Mario Kart: Double Dash‼

Despite its severe lack of maps (all of which are made up by having the greatest music throughout the series) this is the best Mario Kart for me. It's undeniably the most challenging yet rewarding. Mario Kart 8 is noticeably easier but punishes the player more for doing well as a result. This game is pure, skillful chaos for all parties involved. Guaranteed to inspire the ultimate camaraderie in those who choose to play together for the first prize, or cause unheard of spousal violence in the form of child-like controller throwing.

Racing games were never my thing. Many racing games just seemed like simulations to me, quasi-realistic exercises in giving the player the experience of driving cars that they can't afford in real-world places that they've never visited. Kart racers, however, are a tad more up my alley. They may be cartoony and targeted for children, but only means that their design deviates away from the bland realistic racing games that don't quite catch my interest. I'm sure everyone knows that the Mario Kart franchise dominates this racing game sub-genre by a considerable margin. Everyone has their favorites, mostly Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart DS, or Mario Kart 8. For myself, however, it's hard to beat the unadulterated mayhem of Mario Kart Double Dash!!

I'm not sure if I'm saying this because this was my first Mario Kart game, and nostalgia is clouding my judgment, but I've played many subsequent Mario Kart games since. I can say with utter certainty that my love for this game isn't due to perpetual nostalgia goggles. This Mario Kart entry is unique, for better or worse, depending on your general attitude toward this game. This game was the black sheep of the Mario Kart franchise for years because of all of the new features. The "double" in the title refers to having two characters in one kart, which is precisely why this game is as manic. Two characters in one kart simultaneously bring forth so many unique aspects of this game that add to the rampant chaos that I love about this game. The characters are paired off reasonably (Mario with Luigi, Donkey Kong with Diddy Kong, Yoshi with Birdo (?)), but you can customize your character pairings with whoever you want. Each character pairing has its particular item that varies in usefulness. My favorites are probably the Bowser shell or Wario/Walugi's bomb because you can get both items when you're in first and grief the shit out of the racers behind you.
I think it's hilarious. Some people argue that this is the most unfair Mario Kart game because of the double amount of items one can have, but the madness envelops me. Sure, it's unfair that there are twice the amount of bananas and red item boxes on the tracks, and there are so many overpowered special items, but no one plays Mario Kart to simulate a leisurely stroll. Mario Kart Double Dash!! It is like the Mad Max of Mario Kart, and you have to play relentlessly to win. Besides, the blue shell is by far the most unfair item in all of the Mario Kart games, and it's in every subsequent Mario Kart game after this one. Why does the blue shell get a pass?

The 16 tracks in this game are spectacular and vary in size, and all have a smattering of obstacles. My favorite track is DK Mountain, probably due to being excited by the giant cannon that propels you up to the mountain. Other track highlights are Baby Park, Wario Colosseum, and Daisy Cruiser. This game also has my favorite iteration of Rainbow Road. The narrow tracks and sharp turns in Rainbow Road make it the most challenging one, but that makes it all the more epic in scale.

Mario Kart can be inherently unfair no matter which game in the franchise you're playing, so why would my favorite be the most unjust out of all of them? I can understand why so many people don't care for this game, but as the cliche states, "one man's trash is another man's treasure." When I was playing Mario Kart 8, I was strolling around the track (on 150cc, mind you) in the first place, wishing for a bomb to come out of nowhere and make me do a double flip 20 ft in the air like in this game. Maybe I'm a Mario Kart masochist, or perhaps I just need some unpredictability in my Mario Kart to make it more interesting.

The team-based mechanic would never return after Double Dash, and it's somewhat easy to see why. The driving is simply where Mario Kart has always been at, and this entry is early enough in the series to not feature the character roster large enough to support this concept. In my eyes, all this does is exacerbate the classic Mario Kart problem of frustratingly overpowered items. Still, it bore a few classic courses and again remained a multiplayer staple.

I grew up with 64 and also played a fair bit of DS (online and all), and I've had some brief encounters with the rest of the Mario Karts. This is the one that I've always enjoyed the most and the one I always come back to when I want to satisfy that Mario Kart itch. Honestly, in a series that I consider to be predominantly casual and shallow, this entry is filled with surprisingly deep and strategic gameplay hooks.

My opinion comes with one major caveat: my only experience with this game are in the duo cooperative mode with my brother in the back seat on items and punching, and I have never really played its single player mode, nor am I really interested in doing so. What I can say, though, that something as seemingly simple and gimmicky as the "double" in "Double Dash!!" has far more complexity (as far as I'm concerned) than any of the "competitive" style of DS. That game comes down to mechanical and technical precision, rote "skill" at snaking, and not much else.

Meanwhile, this game has a really compelling play angle of cooperative play that needs to be worked at to become a good driving pair. My brother and I played the entire game through cooperatively, and while we did alright in the easier stages of the game, we reached a point where we just couldn't win anymore, at least for a time. It wasn't until we became more synchronized, more understanding of what we each contributed to each moment and began to intuitively work as a team that we really got going, and once we reached that point it was the most fun I've ever had with a Mario Kart game. It might seem difficult to understand from the outside looking in if you don't have enough experience with the co-op mode, but it's little things like being bombarded by three red shells straight off the course, only to have my co-pilot get us back onto the main road with 2-3 punch moves, or how he eventually became able to react to things like bananas thrown in front of us or incoming shells (even blue shells!) and take corrective measure by punching us just out of the way of the collisions (something you can do with the red shells in this game, with a sharp turn right before being hit). The most enjoyable of all though was reaching the point where I anticipated these moves and trusted him enough to know I didn't need to correct or dodge or swerve and instead knew that I should be focused on what I need to do after the punch or dodge.

If this sounds a little hyperbolic and like I'm romanticizing the back seat position and "how much can it really matter?," consider this: after we beat the game, I asked my brother if he wanted to switch to driving and he said no, that he had more fun playing in the back seat because it was "something new."