The N64 outing was the first Mario Kart game to
offer ‘mirrored’ tracks – essentially the game’s core
tracks, except experienced backwards. It was an
inexpensive way of providing new, fresh challenges,
and for the most part an unexciting one – until you
reach Toad’s Turnpike, where suddenly you find
yourself racing amidst oncoming traffic.
CLASSIC LEVEL
It’s-a-him again! You wouldn’t know it to look
at him, but Mario here is actually a 2D sprite.
To conserve the N64’s memory, Mario Kart 64’s
racers were 2D images drawn from various
angles, giving the illusion of them being three
dimensional. Mario 64’s Bob-ombs and Wigglers
also pulled this trick, known as billboarding.
CLASSIC HERO
02
T
he N64’s 3D graphics allowed
the flat-packed circuits we
saw in Super Mario Kart to
explode into life in a riotous
bloom of colour, charm and invention.
Track features that were beyond the
capabilities of the SNES suddenly
became possible, such as the death-
defying leaps of faith that punctuated
Royal Raceway and DK Jungle Parkway,
or the spine-juddering peaks and
troughs of the wild Wario Stadium.
Also new to the series was moving
enemies (Piranha Plants don’t count);
Sherbet Land’s caverns were populated
by killer penguins defending their turf,
while roving Chain Chomps prowled
Rainbow Road, looking for fenders
to bend. And who can forget the one
Easter Egg no-one wanted to unwrap- the spinning oval of doom waiting to
trash your race on the final straight of
the mazy Yoshi Valley?
The most enduring use of the N64’s
extra grunt however came with the
ever-popular battle mode, where
stubby 2D arenas ballooned into
tactically-rich, multi-layered affairs.
They were so vast that the developers
needed to implement a radar to help
the players find each other. 20 years
and countless sequels on, Nintendo still
hasn’t managed to better it.