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This thread has been linked to the game 'Mario Kart Double Dash'.
Thought some of you might be intrested in reading this, it's from Insider so don't complain that I didn't just post the link.
Oh and I'm not trying to boost my word count because I couldn't give a fook about it.
Game sounds amazing.
It's the game you've been waiting for: Mario Kart. There's no other kart racing franchise in the world like it, and the time has finally come to welcome Nintendo's next iteration to GameCube. We all knew that it was coming long before Nintendo itself even revealed the game back in 2001. As one of the most widely loved games the publisher has ever dreamed into existence, Mario Kart's universal appeal guaranteed it a spot in the GameCube library. But until now, no one -- not even Mario himself -- knew how the game would play. Then a few short weeks back, Nintendo dropped the first details of the game, including its official title: Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Now, here at the E3 2003 showroom floor, we've finally played Nintendo's latest masterpiece for ourselves, and this is what we experienced.
Properly spelled with two exclamation points just like the classic Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, Double Dash!! looks to take the franchise into both familiar and innovative territory with its dual rider gameplay design. That's right -- one kart, two of your favorite Nintendo characters at the helm as you whip around the classic Nintendo tracks hucking banana peels and turtle shells all over again. Except this time on GameCube, we're treated to new variations of our favorite courses and weapons, in addition to a much needed graphical and frame-rate overhaul. These common sense features are to be expected from the GameCube sequel, but the burning question remains: how does Double Dash!! play? We've done the dirty deed ourselves -- many times over, in fact -- here at Nintendo's E3 booth, and we've pried our fingers from the controllers to give you the full scoop.
For starters, the E3 demo lets players pick from one of 16 characters: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Koopa Troopa, Koopa Paratroopa, Yoshi, Birdo, Bowser, Baby Bowser, Wario, and Waluigi. *Phew* -- not a bad list of playable characters for an early E3 version! We know what you're thinking: "No Toad? Ack!" While Nintendo would not confirm which characters will be immediately available in the final build of the game, it did specifically state that the layout of the character selection screen should not be considered an indication of how many (if any) secret, unlockable characters will be in the final version.
Mario and Bowser team up for the first time!
As mentioned, Double Dash!! lets players pick not one, but two of their favorite Nintendo chums to pile into the same kart and hit the asphalt. Players begin the selection process by first picking their driver, and then immediately selecting their backseat rider. All players are free to pick simultaneously, so you'll have to be quick in four-player matches to snag your favorite racers if you don't want to be stuck with the less popular Bowser and Donkey Kong heavyweights (characters can only be selected once). After both characters are locked in, you'll next pick your kart -- a first for Mario Kart titles. Each kart is clearly distinguished as belonging to a particular character, but anyone is free to select any kart they'd like, with a few restrictions. For example, the larger characters such as Wario will not be able to squeeze into Baby Mario's tiny ride, and likewise, Baby Bowser is far too short to steer Donkey Kong's wooden barrel machine. The middle-ground characters like Mario and Yoshi can pilot whichever karts they want, making them the most balanced choices of the bunch, as always.
In the past, rider characteristics were determined by whichever Nintendo character was selected, but in Double Dash!! you'll pick two characters and a kart, so what determines things like handling, weight, and max speed? According to Nintendo, that's now tied strictly to the kart selected, not the characters. So if you go with Wario's fat, purple roadster, you'll be cruising a little heavy compared to Mario's spicy, red hotrod. There's also some strategy involved in picking your two riders, as each will bring his or her own special abilities to the race -- more on that later.
The final version of the game will, of course, feature a slew of colorful Nintendo courses (hopefully including the trademark "Rainbow Road" favorite), but here at E3, we're limited to a selection of three: "Luigi Grand Prix," "DK Mountain," and "Mushroom City." If you've played the N64 version of Mario Kart at all, then you'll probably have a good idea of the types of landscapes painting each of these distinct courses. Luigi GP features a simple asphalt roadway with grassy shoulders and nice straight-aways. DK Mountain is easily the most curvaceous of the three, with snaking chicanes and switchbacks littering a downhill mountainside slope that's lined by deadly cliffs, a massive barrel cannon that shoots racers for 10 seconds through the air, and a floppy wooden bridge just before the finish line. Mushroom City is similar in style to Mario Kart 64's "Toad's Turnpike," where blocky moving vans and cars crisscross around city blocks as riders swerve through multiple paths and attempt to follow ambiguous traffic pointers to stay on course. All three feel very much a part of the Mario Kart universe, and each requires several laps of playtime before learning their individual intricacies and mastering their hidden shortcuts.
Control-wise, Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is much simpler in some ways and more complex in others. The A button hits the gas and B brakes, and either L or R can be used to power-slide around corners. One interesting note: the classic hop when hitting the trigger is now gone for reasons unknown, and the wonderful depth of the N64 slide technique has now reverted back to the basic drift found in the SNES and GBA versions. This means that you'll no longer be toggling your control sticks back and forth as you attempt to squeeze out a quick speed boost -- just mash a trigger and drift around the corner like everybody else. While Nintendo states that this could change in the near future, we must admit that we certainly hope it finds a way to inject the wonderful depth and technique invented in the N64 hit back into the GameCube sequel.
Check out Yoshi's pimpin' ride.
While the driving controls have been toned down, the item warfare has been significantly improved, making this latest GameCube Mario Kart title a vast improvement in dishing out the Nintendo-flavored pain. Players can hit either the X or Y buttons to use items depending on their personal preferences, as both function the same. Now here's where the added depth of the dual-rider setup comes into play. As players race over the multicolored, rotating item blocks lining the track, they'll trigger the slot machine item selection window as before, and hitting the Y or X buttons will stop the spinning and select an item for use. Although the ability to hold down the item button and trail an item behind your kart has been removed, in some ways, it's for the better. Keep reading.
Each of the two characters in your cart can hold an item, and only the backseat passenger can dish them out while the front character mans the wheel. This means that when an item is picked up, players can press the Z button to swap the characters' positions and pick up a second item. The switching animation is very fast and seamless, as both riders simultaneously swing around the side of the kart and swap seats without skipping a beat. So if you're in last place and snag yourself a really good item (as will often occur when you're trailing behind), you can pocket that bad boy by switching riders and keeping it up front for a while. This means that Mario Kart players can finally bust out a lighting bolt when in first place or save a cluster of red shells for that pesky second place racer looking to make his move.
But what's the disadvantage to only using items with a single character while the other holds onto something special? Each Nintendo favorite comes with special items that only that character has the chance to pick up within the item blocks. For example, when Bowser stops the slot machine from spinning, he has a chance to earn a special, super-sized, spikey Bowser shell that consumes over half the width of the track and destroys all racers in its path. If Bowser is busy hanging on to a star item in the front seat, then the player is missing out on the chance to snag that item in the back. This tradeoff adds much more strategy to Double Dash!!'s item usage than the old-school method of pulling items behind the karts, and we definitely approve.
One thing missing from this new item storage system is the ability to protect your backside from oncoming projectile attacks such as the deadly seeking red shells. To make up for it, Nintendo has designed a system that isn't yet functional in this E3 version. As items such as red shells zero in on their targets, players will be able to spot them for a brief second before impact and actually dodge them by pulling off a drift maneuver. Nintendo is still tweaking the move, so we'll have to wait a bit until we test it out for ourselves, but we're certainly glad to hear that its in the works. Something else that's supposedly still coming (yet not in the E3 version) is the ability to recover from banana slides by tapping the brake; hang in there, Nintendo says that we're likely to find it in the final game, and we're very thankful for it.
Another cool defensive move that we actually witnessed for ourselves is something that we like to call the "backseat item swipe." If an itemless racer pulls up close to a nearby enemy kart that's carrying an item, he'll reach over and swipe it right out of their hands. It's a move similar to the old ghost item that's sure to cause much angst in heated multiplayer matches. There's still no word if ghosts are in the game or what the final item list will offer, but we can confirm that we have seen green and red shells (single and groups of three), stars, lighting bolts, mushrooms (single and groups of three), banana peels, and the famous spikey, blue turtle shell that seeks out and destroys the first place kart -- except this time, it has wings. The sucker just flies through the air and dive-bombs the leader from above, causing an explosion that will even rock nearby racers within a fairly large radius. Now that's the kind of firepower that we've been looking forward to in our GameCube sequel!
We've also been looking forward to GameCube's graphical enhancements, and we must admit to being slightly skeptical based on Nintendo's early, pre-E3 batch of screenshots released last month. But after seeing the game in motion before our very eyes, we're truly very satisfied with the brightly colored eye-candy presented in Double Dash!!. The framerate is a solid 60 frames per second, and it even holds up perfectly in four-player split-screen mode. (While most kiosks here at the show are set up for single or four-player split screen gameplay, Nintendo is also showcasing Mario Kart's eight-player LAN support at its booth -- we'll be back with a full, separate report of how they've set it up, how it looks, and how smoothly it performs using the GameCube's broadband adapter and local-area network connections.)
Four-player should be awesome, but eight-player LAN will be pure heaven.
Double Dash!!'s animations especially are extremely well done and detailed. Characters riding in the back of your kart feature custom animations that are appropriate for the items being used. For example, they'll hold a banana in hand and turn around to face either forward or backward depending upon whether you decide to toss it ahead or behind your kart. As you get close enough to swipe an opponent's item, you'll see your backseat partner literally lean over, extend his arm, and grab the item from the hands of the poor, helpless victim. If you snag a multi-item such as three mushrooms, you'll watch them juggle and balance the bunch as you prepare to absorb the boost. It looks very polished, but you'll have to pry your eyes from the oncoming obstacles to consciously take note of them.
The style is still very cartoony and the pace is still nowhere near the mind-melting speeds found in F-Zero GX, but Double Dash!! looks, feels, and plays exactly how a GameCube Mario Kart title should here at E3 2003. With twice as many lovable Nintendo characters packed onto the screen as before, resisting this charm should prove twice as tough for even the most jaded of Nintendo critics. Even as we sit and transcribe these gameplay details and impressions, the only thing truly occupying our brainwaves are fantasies of returning to the show floor and getting another round of Double Dash!! under our belts. We'll be back with first downloadable gameplay footage of Mario Kart just as soon as we can get back out there, so sit tight and check back very soon to see it in motion for yourselves!
Oh and I'm not trying to boost my word count because I couldn't give a fook about it.
Game sounds amazing.
It's the game you've been waiting for: Mario Kart. There's no other kart racing franchise in the world like it, and the time has finally come to welcome Nintendo's next iteration to GameCube. We all knew that it was coming long before Nintendo itself even revealed the game back in 2001. As one of the most widely loved games the publisher has ever dreamed into existence, Mario Kart's universal appeal guaranteed it a spot in the GameCube library. But until now, no one -- not even Mario himself -- knew how the game would play. Then a few short weeks back, Nintendo dropped the first details of the game, including its official title: Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Now, here at the E3 2003 showroom floor, we've finally played Nintendo's latest masterpiece for ourselves, and this is what we experienced.
Properly spelled with two exclamation points just like the classic Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, Double Dash!! looks to take the franchise into both familiar and innovative territory with its dual rider gameplay design. That's right -- one kart, two of your favorite Nintendo characters at the helm as you whip around the classic Nintendo tracks hucking banana peels and turtle shells all over again. Except this time on GameCube, we're treated to new variations of our favorite courses and weapons, in addition to a much needed graphical and frame-rate overhaul. These common sense features are to be expected from the GameCube sequel, but the burning question remains: how does Double Dash!! play? We've done the dirty deed ourselves -- many times over, in fact -- here at Nintendo's E3 booth, and we've pried our fingers from the controllers to give you the full scoop.
For starters, the E3 demo lets players pick from one of 16 characters: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Koopa Troopa, Koopa Paratroopa, Yoshi, Birdo, Bowser, Baby Bowser, Wario, and Waluigi. *Phew* -- not a bad list of playable characters for an early E3 version! We know what you're thinking: "No Toad? Ack!" While Nintendo would not confirm which characters will be immediately available in the final build of the game, it did specifically state that the layout of the character selection screen should not be considered an indication of how many (if any) secret, unlockable characters will be in the final version.
Mario and Bowser team up for the first time!
As mentioned, Double Dash!! lets players pick not one, but two of their favorite Nintendo chums to pile into the same kart and hit the asphalt. Players begin the selection process by first picking their driver, and then immediately selecting their backseat rider. All players are free to pick simultaneously, so you'll have to be quick in four-player matches to snag your favorite racers if you don't want to be stuck with the less popular Bowser and Donkey Kong heavyweights (characters can only be selected once). After both characters are locked in, you'll next pick your kart -- a first for Mario Kart titles. Each kart is clearly distinguished as belonging to a particular character, but anyone is free to select any kart they'd like, with a few restrictions. For example, the larger characters such as Wario will not be able to squeeze into Baby Mario's tiny ride, and likewise, Baby Bowser is far too short to steer Donkey Kong's wooden barrel machine. The middle-ground characters like Mario and Yoshi can pilot whichever karts they want, making them the most balanced choices of the bunch, as always.
In the past, rider characteristics were determined by whichever Nintendo character was selected, but in Double Dash!! you'll pick two characters and a kart, so what determines things like handling, weight, and max speed? According to Nintendo, that's now tied strictly to the kart selected, not the characters. So if you go with Wario's fat, purple roadster, you'll be cruising a little heavy compared to Mario's spicy, red hotrod. There's also some strategy involved in picking your two riders, as each will bring his or her own special abilities to the race -- more on that later.
The final version of the game will, of course, feature a slew of colorful Nintendo courses (hopefully including the trademark "Rainbow Road" favorite), but here at E3, we're limited to a selection of three: "Luigi Grand Prix," "DK Mountain," and "Mushroom City." If you've played the N64 version of Mario Kart at all, then you'll probably have a good idea of the types of landscapes painting each of these distinct courses. Luigi GP features a simple asphalt roadway with grassy shoulders and nice straight-aways. DK Mountain is easily the most curvaceous of the three, with snaking chicanes and switchbacks littering a downhill mountainside slope that's lined by deadly cliffs, a massive barrel cannon that shoots racers for 10 seconds through the air, and a floppy wooden bridge just before the finish line. Mushroom City is similar in style to Mario Kart 64's "Toad's Turnpike," where blocky moving vans and cars crisscross around city blocks as riders swerve through multiple paths and attempt to follow ambiguous traffic pointers to stay on course. All three feel very much a part of the Mario Kart universe, and each requires several laps of playtime before learning their individual intricacies and mastering their hidden shortcuts.
Control-wise, Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is much simpler in some ways and more complex in others. The A button hits the gas and B brakes, and either L or R can be used to power-slide around corners. One interesting note: the classic hop when hitting the trigger is now gone for reasons unknown, and the wonderful depth of the N64 slide technique has now reverted back to the basic drift found in the SNES and GBA versions. This means that you'll no longer be toggling your control sticks back and forth as you attempt to squeeze out a quick speed boost -- just mash a trigger and drift around the corner like everybody else. While Nintendo states that this could change in the near future, we must admit that we certainly hope it finds a way to inject the wonderful depth and technique invented in the N64 hit back into the GameCube sequel.
Check out Yoshi's pimpin' ride.
While the driving controls have been toned down, the item warfare has been significantly improved, making this latest GameCube Mario Kart title a vast improvement in dishing out the Nintendo-flavored pain. Players can hit either the X or Y buttons to use items depending on their personal preferences, as both function the same. Now here's where the added depth of the dual-rider setup comes into play. As players race over the multicolored, rotating item blocks lining the track, they'll trigger the slot machine item selection window as before, and hitting the Y or X buttons will stop the spinning and select an item for use. Although the ability to hold down the item button and trail an item behind your kart has been removed, in some ways, it's for the better. Keep reading.
Each of the two characters in your cart can hold an item, and only the backseat passenger can dish them out while the front character mans the wheel. This means that when an item is picked up, players can press the Z button to swap the characters' positions and pick up a second item. The switching animation is very fast and seamless, as both riders simultaneously swing around the side of the kart and swap seats without skipping a beat. So if you're in last place and snag yourself a really good item (as will often occur when you're trailing behind), you can pocket that bad boy by switching riders and keeping it up front for a while. This means that Mario Kart players can finally bust out a lighting bolt when in first place or save a cluster of red shells for that pesky second place racer looking to make his move.
But what's the disadvantage to only using items with a single character while the other holds onto something special? Each Nintendo favorite comes with special items that only that character has the chance to pick up within the item blocks. For example, when Bowser stops the slot machine from spinning, he has a chance to earn a special, super-sized, spikey Bowser shell that consumes over half the width of the track and destroys all racers in its path. If Bowser is busy hanging on to a star item in the front seat, then the player is missing out on the chance to snag that item in the back. This tradeoff adds much more strategy to Double Dash!!'s item usage than the old-school method of pulling items behind the karts, and we definitely approve.
One thing missing from this new item storage system is the ability to protect your backside from oncoming projectile attacks such as the deadly seeking red shells. To make up for it, Nintendo has designed a system that isn't yet functional in this E3 version. As items such as red shells zero in on their targets, players will be able to spot them for a brief second before impact and actually dodge them by pulling off a drift maneuver. Nintendo is still tweaking the move, so we'll have to wait a bit until we test it out for ourselves, but we're certainly glad to hear that its in the works. Something else that's supposedly still coming (yet not in the E3 version) is the ability to recover from banana slides by tapping the brake; hang in there, Nintendo says that we're likely to find it in the final game, and we're very thankful for it.
Another cool defensive move that we actually witnessed for ourselves is something that we like to call the "backseat item swipe." If an itemless racer pulls up close to a nearby enemy kart that's carrying an item, he'll reach over and swipe it right out of their hands. It's a move similar to the old ghost item that's sure to cause much angst in heated multiplayer matches. There's still no word if ghosts are in the game or what the final item list will offer, but we can confirm that we have seen green and red shells (single and groups of three), stars, lighting bolts, mushrooms (single and groups of three), banana peels, and the famous spikey, blue turtle shell that seeks out and destroys the first place kart -- except this time, it has wings. The sucker just flies through the air and dive-bombs the leader from above, causing an explosion that will even rock nearby racers within a fairly large radius. Now that's the kind of firepower that we've been looking forward to in our GameCube sequel!
We've also been looking forward to GameCube's graphical enhancements, and we must admit to being slightly skeptical based on Nintendo's early, pre-E3 batch of screenshots released last month. But after seeing the game in motion before our very eyes, we're truly very satisfied with the brightly colored eye-candy presented in Double Dash!!. The framerate is a solid 60 frames per second, and it even holds up perfectly in four-player split-screen mode. (While most kiosks here at the show are set up for single or four-player split screen gameplay, Nintendo is also showcasing Mario Kart's eight-player LAN support at its booth -- we'll be back with a full, separate report of how they've set it up, how it looks, and how smoothly it performs using the GameCube's broadband adapter and local-area network connections.)
Four-player should be awesome, but eight-player LAN will be pure heaven.
Double Dash!!'s animations especially are extremely well done and detailed. Characters riding in the back of your kart feature custom animations that are appropriate for the items being used. For example, they'll hold a banana in hand and turn around to face either forward or backward depending upon whether you decide to toss it ahead or behind your kart. As you get close enough to swipe an opponent's item, you'll see your backseat partner literally lean over, extend his arm, and grab the item from the hands of the poor, helpless victim. If you snag a multi-item such as three mushrooms, you'll watch them juggle and balance the bunch as you prepare to absorb the boost. It looks very polished, but you'll have to pry your eyes from the oncoming obstacles to consciously take note of them.
The style is still very cartoony and the pace is still nowhere near the mind-melting speeds found in F-Zero GX, but Double Dash!! looks, feels, and plays exactly how a GameCube Mario Kart title should here at E3 2003. With twice as many lovable Nintendo characters packed onto the screen as before, resisting this charm should prove twice as tough for even the most jaded of Nintendo critics. Even as we sit and transcribe these gameplay details and impressions, the only thing truly occupying our brainwaves are fantasies of returning to the show floor and getting another round of Double Dash!! under our belts. We'll be back with first downloadable gameplay footage of Mario Kart just as soon as we can get back out there, so sit tight and check back very soon to see it in motion for yourselves!
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Yoshi and Koopa are the Gods.
Gods of Godlyness.
Gods of Godlyness.
This game sounds so good. The SNES version of MK was one of the best multi-player games I have ever played. Can't wait for this game going to be one of the best GC available.
Finnaly finished reading the original post. Yep, sounds like a great game.
Whitestroipes wrote:
> I beleive Yoshi and Koopa Troopa will be my choice team.
Heh, you're not the only one!
Go yoshi, go yoshi!!!! :)
*ALSO WANTS*
> I beleive Yoshi and Koopa Troopa will be my choice team.
Heh, you're not the only one!
Go yoshi, go yoshi!!!! :)
*ALSO WANTS*
I want it more than I want me.
... yes...
... yes...
Whitestroipes wrote:
> I beleive Yoshi and Koopa Troopa will be my choice team.
Oh yeah!! KOOPA TROOPA'S IN IT!!
**BEST CHARACTER AFTER YOSHI EVER**
ALthough I need to see the possibilities of Paratroopa or whatever his name is.
> I beleive Yoshi and Koopa Troopa will be my choice team.
Oh yeah!! KOOPA TROOPA'S IN IT!!
**BEST CHARACTER AFTER YOSHI EVER**
ALthough I need to see the possibilities of Paratroopa or whatever his name is.
*best game ever*
The possibilities are endless...well sort of
ALl the characters have melee attacks that they can use when they haven't got weapons. For example, Yoshi can use his tongue like in the video clip.
ALl the characters have melee attacks that they can use when they haven't got weapons. For example, Yoshi can use his tongue like in the video clip.
I beleive Yoshi and Koopa Troopa will be my choice team.
w00tage
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