Mario Kart Double Dash!!

MarioKart races onto the Nintendo GameCube! 2 riders & twice the thrills!

JP release: 7th November 2003
EU release: 14th November 2003
NA release: 17th November 2003
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
NGC Magazine Score: 93%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

With each Mario Kart, Nintendo like to do something new. The big thing for Double Dash!! was that each kart now has two racers, one driving and the other using weapons. At any point, you can swap characters. This essentially allows you to “bank” an item to save it for the right opportunity. With twice the amount of items floating around, including lots of special giant items, you’d expect Double Dash!! to feel very random, but it somehow manages to feel more skill-based than other Mario Kart games.

I think that part of this is that two of the more powerful items – the lighting and blue shell – seem far less frequent. In Mario Kart 64, it was almost a guarantee to be affected by both in every race, while in Double Dash!!, I didn’t encounter them often at all. With two items you can also try to defend yourself better (although you have to place your item at the right time as you can’t hold them behind you) or try to get a boost for shortcuts – as you can keep an item “saved” you have a bit more freedom to throw away another until you get what you want.

Another change to items are the special items, where each pair of characters have their own special item. Mario has his fireball, Waluigi has a bomb and DK has a giant banana, for example. This means how you like to use items will impact who you play as. The two unlockable characters, Petey Piranha and King Boo have access to the full set of special items, which do break the game somewhat. On top of that, staples like the triple green/red shells are now special items, which are partly responsible for the game feeling less chaotic, outside of a couple of chaos-inducing tracks.

The driving mechanics are also spot-on with lots of miniboosts that you can earn, and pretty much every track in the game is fun, I don’t think there are any duds in this one, although DK Mountain is easily my favourite: a massive jump and lots of turns. 16 tracks does feel a bit lacking now, though, although the “all track” GP is a nice addition.

There are some interesting multiplayer features. There’s a few different options for battle mode, although still no CPU opponents in these modes. You can also play co-op where both of you are in one kart. This sounds cool, but one person is driving while the other is just timing when to fire items (you can swap positions, though). You can also connect to other GameCubes to play in LAN, allowing for all 8 karts to be controlled by humans, which can also be done with co-op for a total of 16 people. You just need 4 TVs, 4 GameCubes, 4 broadband adaptors, 4 copies of Double Dash!! and 16 controllers. At least the game itself is am immense joy to play.

Fave

The four-plater mode puts every other multiplayer racing game to shame. It’s what the game was built for, and it’s teeth-grindingly competitive throughout, horribly cruel and immensely rewarding at the same time. And if you ever get the chance to play LAN mode, with multiple consoles hosting a superb tournament for as many as 16 simultaneous players, you’ll wonder why GameCube’s aren’t sold in multipacks.
Martin Kitts, NGC Magazine #88

Remake or remaster?

A remaster with widescreen and using the LAN for online would be great.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to buy Mario Kart Double Dash!!