Good
- 3D view was ambitious for its time.
- the karting idea is original, and items were incorporated well, doing a good job of recreating the Mario theme in a racing setting.
Bad
- it's really hard to see because of the pixelated background. Especially on stages with dirt and sand.
- objects are also very hard to see distance wise, like if a piranha plants is coming close to me, it just gets gradually bigger in integer steps rather than a fluent motion. This makes it hard to dodge things.
- objects that block your way, that should be risen up in the 3D plane, aren't. Like some walls. Hence sometimes I run into the wall because I couldn't see it until it was in front of me.
- the walls are way too bouncy. It takes control away from the player in a very unfun way. And it opens the player up two more unwanted random collisions, which can become a domino effect a random negative actions.
- items are unbalanced. You can get amazing items in first, and shit items in last
- the stones in Bowser's castle stays on the ground too long. there are times where I need to literally stop my car and wait for the stones to go back up to continue. That's too big of a pace breaker for me.
- AI throwing more than one item despite not having touched a item square since last item use.
- terrible AI programming. Rather than improve their driving code, the devs opted for giving them unlimited items and special items. Its unfair for the player, and makes it infuriating, because you can't plan for anything accurately. Don't know when opponent will drop an item behind. Don't know when the opponent will use star.
- the game has aged terribly visually and the gameplay.
- the stage moves around way to much. Gives me a headache.
- AI can also clip through obstacles, adding to the infuriating unfairness.
- There's so much bouncing of the kart when hitting other things that it feels like I'm playing bumper cars.
- The extremely low overall acceleration of all characters completely breaks the pace of the game if you bump into a wall.
- Can't drift sometimes when there are too many karts around, because the bumping physics was so much.
- the slightest graze over a gap will cause you to fall through, when in reality a go kart would just go over it.
- sometimes bumps that make your cart jump can't be seen (rainbow road). This interferes with drifting because i suddenly pop up in the air.