Mario Kart DS Review

Mario, Mario, Mario, how are you doing everything. He smacks question mark boxes with his head, smashes Coopas, plays Baseball and soccer, and one other thing he loves to do, race other Nintendo characters in cartoony go-carts. He loves it so much, he has many games consisting of it, and now he has a new one, Mario Kart DS. This is a brand new edition of the game that teaches kids that making you racing opponents slip on banana peels, get hit with shells or either the red, blue or green variety, throwing bombs at them, and tricking them with question mark boxes that make them flip over when hit, is back. Oh goody. Now this game is on Nintendo little advanced piece of machinary, the Nintendo DS. So we get to see Mario Kart, in double-screen vision.

Ok, the plot is that you have to race and win trophies to.......brag about it to the other Nintendo characters. Yay. Umm......that's it.

Ok, let's talk about the new editions to this new edition of Mario Kart. It's on two screens, it has some new weapons to use against your opponents, it has a ton (no not our buddy Ton, ton) of tracks, and you Zam (hey, I used Ton's name, so now I get to use mine) through these tracks at high speeds. Ok, so not extremely fast, more like dog running fast.

Like I said, there are a lot of new (and old) tracks. This game incorporates new tracks and tracks from other Mario Kart games all onto one little DS card. Now these tracks are seperated into 8 different cups which are seperated into 4 (you start out with 3 but unlock the fourth) different CC's. 50, 100, 150, and (SPOILER ALERT, WARNING: IF YOU WANT TO PLAY MARIO KART DS AND UNLOCK ALL SECRETS ON YOUR OWN AND NOT GO, "OH NO, I'M NOT SURPRISED NOW THAT I FOUND OUT THAT UNLOCKABLE ON ZAM'S REVIEW, :-( " THEN PLEASE SKIP THE NEXT LINE. THANK YOU)..........150 Mirror Mode. Now these numbers are based on level of difficulty, if you know what CC's mean, then you should know that. But if not, let me transulate the easiness, 50 - oh man, that was so friggin easy, my grandma could finish that whiles on my grandfather with her hands tied behind her back and her bed is moving at 100 miles an hour while she is asleep blindfolded. 100 - ehh, that was a little harder, but (take all of the grandma thing but take out the hands behind the back, asleep and blindfolded part.) 150 - damn, that was pretty hard, hmm, but hey, its wasn't Ninja Gaiden hard. 150 mirror mode - awww c'mon, that was just 150 backwards; (insert 150 part here.) All the tracks are cool and cartoony. I really liked them.

There are 12, but you unlock 4 of them. They are all familiar Nintendo characters, and the final one you unlock, it one character you would never expect to find in this video game. Let me give you a hint, NES. I was extremely surprised when I unlocked this character, and you should be too. The other characters include: Mario (duh), Luigi (my favorite), Peach, Yoshi, Toad, Donkey Kong, Wario, Bowser, (SPOILER ALERT, *INSERT SAME WARNING AS BEFORE HERE*) ........Daisy (who is pretty much an orange version of Peach with redish-brown hair), Dry Bones, WaLuigi, and the last one I can't tell you about but I gave you the hint about before. Great line-up.

The carts are really cool and cartoony. There are a total of 36 karts. In the beginning, you have exclusive carts to that character, then you start having the same karts for a few characters, and then at the end, you unlock all karts. for all characters which means everyone has the same karts. They are all cool.

The weapons are really good. There are many of them and, (if you don't know already) you get them by breaking a question marked box in the track. There are different weapons such as green shells (regular, just go all over the place shells) red shells (tracking shells, hehe) and blue shells (shells that fly to the character in the lead and stop their ass.) There are banana peels, bombs, etc. There is also shrooms that make you go faster, but we don't care about those, right?
These weapons are fun to use. You'll be yelling, "Ha, Peach, biach, I just shot a shell at your ass and wooped you. Eat that, princess biach." and "Whoohooo, Yoshi, just got your booty with my banana peel, that teaches you to keep offering my girl, Peach, a ride. HA!" So, you get my point about how great the weapons are.

There is also a mode which has a game called "Star Runners" and "Balloon Battle". These have their own tracks including my favorite of all time track in almost any game, the Nintendo DS. That's right, you get to play on a Nintendo DS which is really awesome. There is also a Time Trials game and a VS game to play against your friend or computers.

Now one big thing is that this is one of the first DS games to have DS wi-fi. You can play against enemies all over the world. This is very cool for this game. Its really fun.

Graphics are really good for the DS. Really cool and cartoony. Great graphics.

The only bad is that the game does get a bit boring after a while. You play another track and go, ohh, this one again. So, it's very repetitive. And another, the bottom screen is just maps (which are sometimes really helpful) and menu screens. They could have done so much more with this.
Oh well.

Overall, this is a good game. I really enjoyed it and am sure that all Mario fans, (such as myself) will love this game. It's a great edition to the Mario Kart series. Mario Kart DS gets 4 racing Nintendo characters bashing each other with color coded shells out of 5.

-Zam