Mario Kart: Double Dash

Released November 17, 2003

Developed by Nintendo

Published by Nintendo

NWR Reviews: 9.0 - 8.5

Retrospective by Josh Daugherty

At E3 2002, Nintendo showed conference-goers a short clip of Mario Kart for the Nintendo GameCube. It was nothing more than a tech demo of Mario and Luigi swerving in small go-karts that showed Nintendo was working on a new game. Eventually that game became Mario Kart: Double Dash, a dream come true for any Mario Kart enthusiast looking forward to next-gen racing.

As a platform racer, Double Dash started off where Mario Kart 64 ended. Fantastic visuals, multiplayer seesaw races, finer-tuned power slides, and now two players on one kart. Each of the sixteen characters had unique power-ups and custom rides. Even with twice the passengers on one kart, the gameplay was practically identical to previous games in the series. The two-character kart teams meant you could hold two items at once, switch drivers, and even steal items from other players. It made races really crazy.

Multiplayer was wild, too. You and up to three friends could race around 16 Mushroom Kingdom courses, or battle it out in six different battle modes. Balloon Battle, Shine Thief, and Bob-omb Blast weren't as good as Mario Kart 64's legendary multiplayer modes, but Double Dash was still fun to play on its own merits. What set MKDD apart from the other Karts, however, was the ability to create multiplayer games for up to 16 players in LAN mode. Though the setup wasn't ideal—you needed four broadband equipped GameCubes, four TVs and four copies of the game all in the same room—if you were able to take advantage of it, you got to play one of the best multiplayer games the GameCube ever had.

Overall, Mario Kart: Double Dash was superior to most multiplayer racing games at the time, and is still ranked very high among all multiplayer racing games. The high replay factor has guaranteed its success. Though fans consider it the black sheep of the Mario Kart series, there is still a ton of fun inside Double Dash. That's why we consider it one of the GameCube's greatest games.

Jonathan Metts: "Three words: Cooperative Grand Prix. If you haven't played through every cup on every engine class with a friend handling weapons in the back, go dig up the disc and give Double Dash another chance. Also, show some damn respect for Baby Park, the best track not only in this game but also in Mario Kart DS."

David Trammell: "When I picked up Double Dash, I happened to be renting an apartment with my younger brother. He mostly gave up gaming years before, but the lure of Mario Kart was enough to pull him back in for a few weeks. We played the entire game, on all difficulties, in co-op. Despite him still being the far better racer out of the two of us, he decided to handle weapons while I took the wheel. I'll always remember Double Dash as a unique experience because of the unusual co-op mode, and I'll always be thankful for that last chance to play co-op with my bro."

Mike Gamin: "The Christmas after Mario Kart came out I made sure that all of my friends and relatives with Cubes bought a LAN adapter with their game. We had some great 16 player matches during that holiday season. They would have been even better if the LAN mode didn't completely suck. Why can't I pick my own racers? What is with this random silliness? It would have been nice if Nintendo put just a little effort into the mode."

Aaron Kaluszka: "To me, Mario Kart 64 was in many ways far inferior to the original Super Mario Kart. MKDD was a welcome improvement and had a much better Grand Prix mode, though a very disappointing battle mode. I was one of the few who did try to get WarpPipe working, though it usually resulted in half-rate matches at best. LAN play capability didn't go to waste, however, as one friend in my dorm had purchased a very large HDTV. We had several great sessions of 8-player MKDD on one screen."

Steven Rodriguez: "If you think Double Dash is an inferior Mario Kart game, you obviously haven't played any of the LAN multiplayer modes. Even though Nintendo botched it horribly with random character selection and forced split-screen on every television, once you got into the game all bets were off. With a full complement of 16 players, I believe Double Dash's multiplayer is the best in the entire series. Yes, even better than Mario Kart DS!"

A Dissenting Opinion

Mike Sklens: "I really think this is one of the worse Mario Kart games in the series. It's just too damn slow for my tastes, and way too easy. The new battle modes were fun, but it's a shame that the battle arenas all stunk. The multi-player and LAN aspects were cool, but nobody owned a Broadband connector and co-op was only alright with four people. This game just isn't that great, even if it did bring us the 'blue sparks'."

After a promising start to online gaming with the Dreamcast (may we never forget you), people wanted to see the new consoles have online games, too. Microsoft and Sony both announced online functionality for their new consoles, and Nintendo followed suit, announcing modem and broadband adapters for the GameCube. It took a while, but the GameCube got its first online game in the form of Phantasy Star Online Episodes I&II, a port of the Dreamcast original with extra content added. The following year at E3, Nintendo announced that Double Dash, 1080 Avalanche and Kirby Air Ride would be the first GameCube games that used the Nintendo GameCube Broadband Adapter for local area network (LAN) play.

After that, there were virtually no games that used the GC Internet adapters. The Nintendo games that supported them were underwhelming, the only domestic online game was pay-to-play, and developers received absolutely no support from Nintendo in how to make their online games work for the GameCube. Although third-party applications like Warp Pipe and XLink Kai let people play LAN games over the Internet, it was a hassle to set up, and barely playable at that.

The absence of an online infrastructure for the GameCube was likely one of the contributing factors to the system's premature demise. Had Nintendo showed a serious interest in the online field back then, the GameCube might have stood a better chance. The silver lining of the failure of GameCube online is that Nintendo learned from their mistakes. Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection is the network that currently powers DS games and will soon power online Wii games.