn red and when you fall into the icy water you look blue, it's these little things which make it good.
On the music front yet another high five for Nintendo! The tracks are very well done and far improve from the original, ok sure the speech samples do get annyoying fast (Especially Toad!) the music is very good. And the credit song has to be one of the best tracks produced for the N64. Sound effects are all good too and it really is satisying to hit sombody with a shell as a comical bomb noise ensues!
Ok on to the meat of the game, mulitiplayer! This is where most people will spend there time. When playing with two players you can do Gran Prix, VS and Battle. VS is just one on one and battle is a intresting game I'll go onto later. On Three and four player modes you cannot do Grand Prix strangly, this must be due to technicall issues. But even so on VS mode the frame rate is very good, sure they made a few small changes like the train on the desert leval being slighlty smaller but nothing really noticable.
Battle is a very cool mode which should please most people. Each person starts off with 3 ballons, each time you get hit you lose one, so the aim of the game is to make your opponent(s) lose all of there ballons. This can be very fun but if you do it on 4 player can drag on abit. So all in all Multiplayer is the best conponent of the game.
Replay Value is questionable, they gave you all of the tracks to begin with so there really is nothing making you want to play single player. (Unless you wanna unlock EXTRA mode) But multiplayer can provide hours apon hours apon HOURS of fun, so it depends on what you like doing.
Ok so is it better than the orginal, my personal opion is yes. So what if it is far to easy, mostly dull tracks, magnified opponents, wider tracks etc. Despite all of the faults, you'll love it no less
Thanks for Reading