A pretty good Mario Kart Game, but there is a lack of some things that make the game pretty boring.
Alright, it's a Mario Kart game. Select a character from the Mario Universe, and drive him/her around a track, throwing shells, banana peels and other junk at your opponents in hope of achieving 1rst place. Pretty simple, and this game executes this pretty well.
In GP mode, you have four cups: Mushroom Cup, Flower Cup, Star Cup, and Special Cup. Each cup has four tracks, and when you place first, you gain 9 points, or 6 or 3 points if you place in second or third. Whoever has the most points at the end wins. Yup. There's also three difficulties for you to choose from: 50cc (easy), 100cc (ugh....), and 150cc (stupid).
There's a Time Trial Mode where you try to beat your records in how fast you complete a track, and you can race your own ghost, and there's two multi-player modes, where you can either race or battle with 1-3 other people.
Graphics 7/10
Well, for an N64 game, what can you expect? The graphics are nice and all, but the characters and karts themselves are all just 32-bit sprites. Though, the sprites are done VERY well. The courses have pretty similar graphics to Super Mario Kart and Super Mario 64. The skies in a few of the tracks are just cool looking, especially in Toad's Turnpike. Also, the pictures on the map selection screen look pretty nice and go well with the menu music. The character mugshots also look good, and the way they blink their eyes is cute.
Music 7/10
The music is OK, but only a few of the tunes really stand out and sound cool and catchy. Those tunes are: The Race Way theme, Toad's Turnpike theme, Rainbow Road, the Menu theme, and the Credits theme. All in all, the music fits the game's style.
Sound effects 10/10
The sound effects in this game are awesome. Of course, what I'm mainly referring to are the voices of the characters. Not a single voice in the game sounds bad. Be it the things Mario says at the menu screens or Bowser's roars, the voices are amusing. Without the voices, the 32-bit characters would be very lifeless.
Replay Value:
Uh, all there is is Time Trial mode, the Multiplayer Modes and beating the other difficulties to soon unlock Mirror Mode, then obtain the different menu screen.
Bad things about this game:
Ugh, WHERE DO I BEGIN?!
Well, first, there's only ONE thing for you to unlock, and that's Mirror Mode. No hidden characters, tracks, or anything else to pay you for all your troubles. What a load of bull. The game wouldn't be as boring if there were more rewards.
Second, 100cc and 150cc are just brutal. It's not that you get hit all the time, it's that the CPU characters go WAY too fast. I thought selecting the higher difficulties would increase EVERYONE'S engine size, but no. It only increases the CPU character's. Seriously. No matter what shortcut I take, or amount of Golden Mushrooms I use, never give me a good enough advantage to stay in the lead. And if you make ONE mistake, you're usually screwed. It's cause the CPU characters go at extremely unfair speeds, and if you get stopped by something, they'll be miles ahead of you in only a split second. If there weren't any items on those difficulties, there would be no chance in hell for a victory. And again, there isn't any rewards! Unless you count an unlockable mode where you race on the tracks backwards with your opponents going at 150cc speed as a "reward" there isn't any reason to play the higher difficulties. 50cc is fun enough.
Third, getting a rocket start in GP mode is almost impossible. Sure, it's easy in Time Trial mode, but in GP mode, good luck ever getting a head start.
Fourth and final, ghosts in Time Trial mode. What a selfish feature. The only way to race your own ghost on a track is to never pause, fall into water/lava/a cliff, run into anything that isn't a wall, or take too long. Geez! How picky can you get?! I know that this feature was in it's early phase at the time, but they could've found some sort of way to make it so you can at least PAUSE. I mean, what if some one calls you on the phone or you have to go the bathroom? WHAT THEN?! Also, you can only have TWO ghosts. Yeah, that's a lot.
Rent or buy?
Well, it's not a bad game to rent. (if it's even possible to rent it these days) If you own it, you'll most likely stop playing it after about a week or two. But, that depends on how much fun you have playing it.