Mario Kart DS

It's impossible to know what Mario's next adventure will be. He has practiced a lot of sports, has traveled throughout time and space, and has even been in the Olympics. In the early '90s, Nintendo introduced us to one of the most fun, competitive, and coolest titles in the Mushroom Kingdom: Mario Kart. The series has gone a long way since its beginnings, but now we're going to be looking at one of the most interesting titles: Mario Kart DS. It seems that Mario Kart titles are constantly improving, so let's see just how good Mario Kart DS is.

About the game

There's nothing to say about this game's plot, as in all other Mario Kart games, it doesn't exist. But the interesting part is that it really doesn't need one, it's the competitive part of the game that makes it interesting.

In Mario Kart DS the main game mode is the Grand Prix, where we choose a cup and race all the track in it. There's the GP Nitro, with four cups that feature four all-new tracks each, and there's also the GP Retro, which brings back many of the old-time favorites.

Not only that but it also includes the categories 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc. These are pretty much the difficulties of the game. As the number increases the more powerful your vehicle is, but so is everyone else's. Also you. At 150cc cars go way faster and are much harder to control than racing at 50c, but it sure is more fun.

One of the best?

The thing about Mario Kart games is that whenever a new one comes out, it immediately becomes the best one in the series. Except with Mario Kart Wii, even with how big of a success it was commercially. It's not comparable to how good the Mario Kart DS game ended up being.

Mario Kart DS delivered more single-player hours than any other Mario Kart title that came before. A total of 32 different tracks, 8 cups, and many other mini-games. You have to beat them in the different difficulties to unlock better vehicles and accessories. It's interesting to remark that they didn't include the double rides from Mario Kart Double Dash in GameCube, nor the different types of vehicles. But some of the most exciting races seen in the Mario Kart world up to that point took place in Mario Kart DS.

Review

At the moment of its release, Mario Kart DS was pretty much the best Mario Kart game out there. Not only was it exciting, with more tracks than ever before, local and online multiplayer, download play and more. But it also was portable, fun, colorful and addictive.

• Graphics and Visuals: The game made use of the DS power and delivered some nice 3D graphics. The character models looked great, and the tracks were amazing. Colorful, full of life and excellently designed, This game had some of the best looking tracks at the moment.

• Gameplay: Being released in the early days of the Nintendo DS you'd expect the game to over-use the touch screen, double screen, and microphone, but luckily it didn't. Tt barely even used any of those. You control your kart with the most basic, button-based controllers. The double screen worked wonders for the experience. They moved the map and positions of the characters out of the way in your main screen and displayed useful information in the bottom one. The gameplay is simple, and that's what makes it perfect.

• Sound: The music in this game is excellent, top-quality composition and sound quality made every race exciting. Each character had distinctive sounds and the karts had great sound effects too. The music helps build an exciting atmosphere for the races, with personalized music for each individual track.

It's Mario Kart, and it's finally online. Expect 30 courses, including many old favorites like Super Mario Kart, Mario Circuit 1 and Kart 64's Moo Moo Farm.

Like old-time Mario Kart. Double Dash's two-racers-per kart dynamic is out, while the hop move is back in, along with the usual lineup of characters and power-ups. The online mode only supported four racers in the version I played, but it was smooth and lag free. And though battle mode wasn't playable online, word is it should be for the final release.

Not much is going on in the touch screen department, but who has time to mess with that when you've got a red turtle shell homing in on your ass?