Mario Kart 64 | The Completionist

hey guys before we start today's episode I just want to give a quick highlight to a gentleman by the name of Patrick this is not a brand deal I'm not being paid to say this it's just something I want to share with you guys something that I actually truly believe in especially when it comes to recording older consoles with current day Hardware wherever you may be so Patrick is a company called HDR GB it's kind of one-man army with a couple of guys working with him and he mods consoles he mods Dreamcast's and Genesis and Nintendo Famicom and all this stuff to essentially out put in a higher resolution natively older consoles have the ability to output in a 480p looking scaling and unfortunately in the States most of our stuff was native whereas in Japan and in Europe they had natively built-in but you had to get a certain kind of cable and so what he does is he mods these consoles to output in this true native nature with the cable out and then you can get a converter and even upscale them to 720p and 1080p resolution now why would you want this in today's day and age you can just download everything to your virtual console well not everything is available in a virtual console and sometimes you actually just want to play with a actual controller you want to play with an n64 controller you want to experience it the way that you want to in nice definition on your television so I just wanted to give a big thank you to Patrick and his team who bought these consoles I got one of these over at eg LX back in March and we recorded all of today's episode with this console and lights up blue it has an RGB out cable just output and start to a converter that does 720p at 1080 so it's really clean I really believe in it I think you guys should definitely give it a look if you want to support Patrick and his team go to HD RGB comm or check them out on instagram @ HD RGB as well as twitter HD RGB guys go support them support us all that fun stuff I hope you don't you hope you enjoyed today's episode of Mario Kart I think it turned out pretty good enjoy we have Mario to thank for so much he there were Nintendo saved home consoles he gave plumbers everywhere a dream to aspire to he made overalls sexy but most of all he's been at the forefront of revolutionising video game genres arguably the most famous of these is the racing genre with the Mario Kart series even the completely videogame illiterate can enjoy a rousing race at a moment's notice Mario Kart is truly the everyman game Super Mario Kart may have kicked things off but the Mario Kart we know today was really established in its second generation which some consider to be the best Mario Kart of them all which is why today I'm completing Mario Kart 64 hey everyone and welcome back to another brand new episode of the cleaners today on the show our victim is a little bit different sometimes you want to get on the open road and enjoy that air today we're gonna be completing mario kart 64 an all-time classic so get ready my friends it's going to be an awesome damn tough oh my god oh my god I killed them is evidence turn the camera turn the camera I'm out I'm out I'm out yes [Music] Mario Kart 64 had a substantial impact on my gaming youth I remember fighters my brother over characters I remember the joy of Brahmi when I opened it up for the first time I remember it frustrating me and pushing me into a new capacity for swearing and it seems that every person even mildly interested in video games has at least one iteration of Mario Kart that became very special to them in 1991 f-zero was released for the Super Nintendo and after successfully bringing blistering single-player racing to home consoles Miyamoto looked to create the same feeling but this time with multiplayer the Nintendo developers were more than willing but unfortunately the tech within the Super Nintendo wasn't entirely able to enable split-screen the tracks couldn't eat up as much processing power and therefore couldn't be as sophisticated as their f-zero inspiration despite that they created Super Mario Kart and it still went on to sell over 4 million copies fast forward to 1995 and the Nintendo 64 is about to be unleashed upon the American market and lead directly to several cases of eyestrain childhood carpal tunnel and countless nostalgia memes things were said for mario karts follow up to release as an n64 launch title when suddenly development resources were pulled and reallocated to a different title forgive ibly that other game was super mario 64 and eventually mario kart 64 dropped and became the second best-selling game for the console eventually you were hard-pressed to find anyone who didn't have either Mario Kart 64 or Goldeneye at the ready for Quadra player mayhem that led to all sorts of little brother fistfights and ruined sleepovers there's a special place in hell for all you odd job users everything is on very high shelves Mario Kart 64 harkens back to a time when you were forced to have real life physically tangible friends if you wanted multiplayer experiences you know instead of against some 9 year old from across the country that has learned a surprising amount of aid speech and thankfully completing Mario 6 before is pretty straightforward I'll be focusing on the single-player mode is there is really no concrete completion criteria in vs I'll be donning my cowboy hat and boots and walking this lonely road the only road that I have ever known guys Green Day is so hardcore the Mario Grand Prix is where the majority of the completion process lies it's essentially the rule of force here there are four difficulties 50cc 100cc 150cc and the unlockable extra mode each difficulty has four cups mushroom flower star and Ringo and in each of these are four tracks my goals to nab gold in each and add them into my digital trophy shelf where my digital dad can pretend to be digitally proud of me all that remains is getting hella low times on certain tracks to be haunted by the staff ghosts essentially the chance to race against the replay of someone on the development team man this staff ghost thing is gonna be a creepypasta as soon as some on the development team dies I know it I gotta be real I am ready for a good old head down and marched Rey through kind of completion process right now after doing super smash brothers melee recently my desire for unlockables and extra modes is a bit I can't even think of the word my brain is still filled to the brim with bogus trophy requirements you know the only thing I'm really worried about when it comes to completing mario kart 64 or reopening those childhood wounds I remember controller creaking frustration as red shells hit me right before finish lines and no matter what I did no matter how fast I furious the rubber-banding was there to hold me back and like all the titles of this era it still has to live up to the nostalgia built up for it over the last 20 odd years something that the n64 in my opinion has a difficult time living up to since the shift to 3d was so major for the last console of the millennium a lot of looks and features now feel incredibly dated but it's so nostalgic what could possibly go wrong oh come on those aged well sort of okay maybe not [Music] Mario Kart 64 is considered by many to be the best in the series there is no denying that it is one of the best games for the Nintendo 64 but nostalgia is a powerful mistress is it the ultimate card experience I can't truly say it is time can be cruel as far as premise goes there isn't much to be said here you know that time in elementary school when all of a sudden everybody was into yo-yos well the same thing happened to the Mushroom Kingdom except with small four-stroke engines everyone here has got themselves a go-kart and now it's on like a West Virginia prom the game really just ignores the whole context thing which has become standard operating procedure from Mario's forays into other sports Nintendo essentially takes Mario puts them in a new uniform keeps Bowser naked for some weird reason and then says they do this now enough said not to say they're being lazy you don't need much of a narrative if the gameplay is strong this is really the generation where you saw the Mushroom Kingdom i'ts intermingle Smash Brothers Mario Party and Mario Tennis were all around the corner Mario Kart 64 as one of the earliest of these fanservice e games has all of the ingredients but it doesn't feel as full after all these years I guess we've been spoiled by the wealth of quality pouring out of the fastest developing medium in human history the n64 just didn't have all of its capabilities discovered at that point resulting in a game that feels a little underdone to be real visually speaking mario kart 64 hasn't aged very well in an interview Hideki Konno said that at the time having all eight racers on the screen at one time was costing so much of the processing power that full 3d modeled racers were impossible that's how we got the pseudo 3d sprites on the characters items and even some of the obstacles I kind of remember noticing this as a kid do I caught that the characters just didn't seem to fit in it's like I was about to go on a blind date and when she arrived it turned out that she was a cardboard cutout now the date was still fun we had a lovely pasta primavera walked down the promenade hung out with some of her work friends she just looked at a place the basic sounds to kind of suffer from the limits of the n64 when Mario parks out the whoa it sounds like he's in the other room with his head under a pillow and as anyone to this day figured out what in the blue hell that noise is that Donkey Kong makes in this game it sounds like someone is shaking a baby cow don't worry about how I know that that baby cow owed me money although this did turn me on to say my favorite warrior cord of all time I'm I kinda we we're cool so I'll see you at the park can you please just stop being a creep for once I need you to stop block being agreed [Music] you're going to eat and that's where my criticisms end the levels themselves are vibrant and well stocked with enough personality to keep my eyeballs interested MooMoo farm and Luigi Raceway may be simple but the colors are so intoxicating and although some of the sounds may be less than optimal the music is top of the heap it's some of the best to come out of the Mario series from the title sequence all the way to Rainbow Road I never stop timing along and bobbing my head in childish Glee the game establishes a poppy jazz motif with each course having its own distinguishable theme and each one is killer Luigi Raceway gets me pumped Koopa Troopa Beach makes me want a pina colada and rainbow road's theme ace we want to run through a meadow completely naked just accepting myself Mario Kart 64 s presentation overall may have some fraying at the edges but it still feels good to come back to play after all of these years it has some performance issues during four-player split screen and speedrunners have ripped every hole imaginable into the lap detection of the game on the whole it's still a tight package [Music] [Applause] now I'm not exactly what you would call a car guy but I know that despite a little rust mariokart still has plenty move juice in the old gas hole I know I kind of railed on the looks but the game still has a lot of beauty under the hood that being said drive any car for long enough and things are bound to wear down how tight the gameplay is and my capacity to improve determine how tasking the completion process is I was happy to once again wrap my hands around that freakish controller and get back to my childhood days of tossing turtle shells and drifting mad asphalt as always Nintendo stays true to tradition and keeps the controls basic mario kart 64 introduces plenty of mainstay mechanics to the series jumping and drifting had always been a part of the Kart series but it was in its second iteration when we would be introduced to the drift boost learning everything is simple and once you get it down you really feel in control of some less than typical handling the characters are few but they're all that you need as the primary stars of the mario series are all represented and Wario - who begs a good question who is your Wario mine is either Zack Galifianakis or fat free ice cream I found Yoshi to be the most useful at handling and quickness but it was fun to dust off Bowser and just throw my weight around as I knock people out of the way in my home turf get out of my castle son you know what none of this the 16 levels benefit from the move to 3d with the ability to change altitude on the course I don't know if you remember Super Mario Kart on the SNES but there were no Hills or valleys and all of the jumps were vague yellow bumps instead of ramps and if you have yellow bumps you don't have a race course you have a throat infection I looked it up the change in depth allowed for a much more unique feel from course to course this is where Mario Kart became the game we know and love now completing racing games is like a double-edged sword I mean repetition is the focus of the game you have to race each course over and over again until you master it therefore there's always a sense of progression when it boils down to shaving off milliseconds attracts must be incredible to hold my attention ever the most part these did the toads Turnpike engulfed itself I mean why are those trucks driving on the go-kart courses in the first place and I never remembered yoshi's level name because I called it Yoshi's cliff bastard ever since I first played it but levels like Wario stadium and Rainbow Road will never get old for me after all of these years the controls did take some time getting used to but they were never made with the intent of feeling like a go-kart controlling a go-kart is much more about cornering if you try drifting in real life you would spin out more than the DJ at your cousin's Bar Mitzvah so the sliding touchy controls of Mario Kart 64 are all a part of the intended experience all of the goodies are back from the original game the shells the bananas the lightning bolt for shrinky dinks though it was in Mario Kart 64 where they introduced the fake box the triple items the golden mushroom and yes the Mean Machine the ever vigilant Manhunter Fast Pass to being the biggest in the world the spiny shell more commonly known as the blue shell luckily since I was mostly playing single-player the game took pity and didn't throw as many of them at me as I remembered from my youth oh do you hear that that sounds like a royalty-free cover of the spinor song rubber band man why because he's here in all of his restrictive glory yes in single-player no matter what you do the game decides on two jerks that are always going to be on your ass I understand how it's supposed to increase the amount of tension in a race instead of just letting the enemies get blown out of the water the only issue with it is that this can lead to some pretty gut-wrenching final moments during a race and non that cool end of a kick-ass action movie kind of way but more like a oh they just killed the main character because their contract negotiations did not work out sort of thing while Mario Kart 64 is single-player mode is maybe a little underdeveloped it kept me more than entertained throughout its duration nabbing gold and altering modes and then unlocking an extra mode was pretty breezy I wish I could say the tail ended there with a happy little kiss or something unfortunately what waited for me were three course time trials in Luigi Raceway Mario a sway and the Royal Raceway achieving certain times while locked the staff ghosts a replay of one of the members from the development team beating the level at first look the requirement seemed innocuous enough at a minute fifty to a minute thirty and two minutes and 45 seconds respectively I could not have been more deceived unlocking these took a monumental amount of repetition research and trial and error despite my love for the raceway courses I was ready to break up with them and I mean in a brutal way like at the altar on the jumbotron I found myself screaming this feels like padding but for the love of Genova after 20 goddamn hours and countless laps I did it made my aching thumbs enjoy their place in Valhalla come Ragnarok in the end Mario Kart 64 may not be the prettiest person at the ball but they can still groove I'm almost ashamed to say that the aesthetics wore on me so much since I had a great time playing the money sounds don't change the fact that it's paired with the kick-ass soundtrack the pixelated characters are still cradled an excellent level design and the cheap rubber banding effect is only a minor blemish on tight and addictive gameplay it almost makes me want to go out and jump inside of them are you a car myself but I'm so fragile that ah yeah yeah yeah I hear my ankle just thinking about buying one [Music] after that giant cheep-cheep barked up my last trophy and all the time trials were beaten my journey was essentially over and the lack of resources for this game is shown in spades by its unlockables and by unlockables I mean unlockable won by getting first place in all the Grand Prix in the game if you are rewarded with drumroll please a different title screen will be 30 hours of work and I get a brand new cover for my Trapper Keeper it's like going through four years of college and all I got to show for it was a a piece of paper I guess you could consider the staff goes trials unlockables as well but after you get them there isn't much you can do other than well try and do you were doing before which was getting a better time on the course after that there's nothing left for your single player hard to achieve it's best to move on to getting real friends and playing on the multiplayer split-screen you can also check out the battle mode of its four levels of varying murderous 'no sound the fun of battle mode to be pretty short-lived and somehow I was always stuck with the goddamn banana peel what am I desperate for laughs in the 1920s if you're looking for an additional challenge might I recommend getting fourth in every race of a cup when you finish you will see the only narrative cutscene in the game you're a lonely character who watches the top three contenders go to their glory and is left behind to drive off the hill like a lonely cowboy that is until a bomb comes to ace you're asked whine after you get to your moment of noble defeat eight life a if that wasn't strange enough then go ahead and check out the League of unintentional shortcuts that speedrunners have found throughout the game but beyond your own machinations you're not gonna find anything else waiting for you know 100 percent bonuses no extra characters and no additional courses that's never what the game was about in the first place though it wasn't about a full-fledged single-player mode it was about the multiplayer effect with which there were another hundred plus hours of gameplay available to you completing this game top to bottom was extended and arduous but completely surmountable by my callous completionist fingers the single-player campaign can almost be done in one through barring any tragic RNG and the ghost trials while difficult can be done on the right day with the right mix of caffeine and ramen while I completed Mario Kart 64 there were three ghost trials unlocked 64 Grand Prix races 1 523 time trial attempts at apps damn it 30 hours of total playtime and 6 times I hugged people in the office and whispered I'm a-gonna weed Frasier almost quit so there you have it Mario Kart 64 in my opinion age has not been too kind to this one at the end of the day it is a pre straightforward game to complete but it kinda has a little bit of rust on it I think every game after Mario Kart 64 is incredible Double Dash even the Nintendo DS version of Mario Kart unfortunately while it isn't as good as it could be at least it set the precedence for what Mario Kart should be going forward so with that of my guys I give this game my completionist rating of finish it ok my wallet huh that's all the time ever today guys so please as always let me know about today's episode somewhere on the internet if you liked what you saw hit that like button subscribe let me know what future episodes of the show you want to see here on the completionist a big shout out to HDR gb guys if you want to go check him out in his business please please please go do so him and his team are awesome they've been real supportive of us this Mikron episode was made possible because of them so go check them out and if you want to see more HD goodness you can check out our episode of your husband with the tech I'll see you next week after I figure out to do with Bradley's body like that's buried but if someone finds it

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 600,154

Keywords: Mario kart, mario kart 64, mario kart review, mario kart 64 review, kart, super mario kart, nintendo, nintendo 64, mario games for n64, n64, jirard khalil, completionist, game review, game reviews, video game reviews, IGN, mario, mario cart, mariocart, Mario Kart (Video Game Series), Mario Kart 64 (Video Game), Mario Kart 64 gameplay, reviews, review, gameplay

Id: -tGzOkFl-5s

Length: 23min 6sec (1386 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 18 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/B__Malz]

i love all the games he plays and the style of the videos...but I can not stand the completionist himself. Idk what it is, but he rubs me the wrong way.

[u/RayMinishi]

"Fans call this the best mario kart".

That's nostalgia if I've ever heard it.

[u/UltraHacker9000]

Video starts at 3:50 btw. unless you like intros and mindless blabber.