I’m not sure where this impression came from, but for a while there I’d been going on the impression that Mario Kart DS was probably pretty heavily borrowing from Mario Kart 64. When acknowledging that Mario Kart DS was a pretty revolutionary game, I thought it was because of tight controls, the full-screen map, and of course the all-important online play. It turns out while all of those are important, Mario Kart DS is really an evolutionary step in the franchise beyond its predecessor in far more ways than this.

I got a pile of Wii Points for my birthday and tonight I spent a thousand of them downloading Mario Kart 64 for play on the Virtual Console. I’d played it briefly emulated before in Windows. Uh, emulated badly, it turns out. It goes without saying that the Virtual Console’s emulation is excellent, but this is the first N64 game I’ve picked up for VC, so it’s more impressive than the others to me. Emulators for SNES, Genesis, and of course NES have been dead-on for years, but the N64 emulators really don’t work very well at all.

Are those sprites?

The drivers in MK64 appear to be sprites of pre-renders, like in Donkey Kong Country. The effect is pretty ugly, especially in progressive scan. In contrast, the ones on the DS are full 3D. I knew the DS was a bit more powerful than the N64, but it was always just a comparison with my never having really played much of the N64. I pretty much skipped that generation until near the very end, and then the used N64 I got died after a month of Ocarina of Time.

And… pan out.

Why is the camera riding my ass in Mario Kart 64? I can’t see where I’m going because I’m taking up like, half the screen and I have absolutely no peripheral vision. The only time I could figure out where I was going was when I was on the tracks that show up in the retro circuit in Mario Kart DS. One of the tracks was so confusing that I kept driving into a wall and off a ledge into the water simply because I couldn’t tell I was going the wrong way.

Banana peels are duller, they hurt more.

Before Mario Kart DS, hitting a banana peel was not “fatal”. I forget this all the time. You hit a banana peel and you slide a little for a second, and it’s possible to recover, I think by jumping a few times or something. I know you could keep from spinning out from puddles in Mario Kart: Super Circuit. But I was so confused when I would hit a banana peel and nothing would happen at first. You’d think I’d like it better when you can recover but you know what, I don’t. Not sure why.

Resolved to be more.

In 480p, even an ugly Mario Kart looks pretty slick in all its 3D-ness. The DS screen is pretty low resolution, and that has to be my main complaint with the system overall. You get some really nice graphics on a screen that low-res and it hurts to see such potential dashed. On the contrary, seeing MK64 on my 32″ HDTV is an exercise in contrasts: the ugliness of the sprites floating over the smooth, clean 3D tracks. I think the DS’ way is better though. I mean, let’s face it. Which are you looking at all the time? Your driver, or a particular section of track? Now you see what I mean.

I’m looking forward to trying this game multiplayer.