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While on vacation in Disney World last week, Pale was excited to find that virtually every arcade on the property had at least one Mario Kart Arcade GP cabinet.
The game feels like a combination of classic Mario Kart and a standard arcade racer. Karts feel much looser than their console counterparts. Part of this feeling comes from the fact that you are controlling the game with a much more sensitive analog wheel. I found myself over-steering constantly when I first started playing. There are three main game modes; Grand Prix, Time Trial, and Multi-Player.
In Grand Prix, you choose a cup and then from within that cup you can work through the races. Each race requires another credit though, so it still amounts to one race per credit. If you play through to the end of a cup, you can take part in a fun bonus mission that is very similar to the mission mode in Mario Kart DS. In one example, you have to bounce a large melon to the goal before time runs out.
Time Trial mode is just as you would expect it. You are the only racer on a track and you try to get the fastest time possible. There are leader boards in the game so you can see how you stack up compared to other people who played at that cabinet.
In Multiplayer mode you can play against up to three other people depending on how many cabinets are linked together. If you don’t have a full set of four people, the game will add bots so that it is a four kart race.
The controls are simple. A force feedback wheel handles the steering, a single button where the horn should be handles item use, and two pedals handle gas, break, and hop. The force feedback on the wheel feels quite nice and many of the items in the game rely on it for some of their effectiveness. The pedals get the job done but aren’t overly interesting. In order to play effectively you must take a two footed approach. There is hopping in the game, but in order to do it you must tap the break pedal quickly while the gas pedal is being held down. This was a little strange at first, but I got used to it.
In many ways, the game has controls more similar to the original Super Mario Kart than to the other games. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a speed boost on a power slide. Sliding serves two purposes in the game. Like the original, you will not lose as much speed if you slide around a turn. New to this game, sliding also puts a shield around your character, which protects you from items. If this feature made it to future games, it could make snakers all the more frustrating. Not only would they move faster, but you couldn’t shoot them as easily.
One of the most entertaining features of the game is the camera mounted above the screen. Before each race, it snaps a picture of you. This picture is displayed by your racer in-game in much the same way the icons are displayed in Mario Kart DS. What makes it even more fun is that, based on which character you choose, props are placed around your photo. Yoshi sticks Yoshi eyes on your head, Mario gives you a hat and mustache, etc. I hope they release a peripheral that allows future Mario Karts to do something similar.
Namco advertises over 100 items in the game, but in all of my playing I probably only saw about a dozen. They are handled in kind of a strange way. During any race, when you hit a question block, you will randomly get one of only three items. The three available items are decided in a different way depending on the mode. In Time Trial mode, they will always be speed mushrooms. In Grand Prix, they are pre-determined based on the track. In Multiplayer, before the race begins, each player will stop a roulette that chooses which three items he or she can get. Here is a quick list of some of the items I saw. The names aren’t official.
- Oil Can – Drops an oil slick behind you that will spin out your opponents.
- Lightning Rod – Your character swings it like crazy, and any car that you bump into will get shocked and slow down.
- Tornado – You send a tornado out in front of you. This clears debris from the track and spins out opponents.
- Paint Brush – You vandalize your opponent’s picture and slow him down.
- Square Tires – You give your opponent’s kart square tires. This causes him to slow down and his steering wheel to shake almost uncontrollably.
- Hub Cap – You throw a hub cap-like thing out in front of you like a Frisbee. It squishes your opponent and slows him down.
- Super Mushroom – Your kart grows in size.
- Metal Mushroom – You transform into a metal kart and racer as in Super Mario 64. This gives you full weight statistics even if you chose a light kart.
- Speed Mushroom – Gives you a speed boost.
- Green Shell – Fires a green shell out in front of you. It moves much faster than in previous Mario Karts.
- Red Shell – Fires a red shell that seeks out your target.
- Dr. Mario Virus – Attaches a virus to your opponent. This causes his screen to blur and him to slow down. The virus can be passed on if the infected kart bumps into another kart.
Overall, the game is a lot of fun. Some of the tracks are only slight variations of other tracks, but there is a lot of meat there, considering it is an arcade game.
Mario Kart Arcade GP
