Token Female Gamer

Chances are you have already played this game; if not on the DS then probably on the Wii or GameCube. It is not terribly shocking that Mario Kart DS is just like all of its predecessors. (Take note that Mario Kart for the Wii came out three years after this DS version!)

At its core, Mario Kart is a standard racing game. The whole gang is there, Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and so forth. Chose one of them and race around iconic Mario world racetracks.

What always made it incredibly fascinating for me was the focus on drifting. With three difficulty levels, mastering the drift is essential to winning, especially once the competition gets harder.

The tracks and characters are all pretty standard fare by now, but then maybe Mario Kart doesn’t really need anything new. It is after all an incredibly fun racing game.

Although I was a huge fan of the original Mario Kart (yes the one on the SNES), I’m just not a big enough fan of racing games to enjoy playing the same game over and over again. To date there are eight Mario Karts that have been released in the past eighteen years and not much changed.

Certainly little changes have been added over the years, even on the DS version. It was the first to add online multiplayer – a feature that I have never used. A feature that certainly doesn’t make up for the archaic controls on the DS.

Producing reliable and frequent Drift – drift being the entire purpose of the game – is much more difficult, as the DS is only equipped with a direction pad and not a mini joystick. The rapid left and right button mashing required for smooth drifting is something I was happy to leave behind with the SNES, as I was never any good at it. My Mario Kart star ascended into blinding heights only after the controllers came sporting mini joysticks.

I should add that I do appreciate the split screen aspect. The top screen is an over the shoulder view of your racer and the bottom screen gives a birds eye view of the entire track.

In general though it’s a game I have played enough as a single player and when I have a friendly match against friends I will always pick the Wii version over the DS.

Release date: November 14 2005
Website: http://www.mariokart.com/mkds/launch/index.html
Developer: http://www.nintendo.com/
Platform: DS
Genre: Drift Racing Game with Items. =D
Time played: Five hours

Rating

Tags: action, drifting, ds, mario, nintendo, online, racing, sports

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 9th, 2010 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Hand Held Computer Games, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.