(Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/15/2020)
[Image from igdb.com]
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre(s): Racing
Platforms: GCN
Release Date: November 7, 2003
Are the exclusives on the Gamecube being treated to a glowing renaissance of favorable reflection because we’ve simmered down considerably, or are we refusing to take off our rose-tinted glasses? Like whatever woman Thomas Dolby sang about, is the Gamecube blinding us with nostalgia? Younger folks may not remember, but the number of beloved GameCube games that were received contentiously upon their release is staggering. I’ve gone into detail on how Nintendo inflicted unorthodox artistry on Mario fans and Zelda fans with their respective GameCube entries, but their innovative integrity extended to Mario Kart. Hey, if Nintendo weren’t afraid that their two largest, brand-defining series were going to tank if they altered their foundational chemistry, they wouldn’t feel any hesitation with tweaking the properties of gaming’s most successful racing franchise. Unlike the Wind Waker that flirted with an aesthetic change and Super Mario Sunshine that placed Mario in a different setting with a hydro pack to complement his platforming, Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is an experiment with Mario Kart’s racing fundamentals. Given that they’ve never revisited this game’s core mechanic for any future titles, one would assume that the experiment floundered. Personally, and I think many could say the same, Nintendo should’ve shouted “eureka!”
The key component to Double Dash’s distinctiveness is fairly self-explanatory. Instead of having the Mushroom Kingdom’s finest compete while sitting in single-seater karts, Double Dash suggests that, well, doubling the characters to serve as a single combatant should spruce up the racing experience. One character sits up front behind the wheel while the other is perched in the back of the kart, ready to toss items at opponents. They can also be quickly swapped at the press of a button if the player wants to throw an item the driver might be holding, or if they want a different backside to look at from their perspective. One might worry that doubling the number of characters to perform the racing equation simultaneously will overly complicate the process. Still, it really is as simple as one character’s actions to the analog stick and acceleration button. At the same time, the other is attached to another on the controller, just like the control scheme of Mario Kart 64. In fact, despite the multifaceted driving elements at play, I’ve always found Double Dash to be far smoother to control on a fundamental level than Mario Kart 64, and I know for certain that it isn’t because I’ve logged several hours, days, weeks, and or years into one over the other. Double Dash has finally perfected the series’ drift mechanic that the player could use to comfortably navigate around curvy bends in the track or to execute a manual boost with acute timing and sufficient knowledge of the track’s layout. Skidding too sharply in one direction was too much of a stiff caveat to Mario Kart’s skill ceiling; thus, I never relied on it and never humored any difficulty past 100cc as a result. Now in Double Dash, the player can better maintain their footing on the track because the kart will only angle itself in the desired direction without sliding too harshly off the course. Alternate the control stick from left to right with slight vigor, and sparks shall fly while you boost as gracefully and proficiently as a Russian ballet dancer. Finally, dominating a Mario Kart game feels like a feasible achievement.
As for the racers in question, Double Dash does propose a pairing based on sensible attachments the characters might have from the mainline Mario series. Gaming doesn’t have a more iconic duo than Mario and Luigi, and their baby forms are equally as logical a match-up, albeit not nearly as notable. Still, I think that I prefer the dynamic between Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong from Donkey Kong Country, merely based on the strengths of the series they stem from. It makes perfect sense for Wario and Waluigi to team up, as they are the nefarious, uglier doppelgangers of the two plumber brothers, and Bowser should ideally chaperone his bratty spawn if he insists on racing with all of the grown-ups. As for the pairings of characters that have no familial attachments, Double Dash extends the rationale that Mario Tennis proposed by situating Peach and Daisy together as matriarchal royal figures, plus Yoshi and Birdo as odd fictional creatures within the Mushroom Kingdom (even if one is from another realm entirely and is a distinctive character instead of a breed of creature). The returning Koopa Troopa and the Mario Kart debutante, Paratroopa, are the non-descript team of the Mushroom Kingdom’s varied ecosystem, a pair that I can best describe as…interracial? Sticking to the pairings with obvious chemistry is all fine and dandy, but I doubt that curiosity wouldn’t strike in any player who wants to shuffle the selection of this board. The players can formally ship Luigi and Daisy, or perhaps Waluigi and Daisy if they feel like the taller, ganglier bizzaro version makes for a more suitable mate. When has Diddy Kong ever collaborated with Birdo, or Baby Mario with the green Koopa Troopa? For a moment, Mario can set aside his differences with Bowser and gleefully burn some rubber together, and that is a genuinely beautiful sight to behold.
However, the player must be aware of the size differences between Mario and the King Koopa and how they factor into the racing equation. Instead of the cookie-cutter karts that vary in color depending on the character driving them, Double Dash implements a bevy of distinct karts personalized to every available character. The babies drive karts that resemble carriages, Yoshi rides around on a kart with his own green dopey visage on it, Wario steers his dark purple “batmobile” as seen in Wario Land 4, etc. Even though the wide range of pairing choices may indicate that the player can make like Burger King and have it their way, Double Dash does establish some ground rules on which karts can seat the array of combinations. Only the small characters, such as the babies, the koopas, Diddy Kong, and Bowser Jr. fit in the dinkier karts. Characters of medium size, such as Mario, Peach, and Birdo, can’t squeeze into any of the small karts, but they can choose a tinier partner to accompany them while they reside in their balanced automobiles. Bowser, Wario, and Donkey Kong have the widest partner pool, but they’ll be restricted to only the three karts that are able to support their heftier masses. Like the karts in the previous Mario Kart titles, there are specific stats to be mindful of when choosing one, and they are neatly illustrated to the player in great detail, like in Super Circuit. While few karts possess the same stats, the significant differences boil down to three classes of karts that coincide with size. Smaller karts have impeccable acceleration properties but are more susceptible to being battered off the track by larger karts. Medium karts have balanced stats all around, while heavier karts are glass cannons that run like the wind until they have to recuperate considerably upon taking any amount of damage. I said before that assigning stats to the karts in any Mario Kart game is counterintuitive to the series’ accessibility. In the case of Double Dash, there are so many variables to consider with selecting two characters and their kart that it verges into an unprecedented realm of strategy. Suddenly, Mario Kart became as build-oriented as an RPG.
Does Double Dash do anything radically different with its courses as much as the characters that race on them? Not exactly, but the collective of sixteen courses is the strongest the series has seen, or at least contains fewer duds compared to Mario Kart 64. Immediately, the starting Luigi Circuit, which is intended to be simple so the player can stretch their racing skills, marks the first course where players can collide with racers on the opposite side of the track due to its skinny figure 8 design. Mushroom City channels the rampant nightlife of an urban area while providing several alternate paths to drive down without obscuring the player’s placement due to confusion, like in Yoshi Valley. Daisy Cruiser takes place on a vibrant cruise ship where the player must dodge swaying tables. Dry Dry Desert from Paper Mario features tons of obstacles like pokies and tornadoes, with a piranha plant sinkhole that swallows players like the Sarlaac pit. Wario Colosseum is a Thunderdome with the tightest track designs, where one slight miscalculation in turning could result in Lakitu fetching for you as everyone leaves you in the dust. My favorite of the bunch is easily DK Mountain, mostly because launching oneself from the arborous jungle to the craggy elevated terrain on the grounds of an erupting, pissed-off-looking volcano via a giant barrel cannon felt so bloody epic when I was a child. Traversing around the feet and face of a friendly brontosaurus in Dino Dino Park is also a treat. As for the courses that persist with a new iteration for every Mario Kart title, Bowser’s Castle and Rainbow Road are both stunning in their respective ways. The former has never looked so witchy and gothic, and the giant Bowser mechanism that spits fireballs is a nice touch with the castle’s defenses. Rainbow Road does not exude the same journey-ending sensation as the one from Mario Kart 64, but it does truly live up to the standard of being the climactic course of a Mario Kart by easily being the hardest to navigate through without falling. The shooting stars, the yogurt texture of the track, and the twinkling cityscape seen below it are all nice touches.
Besides the exquisite themes and set pieces, I suppose the most distinctive element to the courses of Double Dash is the peculiar, pervasive atmosphere encompassing all of them. No, I don’t mean on a thematic level, but the exhilarating tension of combat. Yes, Double Dash’s racing is hectic enough that it is indeed comparable to the frantic bedlam of battle. Some courses even revel in the chaos like Waluigi Stadium, which is filled to the brim with obstacles amongst cramped, muddy tracks with bumps and ramps galore. Really, the track that epitomizes the insanity of Double Dash is Baby Park, the most deceptive course in the game on account of its theme, simplistic figure 8 design, and designation in the easier Mushroom Cup section. In actuality, it’s the track that separates the men from the boys (or babies in this case, I suppose). What this elementary oval fosters, inadvertently or not, is an absolute barrage of blasting and being blasted by items by everyone no matter their position in the race. Bananas will be littered about along with the fake item boxes, and shells will ricochet around like pinballs, so the player can catch strays from all angles.
The item insanity of Double Dash is already a byproduct of having two characters holding two items per kart, but what really kicks the pandemonium up a notch is the newly introduced special items. In an uncommon roll of the item dice that also depends on one’s current placement in the race, a character-specific special item may appear to give them the edge amongst the competition. Mario and Luigi hurl a line of red and green fireballs, respectively. The Bowsers will chuck their giant thorned backsides at players with great velocity, Wario and Waluigi whip a goddamn Bob-omb out of their asses, and the babies will blaze through the tracks as an attached Chain Chomp lays waste to all racers in its wake. Even the Kong’s inert giant banana could be devastating when tactically placed in an inconvenient position. While I’m on the subject of Double Dash items bound to pulverize the player, the blue shell finally lives up to its reputation as the feared equalizer of the series, flying over the losers to guarantee that whoever is in first place feels its wrath. Just the hiss of this item as it approaches strikes dread in me, whereas it evokes pity in Mario Kart 64. Above all else, I think the smorgasbord of items that clutter the tracks is why Double Dash was met with criticism on its release, citing that the unpredictability of it all lowered the skill ceiling to the mindless dregs of a party game. Maybe my decades of practice will render my argument null and void, but items hardly inhibit my road to victory on most occasions. I thrive in Double Dash’s unbridled mayhem, and anyone who puts enough effort into mastering the game’s controls and track layouts will also view the items as a minute source of adversity.
Despite the overwhelming nature of the racing, Double Dash promises to make every hellacious escapade worth your while. Somehow, in four entries, Double Dash debuts the concept of unlockables to preserve the player’s attention. The player is awarded with an unlockable per first placement overall for each cup and their difficulty levels, and these range between a smattering of wonderful augmentations. Additional karts will be added, and I am quite fond of both Waluigi’s purple Hot Wheels racer and Diddy Kong’s barrel train. Some karts will also be unveiled behind two pairs of unlockable characters, and adding them to the roster takes tackling the steeper 150cc difficulty. One might assume that the Koopas have replaced Toad as the commonplace character of the crew, but Peach’s underling had to be obscured behind a locked window because of one shocking revelation: he now has a girlfriend. Like Waluigi before her, Toadette was catapulted into existence to serve as a faithful partner to her male counterpart, evidently showing that Toads and Smurfs share the same sexual dynamic of one token female per civilization. Further down the line in “mirror mode,” King Boo and Petey Piranha are a pairing that shares the commonality of bosses that debuted in a Mario-related GameCube title, and their well-rounded pipe karts, matched with their ability to use any special item, make them quite formidable to race against. For completionists, accomplishing absolutely everything will unlock the parade kart, a heavy kart with incredible stats that is drivable by any character regardless of their weight class. The layers of gold lathered onto this vehicle is a bit gaudy for my tastes, but the player shouldn’t feel shy in gallivanting about in this uberkart for their achievements. Needless to say, hanging these potential rewards over the player’s heads obviously should give them enough incentive to endure all that Double Dash might inflict on them.
I guess I will concede that Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Is an acquired taste. It’s an experimental entry that twists the essences and mechanics of the series so radically that it feels like a removed deviation from the series instead of a cornerstone of the series’ continual evolution. Despite the tighter boosting mechanics and implementation of unlockables, Double Dash is perhaps too big a beast for the average Mario Kart player to conquer. If this weren’t the Mario Kart game that I grew up with, I’d probably harbor the same reservations towards it. Still, one can’t deny how distinctive an entry Double Dash is, especially since Nintendo hasn’t bothered to revisit the double kart mechanic for any subsequent titles in the series. Personally, the Ben-Hur-esque aggression that only Double Dash could possibly offer gets my motor running in a way that other entries in the series don’t quite tap into. Double Dash is exhilarating fun, but don’t expect the traditional Mario Kart fare.
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