An Opinionated Video About Mario Kart DS

[Music] mario kart es voted on by you in a video patreon supporter by people such as ollie pops anthony combs silver skeleton in that be Knutson thank you Wii Sports Resort won my most recent poll and I already did a video on that but a lot of you really wanted me to do Mario card yes so I figured I fill in the gap while I work on my claw so mario bros video in a holy crap it has been years since I touched his bad boy I know Mario Kart DS might not seem too special in the modern lens but you have to consider the error this came out these days you really don't need to make any compromises when it comes to portable gaming especially if the switch and Nina Tendo game you want to play at home you can now take with you on the go but that's obviously not how things always work I mean the previous portable Mario Kart looked like this so again at the time it didn't feel like any compromises were being made in 2005 this is basically as good as we could've asked for in regards to a portable Mario Kart technical limitations aside another reason we didn't feel like we were making any compromises with a handheld Mario Kart was because the DA's entering a particular added so many things they have since become staples of a series retro tracks online racing mission mode okay that last one never came back but it should have to this day I'd argue Mario Kart DS has the most content sure Mario Kart 8 deluxe might have more characters and courses right out the gate but for one Deus has a battle mode I'd actually want to play in that mission mode really rounds out the experience so going into this I'm going to be fairly critical this was my very first deus game ever in fact it's a game ideas came with and I don't want to sound like a nostalgia blinded baby so if I start critiquing certain components and I will because I want to be fair here I don't want to see anyone flipped in the hello it seems like even when I'm positive as hell like I was for a resort for example there's always a handful of people to get real upset about my few unenthusiastic comments so I'll just say right now I love this game and don't you try to rant about me thinking otherwise we got Grand Prix time trials versus mode battle mode and new and exclusive 2d s mission mode we'll be going through these one by one so let's start the basics you start with your basic eight playable characters you know the ones Mario Luigi Bowser Peach then there's four unlockable characters here one of which being the classic NES accessory wrong I know there's some people that aren't fans of his inclusion because he's not a real Mario character or whatever but if it's somehow okay to have link villager and inkling of Mario Kart and I think our Obi is a worthy addition as well personally I like him a lot the new comers dry bones for all those edge Lords out there it's a good selection of characters and most of the character models look good for Deus emphasis on most Hauser's got his face stuff of pound cake and the Big M himself looks like total ass he looks fine in Mario 64 yes and that was a lunch title so who knows what happened here the game in general just has inconsistent visuals the courses look great for Deus all of them really but then you have stuff like the Koopa shells which are literally just a stationary paper cutout I understand the DS doesn't have much memory to spare and making each item a 3d model may have been too taxing on the hardware but for [ __ ] sake you can at least animate the sprite even the Gameboy Mario Kart did that Mario Kart 64 did that as well and that was so well animated I bet many people didn't even know it was a 2d image even still it's hard to complain too much when the game consistently runs it assault 60 frames so if Mario looking like a bootleg carnival toy was a price to pay then I think that's a fair concession afterall fluence racing should be the primary focus on the kart racer this is as nitpicky as it gets but while we're on the subject of graphics I thought I'd mentioned this because they even bother me as a kid I'm not here to give you guys a damn science lesson but in short the color fire in most situations directly translates to temperature fire that as blue is much harder than fire that is red in fact the color of stars is how astronomers determine how hot a star is so in double dash the color of drifting sparks goes from yellow to red to finally blue the implication I thought was it the sparks your wheels are kicking up are getting hotter while you maintain drift but ever since the S it goes from blue to red Y then in Mario Kart 8 deluxe they really screwed things up by making go from blue to red and impact a purple again this is such a whenever thing it doesn't really matter but a bug me for years and now I hope you'll bug you so you're welcome we're turning from double - our selection of karts with different sets if you 100% the game you can even use any cart you want regardless of what character you choose which I thought was a nice touch but I swear they got the stats on virtually every car mixed up take Luigi for example his Kart the streamliner is a speedy looking race car that's the one with low stats and good items meanwhile his damn vacuum is too fast 1 or Yoshi he has an old-fashioned drag car and that's the slow one of good items meanwhile this big-ass egg that's the one of good stats in bad items or wall Luigi's excavator that's the vast one not his bike but his damn construction vehicle or hell you know Mario's Kart the B - er front of the box iconic that's the slow one but this dumb looking star car yeah that's the good one once again it's not a big deal obviously I just thought it was funny but as far as the racing itself it feels really good des was basically the game that established what a mario kart game should feel like I say this because every Mario Kart game that preceded the S feels more similar to how this game feels then it does say 64 or Double Dash when it comes to multiplayer this is one of the more skill-based mario karts it's the last in the series to have the original drifting for one you know back when you had a bill up your drift by wobbling a d-pad back and forth this was also the game that added conventional drafting it was technically at 64 but in the same way that drifting was technically in 64 it just didn't feel right until d/s put its foot down and it was like okay listen here you goobers this is how it's done i would be remissed not to mention another high-skilled tech that was frequented online that technique in question being stinking which if I had to guess is why they removed the original drifting style and future titles snaking for those who aren't familiar is when you quick drift in alternating directions in a straight line it can be tricky to pull off but if you do it successfully it's slightly faster than driving straight thinks as a small burst of speed the point is mario kart DS is one of the more technical entries in I respect that that being said we're talking about the racing mechanics here because the item balancing Adeus is complete bollocks honestly when it comes to both the item balancing this and the wii version are easily the most braddock it's not as bad as we and credit where credit is due there isn't a stupid amount of rubber banding like there wasn't we in fact if it wasn't for the items this would easily be the fairest mario kart most of the bullcrap comes from a particular spiny shell i should probably mention the bluebird first everyone's favourite item this is the game that item premiered in and okay can we just be real for a sec how come out of all the items they have removed its the blooper that stayed mario kart we added the mega mushroom and I thought that was cool but no that never came back guess what did though the blooper bloopers for anyone who hasn't played a mario kart in the past 10 years is an item that covers your screen with pink it doesn't slow you down or anything it's all artificial there is no happy medium of poopers either it makes your whole screen black or it's like how it isn't we we're hardly matters plus they don't have a perceivable effect on computers I think you see them swerve left to right a little on straights but that's about it if they want to keep bloopers but give them a more tangible effect they should spray your tires with ink making you slip more I people would still complain about them being annoying but firstly it would be no more annoying than not being able to see your damn screen and - at least it wouldn't feel useless when you got the item yourself transitioning to the other items here I don't know if this was supposed to happen but I really appreciate this design choice if it was I had a triple banana behind me and then when I got chased by red Joe I lost although this might sound like a bad design choice but I think it's smart and here's why me and my ex-roommate's used to play Mario Kart Wii all the time and basically if someone got into first and had a triple banana that was it there was no way in hell you'd pass them because by the time you got three red shows they probably already got another triple banana but with this triple bananas can be used offensively three times but defensively once it's way better than that circling banana bullcrap they added an eight the items go straight through that anyway or at least that being an intentional design choice is what the optimist to me hopes my cynical side knows the real reason is because red shells are cheap as hell in Deus if you hold an item behind you you would expect not to get hit by shell right well that would be some wishful thinking because in many cases the shell will go around your items if my discord is to be believed this is an issue in the Wii version as well I don't remember this in either yet Here I am talking about it the items in general make getting three stars and grand-prix a complete nightmare in later games as long as you get first in all four tracks you were rewarded three stars which was a good change if you ask me here in DS however it's all about how fast you complete each course and that's a problem when how many blue shells you get hit with is 100% random yup it's time to talk about these boys these are seriously the one thing I distinctively remember from DS there were blue shells up the ass don't be surprised if you get hit by three of these before your race is over there was one race where 4 of them popped up and in a situation where everyone is neck-and-neck aka it's not impossible to overtake first there should never be a chance for one to pop up I don't think I'm alone when I say these should only pop up when a single red shell just won't cut it when overtaking the lead I'm actually one of the few people that doesn't mind the blue shells inclusion in moderation but they shouldn't be popping up right before the finish line they are especially a problem in Rainbow Road because if you get hit by a blue shell when you're upside down like I did here you're boned that's a huge setback and obviously you can't control window blue shells gonna hit you so it feels slightly unfair ironically the D s Rainbow Road would be great in Mario Kart 8 with its anti-gravity because they're being hit upside down wouldn't behave any differently I suppose that's my cue to start talking about the tracks while it's not the best selection of courses we've seen in fact I forgot about a lot of these until I started playing again when shroom Ridge came up I was literally like oh yeah that exists but there's some real classics here Delfino Plaza is great tick tock clock and airship portraits are pretty solid as well Luigi's Mansion runs circles around that crappy haunted house track and a peach gardens are surprisingly one of my personal faves NDS happens to have won the best Bowser castle maps however we need to address Yelp in the room not everyone will be happy of this but please try to hear me out waluigi pinball i don't think it's the perfect map people praised it to be let's look at what it did right first theming to begin with that song slaps hard it was even remixed in smash bros it's that good [Music] then there's the fact that's on a pinball table that's in extremely unconventional setting for a racetrack the visuals are awesome I really love the foggy spotlights illuminating the night sky the sound effects are great too it's the only map where they're different there are some satisfying little jingles when you overtake another racer the item roulette sounds different [Music] and even the Lapp signifier sound effect is all a bit all that stuff is what people think about when waluigi pinball comes to mind and it's all great stuff that being said the other half of what makes up a track is to layout itself this is where waluigi pinball starts a floater for a map called waluigi pinball there's certainly not a whole lot of time spent on the pinball table yeah just the last eight seconds really and even then what are you doing just driving straight mostly maybe crossing your fingers a surprise pinball does it hate you from behind but otherwise you're only driving a direct line to the gutter of the table as for the rest of the map all we have here is your basic run-of-the-mill linear concrete pathing not only are there no shortcuts or branching paths here but this has absolutely nothing to do with pinball and appall just might say you're driving on the rails at a pinball would travel along on the actual table but if that's the case then what the hell is that waluigi pinball is a perfectly fine track but if it wasn't for the mere idea of driving on a giant pinball table I don't think this map would have been elevated to the god tier status it holds today waluigi deserves a better pinball inspired map of you ask me honestly they could've just taken the pinball portion of the track and made it into a decent battle map as mentioned earlier es was the first skin to have retro tracks and well it certainly feels like it I have a lot of respect for Deus for essentially trying to double the number of tracks we came to expect in each game but the best of the best these are not I swear they went out of their way to pick the least interesting callbacks if I were to take the Gamecube checks for example and pick out my favourite aid essentially cutting the list in half these would be the ones dayz cruiser while Ouija stadium mushroom city Yoshi circuit DK mountain Wario calcium Dino Dino jungle and Bowser castle out of those eight only one is back into yes that map in question being Yoshi circuit which has been stripped down significantly the piranhas and the pipes are gone and so is that secret passage in the side of the mountain I of course understand not everyone's going to have the same favourite tracks as me but who the hell was begging for Luigi's circuit to come back that seems to be a theme of the retro tracks and yes they picked the maps that would likely be the easiest to recreate despite if they were fan favorites or not if I were to pick the simplest tracks to recreate from double - the four we C and D s would also be the four I would pick going back to the example I gave of Yoshi circuit even among the most basic picks many of these are still stripped down mushroom bridge for example remember how cool was when you could drive on the side of the bridge well that's gone now also can we talk about how many of the courses in DSR plane s circuits figure eight circuit Mario circuit Mario circuit one circuit Luigi circuit Luigi circuit Gamecube and Yoshi circuit that's a lot of tracks are just your basic raceways I'm not trying to come down too hard on D Esther all this because clearly it stands out in other areas in fact we have yet to get to my favorite parts of Mario Kart Diaz so don't worry and to be fair I didn't even notice this as a kid I just bring it up because again I played this game non-stop when I was younger so I only think it's fair to analyze each Mario Kart with my rose-tinted goggles off besides they had to search somewhere credit where credit is due this was the first game of fresh show tracks so perhaps it's harsh of me to be this critical on their first attempt it's also likely these reservations were made because of the space limitations on a DEA's cartridge either way by the time the Wii version came out they got their bit together of the retro stuff after collecting my complete thoughts on the game it became pretty obvious that strong suit is not the racing mode the racing is still tons of fun of course I played it endlessly as a kid and I loved how technical the mechanics feel compared to the sequels but compared to what we've seen recently the battle mode and mission modes are so much better than any non racing offerings and a new mario karts that outshines the heart of Deus itself well how about you say we get into the good stuff let's talk about battle battle mode NDS is awesome we've got two modes here plastic bloom battle and shine runners balloon battle is as it used to be you know none of that you can't die bullcrap here it's last-man-standing as it should be I like how you have to blow up the blows of your mic you only start off a single balloon so you have to choose how many you want to blow up from your reserve you might be asking why the hell wouldn't you just blow them up all right away and the answer is the less balloons you have the better items again a really cool risk reward element I'm shocked has never come back since yes then there's also shine runners not to get confused of shine thief from GameCube or eight to looks I love shine thief but I think I might like shine runners even more it has an elimination aspect to it I really like so the way it works is the game starts of several shine sprites scattered throughout the map you try to collect as many as you can and you can attack other players of items to steal theirs if you have the least amount of shines or if you're tied with the players have the least amount of shines when the timer hits zero you're out of the game it's such a fantastic mode it is yet again something that never left a DS version seriously they should just get rid of coin runners and replace it with this that's all coin runners is anyway it's just shine runners about the elimination aspect in other words shine runners without the thing that made a grade so battle note is pretty dang good my only complaint is a variety of stages and that's not to say the battle maps are bad in fact they're all good well maybe if the exception of Paul Shore which is a disgrace to beach levels everywhere I absolutely adore beach theme stages but three piles of sand and a palm tree come on Nintendo you can do better than that the Giants yes is awesome Twilight House is cool I hate Twilight House I like Twilight House but I respect your opinion the problem is they're also open these maps don't provide any where to escape players or items there's nothing wrong with the open map but variety is important Nintendo DS's wide open palm Shores wide open tar top as well it's just a circle arena even pi Plaza is debatably an open map the only two stages of any sort of complexity are Twilight house and block port from Nintendo 64 that just goes to show you how good battle mode is in Mario Kart d/s though the map variety is lacking and it's still the best battle mode in any of the games the other hard-hitter mario kart DS is the mission mode this mode is absolutely fantastic since we never saw missions returned this almost feels like a fever dream or something it's like the kind of thing you'd make up when you're a kid hey guys the new mario karts gonna have boss fights and special missions and stuff will not will so and yet it must be real because here I am playing it missions range from beating a drunk driver in a red car to the finish line to blowing up plant guys in the desert there's a decent amount of diversity here in regards to the task you're presented with for me the highlight was always the bosses once you complete all eight other missions in the world you unlock the boss the sound design when their stage appears is so badass and eerie guys I don't know if I want to play Mario Kart anymore getting kind of scared the atmosphere during these battles are great really the bosses are just awesome they're all uniquely their own and they even had their own theme stages speaking of which you know how I was saying the battle maps could have used a bit more variety will the map you fight kingboo on is it too complicated but it also provides places to avoid items without having any vantage points for campers honestly they could have just swapped out either that Beach map our top tart with this arena and it would have made for a more well rounded safe selection it only verifies just how much effort went to these missions a simple little stage it only exists as a boss arena for King Boo is better than some of the actual battle maps one of the coolest things about mission mode is once you complete world 6 you think you're all done the credits roll everything and when you go back to improve your score in some of the missions you notice that holy smokes there's a seventh secret world if this game was just two six worlds I would have been happy but seven worlds there's a lot of content here in all including bosses there are 63 missions to endure as a package it's all interesting enough that I did all one sitting totally not advised but I can't confirm it will keep your interest when people think of mario kart DS what usually comes to mind seems to be the multiplayer specifically the download play and I can totally contest that one of my fondest gaming memories ever is going to some family reunion when I was a kid I didn't know a goddamn person there but at some point during the night me and all the other kids there realized we all had Nintendo DS's next thing you knew there was five of us all playing Mario Kart battle mode on download play my friends and I used to play this game before school all the damn time it worked great I also loved how you can draw an emblem for everyone you race against the sea yeah this game had an emblem maker once more another feature that never came back I love customization options like this even as niches amay see him as I said before this was the first mario kart game of Wi-Fi races and as far as I'm concerned the earliest first party in the Tendo title the rule II nailed the online the Wi-Fi was so good in fact there still exists some fan servers that are still online today shout-out to Doc XD for letting me know until he expounded on the discord I thought he was just trying to say Wi-Fi and then his cat started to tap-dance on his keyboard we move you the best part you don't even need to use mods to use it or at least theoretically I couldn't get my DS to connect to my Wi-Fi network I don't know what to say just want to work I even tried using my smartphone as a hotspot and that didn't work either I'm sure it works just fine for others but I can't really comment on it much myself if I can't try it out personally I don't think I'm missing out on much though because I was there when the official servers are up those are some fond memories probably for the best I can't taint them by getting my ass handed to me in the online nowadays because anyone still going through all this hassle play some Mario Kart DS online is unquestionably going to be damn experienced [Music] Mario Kart DSS agree cam then and it's sold great game now outside Muppet face Mario most everything here is aged pretty well as far as my handful critiques are concerned well those are always minor problems it's not liked I made them worse nevertheless clearly all my net pics are just that depicts because in the grand scheme of things it was a lot of fun revisiting his entry not to mention this is easily the more euchre I've dumped the most hours into there are a few hiccups but so what every Mario car has some rough edges when it comes to analyzing the series I find people rely too heavily on their nostalgia to determine which one is the best basically if it's the entry in the series people funnily remember playing the most that's automatically the best one some people will even go as far as to say a specific entry dominates on all fronts and has zero problems as far as I'm concerned that has yet to happen no game in a series is perfect but likewise I think there is yet to be a downright bad Mario Kart hey this is a bit of a late update to the script but this just came out so now I suppose that statements up for debate so is Mario Kart Diaz perfect no but it's pretty damn close given the hardware it's on I guess the ultimate question would be is this the best Mario Kart and I don't know simply because I don't think I have one every game has something it excels at four DS it's the Battle of mission modes for those two things alone I'd say Mario Kart DS is still worth playing today while I may not have a favorite Mario Kart des is one of my favorites in reinforce with the words Mario Kart meant to gamers all around the world and its impact won't be forgotten anytime soon [Music] hey thanks for watching this video is funded by patreon such as amanda goofed romney banner as sin cane Colton Saurav king cosmic Chazz Robinson Martin hasta Hagen Jeffery long cash inator Victoria Mars Anthony combs in abaca Norton thank you all so much until next time have a good one [Music]

Channel: SilokHawk

Views: 899,149

Keywords: mario kart ds, nintendo ds, review, mission mode, battle mode, multiplayer, silokhawk

Id: yyd2dDNP5nY

Length: 20min 52sec (1252 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 04 2019