Hearing John Ulmer describe this as the best racing game on the N64 made me glad that I'm not really a driving game fan because if this was the best then it must have been a poor console for the genre. This remake of the vastly superior SNES game was such a major disappointment for me, not only by way of comparison but just on its own terms it needs skill but doesn't allow you to get better and it just isn't as much pure fun as it should have been.
The bright graphics and vocals are all good but the increased power of the N64 went to the programmers heads and it is just all too busy. The tracks have great backgrounds, which I have no problem with, but the amount of stuff occurring on the track is a real problem. The sheer volume of obstacles mean that even the most skillful driver will get caught up and it is endlessly frustrating when it happens it certainly reduces its value as a straight racing game. It doesn't help that you simply cannot pull away in the way you could in the SNES game. With that game a good lap would mean the reward of space and a bit of a lead; however with the N64 the characters seem to stick with you no matter what even a mushroom will make little difference a few seconds after you have used it. In fairness they also seem to slow down (although not to the same degree that they speed up) when you hit an obstacle but it is still annoying because a perfect race can still see you in 4th if you hit an obstacle on the last third of the final lap.
The characters are all OK and have had their individuality hemmed in a bit (not sure why I still go for Toad) and again the courses see good use of the Mario universe. Some of them tend to be a bit too long and too many of them are overly complex with it. The items are surprisingly useless (not helped by how the others will catch you no matter what you do to them) and not helped by the computer characters having a seemingly endless supply of their chosen weapon (causing the third lap to be a total mess of bananas etc). The good items are useless because the computer will catch up in seconds while the idea of a "first place seeking" missile must have been good on paper but is crap in reality. The battle mode has not survived at all. The levels are complex and the items useless; the best way of winning it just to fire lots of green shells and the retreat to an upper level to wait it out. Even the simplest levels are a garish affair and it was more than I could bare my favourite part of the SNES game had become an unplayable, skill and strategy free zone.
Overall this is not an awful game but it is rather poor. The fact that it might have been more for kids would explain why the skill has been taken out of it to some degree, but it doesn't explain why it is just so frustrating and random to play. The mockery of the battle mode is just another straw on my already broken back maybe this is why I got so good at Goldeneye?
