Mario Kart DS

Mario Kart DS is a racing video game released in 2005 by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. It is the fifth main installment in the Mario Kart series.

Why It's A Delightful Speedway

 * 1) The first game in the Mario Kart series to include the Retro Grand Prix, which contains stages from the older Mario Kart games, so this game can be fun for both new players of Mario Kart and old players.
 * 2) New unique modes, such as a mission mode, which the player must complete some tasks to earn a certain rank, depending on their perfomance during the mission. It involves seven levels (which the seventh level is an unlockable level, which the player must learn at least one star ranking in all of the mission on each level) each containing eight "missions" and a boss battle
 * 3) Dry Bones and mh:crappygames:R.O.B. mark their first appearance in the series as unlockable drivers, which the player will unlock them respectively by obtaining a gold trophy for every 50cc Nitro Grand Prix, and obtaining a gold trophy for either every Nitro Grand Prix cup or Retro Grand Prix cup respectively.
 * 4) * Shy Guy also appears in this game via Download Play.
 * 5) Over 36 different karts, to use. Each character has three karts, which each one has their advantage and disadvantage in terms of speed, drift, acceleration, etc. If the player wins all of the gold trophies in all eight 150cc cups and all cups in Mirror Mode, each character can be paired in any of the 36 karts, making 432 combinations to use.
 * 6) One of the courses in Battle mode is a Nintendo DS displaying the title screen of Mario Kart DS in the top screen.
 * 7) Most of the boss battles in Mission Mode are enemies taken from Super Mario 64 DS, like the King Bob-omb, Goomboss and King Boo.
 * 8) The player is also able to make their own emblem which will show up on the kart they drive.
 * 9) Two new power-ups were introduced, which are the Bullet Bill and Blooper.
 * 10) The bottom screen shows a map of the track and can show incoming obstacles and players you normally wouldn't notice. The map can also be adjusted with the stylus to either a brief bird's view of the map or the entire track, taking advantage of the DS' double screen.
 * 11) It's the first game in the series, and in fact, the first Nintendo game in general, to officially support online multiplayer mode.
 * 12) Drifting is much easier than it was in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! It allows for snaking, which became a popular technique in Time Trials to beat new records.
 * 13) New awesome items were also added to this game in contrast to its' portable prequel:
 * 14) * While the Blooper is a somewhat useless item, it makes computer players swerve and is a good way to utilize the bottom screen.
 * 15) * The Bullet Bill is a better version of the previous Chain Chomp, because it provides invincibility from every single item, something the Chain Chomp doesn't do.
 * 16) * While the Fake Item Box is pretty much useless in terms of defense, just like in Mario Kart 64, it looks similar to a real Item Box in this game, although it lacks a question mark entirely, doesn't spin, and looks red on the map.
 * 17) It has a lot of cool courses to race, like Rainbow Road and Waluigi Pinball.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The drifting can be done even on straight tracks, as it only needs you to press twice in the direction in which you are drifting instead of holding it for a period of time like in all games starting from Mario Kart Wii.
 * 2) Lackluster retro tracks. Some of the iconic tracks from the older games didn't return but instead the easiest tracks returned instead. Thankfully, its successor brought back lots of great retro tracks.
 * 3) The controls are decent enough considering the system only has a D-Pad, but playing this and Mario Kart 7 back-to-back illustrates just how important an analogue controller is to this type of game.
 * 4) Nintendo were still clearly finding their feet with online play, which is pretty limited and reliant on the clunky "friend code" system.
 * 5) This game's rendition of Baby Park completely erases what made it so hectic in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, due to the track being made bigger and there only being 5 laps instead of 7.
 * 6) Dry Bones with the Dry Bomber kart is extremely overpowered in this game. The same goes for Waluigi in the B-Dasher.
 * 7) The Fake Item Box, like in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, is useless in terms of defense, as it cannot block items.
 * 8) As mentioned above, the Blooper is a somewhat useless item, as your opponents can see where they're going even when they are inked. Also, players can easily look at the bottom screen to see where they're going.
 * 9) Following the discontinuation of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection on May 20, 2014, the online cannot be played without hacking or private servers.
 * 10) Small roster that only consists of 12 characters (13 if you count Shy Guy, who is only available in the download play version).
 * 11) Repetitive voice clips. Characters will constantly shout the same lines when they hit you, pass you or you hit them.
 * 12) Speaking of which, they reused a few of Mario's voice lines from Super Mario 64.
 * 13) The character models are even uglier than the ones seen in Super Mario 64 DS (Donkey Kong especially, due to how unsettling he looks in the game), if the poly were going to be reduced to make up for the kart, well then they should have used pre-rendered sprites. of which, the DS was a 32-bit system, N64 was a 64-bit system, and yet Mario Kart 64 used pre-rendered sprites for characters due to the fact that character poly would be reduced to fit with the kart. take a look: https://www.spriters-resource.com/nintendo_64/mariokart64/. Though in order to have the ability to switch karts, they should have had the characters be pre-rendered sprites while the karts are modeled

Trivia

 * When you boot up this game on the original Nintendo DS model, Mario says "Ya-hoo!", but when you boot it up on any other device (DS Lite, DSi, DSi XL, any 3DS/2DS model, or the Wii U's Virtual Console), he says "Here we go!"

Reception
Mario Kart DS was well-received by game critics upon release. It holds a Metacritic score of 91 and is also the third best-selling game for the Nintendo DS, selling 23.56 million copies worldwide.

Videos
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