You could not count the hours I sank into the first three Mario Kart games. In my vast spare time in elementary school, I spent entire weekends trying to master a perfect five laps in each course of Super Mario Kart. The game may be rough around the edges today, but its influence on the genre as a whole cannot be denied. Mario Kart 64 was even more addictive, adding four-player mayhem and far more advanced stages, including still the best battle mode the series has seen to date. Then Super Circuit brought more skillful tactics into play, and though it had been shrunk down for a portable, it was every bit as fulfilling as the titles that preceded it. Still, the urge for more home console Mario Kart was building, as it had been nearly seven years since Mario Kart 64. Finally, Mario Kart: Double Dash promised to waste our lives away like we were six again. Instead, to this day, it might remain the most disappointing Nintendo game I have ever bought. Childhood glee had turned to bitterness.
Double Dash at least thinks bigger. The primary selling point is the two-racer karts, in which one character drives in front and the other hurls items. By doubling the racers, the character roster has also been doubled, which had been needed desperately in the series up to that point. This makes Double Dash the only co-op game in the series, as you can team up with a friend or assist a less experienced player as you both cooperate towards victory. Because of the varying weight classes between characters, Double Dash also introduces different vehicles to the series, meaning weight no longer determines every single statistic. It is nice to be able to play as your favorite character but also being able to have good acceleration or speed depending on your preference. Characters will also have exclusive items appropriate to their namesake, such as Yoshi's homing egg, Bowser's gigantic spiked shell, or Wario's Bob-ombs. On a conceptual level, Double Dash brings plenty of fresh ideas to the series.
Unfortunately, the game drops the ball in every other area. First and foremost are the courses, which are stale, boring, and overly simple. Not only is 16 courses too few (retro tracks were not yet introduced to the series), but almost all of them feel like dumbed-down versions of courses from Mario Kart 64. Take Peach Beach, for instance, which is simply an oval with one branching path in the middle, and feels like a pre-school version of Koopa Troopa Beach. Or Waluigi Stadium, which is a painfully obvious sequel to Wario Stadium, except nowhere near as entertaining. The shortcuts in each of these courses are very obvious, with nothing creative or high-risk-high-reward. Most tracks have no shortcuts at all, while the ones that do are short stretches of grass you can boost across with a mushroom. As always, you have to play each cup in various speed classes and a mirror mode, and there is also an "All" mode to unlock that is a tedious chore just to say they added a couple more hours to the game.
Double Dash is also the point in the series where the item system turned to shambles. Most items from the previous game are back, although some of them have been tweaked...for the worse. For example, the Fake Item Box is completely useless now. What was a pretty good trap in Mario Kart 64 (especially Battle Mode) now has no use, since it is now a completely different color than a normal item box, meaning it will fool nobody. This is also the game where the blue Spiny Shell is turned from a very rare shell that hits every player on its way to first place into a flying bomb that appears very frequently and only punishes the racer in first, not actually assisting the player who fired it. Only the racer in 2nd place benefits from this nonsense. The character-exclusive items are a neat idea, but unfortunately, some are clearly better than others. Yoshi's egg is no different from an ordinary Red Shell, while Baby Mario's Chain Chomp is ridiculously more powerful than other characters' items. While not quite the worst item system in the series (I love Mario Kart Wii, but it earns that dishonor), this was the shark-jumping moment.
The Battle Mode is also an unfortunate blend of great ideas and terrible execution. The great? Three unique ways to play, the first of which being the standard three-balloon elimination match. You can also play a new mode called Shine Runners, which is a timed game of keep-away with a Shine Sprite while other players aggressively trying to steal it. Lastly is Bob-omb Blast, where players just chuck explosives at each other until they hit enough characters. Having these options is great and I desperately miss the Battle Mode variety nowadays. Sadly, the battle courses are plain, tiny arenas, including one that is just the flat surface of a giant Gamecube. In another example of dumbing down an already-done concept is Block City, which feels like a tech demo for Block Fort seven years prior. You can unlock more arenas, but on the whole, Battle Mode reeks of wasted potential, and unlike the races, this is one area the series has not since recovered from.
Like any Mario Kart game, Double Dash shines more in multi-player, but this is a case where it is difficult to get much enjoyment unless you can get a full four players together. In single-player, having two racers per kart honestly feels no different than having just one in any other game, so you really need to have a co-op 4-player game going to turn it into a great time. On the technical level, this game's aesthetics have always rubbed me the wrong way, being one of the ugliest looking Mario games on the system (only the Mario Party games look worse). Everything has an overly bright pastel look which makes the environments bland, and though this is admittedly a nitpick on my part, the recurring Mario theme of walls and hills having faces and noses is taken to absurd levels here. But far worse than the visuals is the game's soundtrack, which is the worst in any game with “Mario” in its title ever. The constant whistling is obnoxious, and many of the songs have this odd hillbilly feel to them. It's one of the few video games where the music actually annoys me while I am playing.
I hate this game. It nearly killed the series I cherished so much and previously sank countless hours into, and while the franchise has since recovered, it's a shame that Double Dash's unique potential went to waste. The two-racer kart idea is interesting and helped to expand the roster. The character-exclusive items are also a great idea, even if they are not balanced equally. Unfortunately, the rest of the item system has gone into the gutter, with tweaks that only serve to annoy, not assist you. The courses are extremely bland, and with an exception or two, are uncreative. The racing feels slower than ever, and while the Battle Mode also has some great ideas, the arenas themselves are so dry that the ideas cannot flourish. And that soundtrack...ouch, talk about a horrid wrong turn for a series and overall franchise known for wonderful music. Double Dash attempts great things on a conceptual level, but somehow fails at every basic principle of the Mario Kart series.
Final Score: 4/10