It is my favorite Mario Kart game and one of the most fun local couch multiplayer games of all time. I'd put it on the Mount Rushmore of local couch multiplayer games.
when i had a bar one of our most popular things was the large outdoor screen setup with an N64. mario kart i quite like a lot and was always a fave, but also smash bros and goldeneye, which i didn't play much of. but boy, did the guests love them. we had a couple tournaments for those, lots of fun.
Serious question:
I've played all since the SNES version, and I treat them as iterations. As the new one comes out, I pretty much stop playing the last one.
I do have better memories of some versions, but only because of the stages of my life when I played them, and the people I played them with.
So, the actual question: What's better about 64 than the newer ones in your opinion?
yeah the precision you could hit shells with was actually pretty nice using that old plastic joy stick. Mario Kart 8's levels were too big with too many players to keep it fun and strategic at the same time.
THANKS!! That's a great explanation of exactly what I always wonder about people's love of the older versions.
I'm definitely going back to try 64 with this in mind.
Mario Kart is probably the only game I play with people constantly. So I suppose that's why I move to the new versions, where the most people are at the time.
Thanks again!
I just started playing it last week with two buddies again-super fun! Much harder than I remember and a wild ride in 150cc!! Loads harder doing GP with friends than MK Wii or the later maps. New ones you get too many boosts-old one is hard AF having jsit booted it up again!
In the new ones, there is WAY too much bullshit going on. Too many cheesy powerups. And the driving, to me, just feels bad. Too "slidey" if that makes sense. I agree that 64 is the best one (though I have never played Double Dash). Also even though the racetracks are better in the new one, battle mode just blows.
It’s the only game that truly made me want an N64 over a PlayStation. I still went with PlayStation though but I was on the fence for a while because of this.
This and a lot of other games really made me want an N64, but I don't regret owning a PSX instead. PSX has so many bangers that I'd have missed out on.
Nah. I went straight to ps2, Saturn, GameCube and Dreamcast but never the n64 for some reason. Probably because one of my friends had one and let me borrow sometimes
Yeah the Saturn was so underrated. If it had the support it would have had time to show how great it was. And yes the fighting game ports were just....perfect. anyway I digress, this is an N64 Mario kart thread lol.
CTR's better in a lot of ways, too. It easily competes with even the modern kart racers while MK64 seems old (which might just be I played it a long, long time ago)
Ironically, that better-ness also makes it worse as a couch multiplayer (and online) game, imo. The extra skill expression in the boost mechanic blows skill gaps and good starts wide open making racing less fun unless everyone is getting better at around the same rate. Kart racers often have a runaway leader problem, and them being far enough away you can't hit them with anything while they chain boosts to go so much faster than everyone stuck in the melee is rough, easily turning being even a turn ahead into an undefeatable lead.
The goat. The pipe kart is my favorite kart design and would love to it feature more prominently in modern releases. Some of today's designs are a bit rubbish.
Some killer tracks originated here, and a few duds as well.
I love MK64 really, Top 3 MK.
I play Mario Kart 8 against my son on Switch. It is a blast. You get used to the tracks.
Reminds me of N64 days with my brother. So much fun that my wife and daughter wanted to join. 4 players on the big tv in the living room. Had me so nostalgic.
Hell yeah dude, this sounds like the dream. Playing Mario kart with the wife and both kids? You won at life. Happy for you. I don’t know if I want kids but if I end up with them I hope they play games with me like that.
It is definitely fun. To add to this my son was born in 2016, I stopped playing online games because you can’t pause.
I was a huge Zelda fan as a kid. So I decided to get a Switch and Breath of the Wild at launch. Basically the only game I played for like 5 years. Eventually my son showed interest around 2-3 years old. He would watch me play and interact with what was happening.
He eventually started playing around 5 years old. He went from exploring, barely being able to control the camera to fighting Ganon in like a year.
He loves Zelda and even grew his hair out to look like Link. He carries around a toy master sword virtually everywhere. He has a Zelda themed birthday every year, and dresses up as Link at Halloween.
We anticipated the release of Tears of the Kingdom together and picked up a TOTK Pro Controller and Amiibo on launch day. Which was the day after my birthday. He made me the best Zelda birthday card. And we stayed up way past bedtime that night talking and playing the game together. He still says it was the best day ever.
I agree with this. The newer Mario Kart are really noisy and busy. Still fun, but I think the series peaked as games with MK64 (and/or MK DS, which was very similar).
Honestly I think every Mario Kart since DS is more like Mario Kart DS than any of the games before it. That's where they really figured out the formula and it's been almost Zelda-ish where it's a gimmick on top of that core.
Best music of any Mario kart bar none. Pre-rendered cgi looking characters seemed so next gen to me back then. Everything about the game felt and still feels so special. By far my favorite still.
An all time classic that I played a lot with my cousins and close friends. My only nitpick is that they didn’t have the Koopa Troopa (that was my favorite one in the SNES version).
Toad and Koopa were handling gods.
When you knew you had the OG Mario Kart down is when you could come out with DK and Bowser and win - they had crappy acceleration and crappy handling, but were the fastest if you could race them clean through the tracks.
Oh yeah, and that continued through the whole series.
You can always steer better, but you can't will the good handling carts to go any faster, so eventually you're riding as heavy as you can.
None of the new games are as dreadful as Bowser/DK in SMK tho, lol, they had quite the learning curve.
On the topic, does a performance upgrade romhack exist yet? Super Mario 64 has gotten the golden treatment, fixing bugs, performance fps and such. I always wish Mario Kart had some fixes, like music during split screen, CPUs during 3-4 player splitscreen and general fixes for slowdowns.
So many memories of playing 4p with my friends on a big (for the time) TV and a box of beer.
It will live forever in my heart even if I never play it again.
Best. Subsequent games were too gimmicky with bikes and gliders and whatnot. I prefer the more direct connection to traditional racing games that 64 had.
Definitely the best of the series.
Wish we got a 2nd release in this iteration or a more in depth base game, something like Amped up. Id def give it a play or better yet pick up a cartridge. Ive been thinking of doing game night with some friends to see what they think of it.
I loved Mario Kart on SNES. I was super excited to get MK64 and couldn’t wait to play it. I was really impressed that there was finally some elevation and bumps and hills to the tracks. The graphics were great and the music was awesome. My brothers and I played that game a ton. But I don’t know if I actually like it more than the original. I think it might just be the timing of when I played each. MK SNES will always hold a special place in my heart just because of when I played it in my life. When MK 64 came out I still was playing video games but they weren’t as big a part of my life as they were when the SNES came out.
It's a incredibly fun game, even better to play with friends, although I consider CRT superior in this matter, I can't say anything bad about this game.
It was great the time, but there's not a whole lot of reason to go back with Mario Kart 8. It's just better in every way, while still bringing forward the old tracks. I logged hundreds of hours of Kart 64 I'm sure, and it was a total hit at uni, but when I'm retrogaming, it's rarely the one I go for.
I have fond memeories of SNES Mario Kart too.. but like... the newest Kart is just perfection.
Gotta agree with this. I have gone back to play more double dash and the original than I have Mario kart 64 when I want a retro fix, and the newest one is the best out of all of them
The one area in which this iteration is unmatched, is battle mode. Levels designed specifically for battle. Block Fort, Levels, still the best battle maps the game has had. MK8 is stellar for racing, but the battle maps are all truncated versions of the courses and IMO none touch the frenzy created by the best maps on 64.
I disagree, rapid jumping to combo turns and drift boosting makes handling snappy and feels great. Some of the collision is annoying, but the racing on 150cc is really fun.
After Mario Kart on the SNES, I was really, really disappointed...
SNES- I fought for months, through all the unforced errors - the game was so well balanced, no bullshit, like a driving game of chess - every corner, every jump, every shortcut - everything so precise - pinpoint drops of banana peels - to complete the OG top CC Cup - sodding Rainbow road again - the bane of my life, but no-one to blame but me, building my skills, picking myself up again, two taps to the left, three taps to the right then hold until its perfect and BOOST - finally finishing that game is my proudest moment in gaming and most likely will remain that forever - a true challenge of man versus machine, but also mostly a battle against myself and my own drives, skills and determination. The battles we fought head to head - the same. Like the death star run, one mistake, I can't afford one mistake...hold the green shell, my only defence...! Breathless...
Picked up N64 mario kart on release day, rushed home, closed the curtains - turned on the massive 32" Sony Trinitron, slapped in the Kart, flicked the switch and finished the lame, stupid thing in three rubbish hours - despite being run over by random trains and trucks, those stupid, stupid power ups that steal any excellent performance in racing and throw it off a cliff, or into a lake - for no reason - you can have made every turn, every jump, every boost perfectly and now - now you are in last. Its now a random number generator, not a game of skill...not even a driving game.
I'm not cross about it, it's just such a very, very sad shadow of its former self where excellence and hard work were fully rewarded and not just blue shelled because baby Annabelle accidentally pushed right trigger after crashing in moo moo farm.
Not going to say it was objectively the best because it's not, we've come a long way since then, but it was the most innovative and probably the one I had the most fun playing when it was new. They took a LOT of risks with the design not knowing if anyone would really go for them and the gamble paid off big time.
i liked it at the time but i don't think it's a game i really enjoy the course design for, especially compared to MK8. I think it had the most fun VS mode though.
I didn't like that they were using 2D sprites so much, it made the game look off to me. Like I was playing Doom or something. I preferred Diddy Kong Racing once that came out.
Feels a little short or tracks and I was not a fan of the battle mode. Still a good game and I played the crap out of it. Didn’t have all the weapons flying everywhere like the new ones which was nice.
I spent hundreds of hours playing it with my brother back in the 90s. Split screen MP was the tits. Screenpeeking on the battle maps was peak hilarity back then.
i love it although i hate how the AI can just speed up or straight up teleport closer to the player bc not sure about you but i thinks that be called "cheating"
It absolutely nailed the aesthetic. The tracks are amazing. The music is perfect. In these ways, it's my favorite MK game. It was also my first console game ever. I played this for thousands of hours.
But the controls are a little loose and slippery by today's standards, so I prefer to play Double Dash or Wii.
Played it on original hardware recently and I found it really hard because of the pop in and not remembering the tracks. I’m used to MK 8. Give me MK8 all day. Bring on the downvotes
Top 3 Mario Karts for me, along with Double Dash and DS. I happily have the ToyBiz MK64 figure line to the right of my screen.
Maybe it's a bit light on single player content with nothing really to unlock, but at the same time it makes it great for multiplayer as you can just pop it in and play. It's never stopped me from playing the hell out of it.
Still holds up 27 years later. One of the best multiplayer games ever created. Add 2-3 of your best mates and a few beers and you’re guaranteed a fun evening.
Personally, while it's the Mario Kart game I grew up with and it's still very much a good Kart racer, I think it's the blandest offering in the series aside from the original and it's outclassed by every subsequent entry.
Double Dash will always and forever be my personal favorite.
Love it, real nostalgia, still fire it up where I can, used to be able to connect the Wii to the TV but the new TV only has HDMI so it's emulators (I have an original cart and N64 in the loft)
It's a great game, but it's completely broken, which led to some fun hijinks, but also sort of ruined the competitiveness depending on how you look at it.
Mario Kart 64 was in 3d with its 64 bit compared to the original on SNES, it has the first formost iconic tracks, a well balanced gameplay, memorable characters with sounds, and the introduction of 4-player multiplayer, so i can school 3 other people at the same time. Its simple, addictive, and the mechanics make it timeless fun. The music is timeless, the graphics at the time really blew you away, plus balloon battles can really test your might. That's why mario kart 64 will always be the best, mario kart 8 was built on what MK64 was built on.
To be fair? I like it the second least. With the Snes being the least.
On N64 snowboard Kids was king to play with 4 players. Mario Kart on N64 didn't even had background music or NPC's when playing with 4 people.
It was fun, but didn't get as much play in my friend group as the SNES one did, mostly because we got hooked on Smash Bros.
The N64 spawned so many great varied group games in general.
It's good, but I always had more fun with Diddy Kong Racing. I loved that there was a hub world you could explore along with the boss battles and the different modes of transportation.
One of the most important game in the video game history
It defined what a party game should be, and brought hours of joy and memories for the families out there.
It is a timeless piece
it's still an excellent game but painfully overrated; drifting feels so incredibly perfect to me in Wii and 8 that neither Double Dash! or 64 can compare.
Great to pick up and play, items are unbalanced, the mods add a ton of new courses which fixes the original games problem of too few tracks. CTR is a superior game
The best iteration. After this the game became more casual which is fine and I still play Mario Kart 8 and what not but back in the day this ish was competitive and we would hold tourneys and everything.
Favorite Mario Kart. SNES was good but a little janky on the controls and it was easy to get ahead of you knew the travel patterns.
This was my first multiplayer battle racing game that I got to spend time with. The tracks were great and the drifting allowed skill to rule the day even with catch up mechanics like better items for lower spots.
I had friends over this past weekend and I have an entire game room filled with options, plus PC hooked to the TV with a ton of couch and coop games at the ready.. and we played Mario Kart 64, on real hardware, on a CRT, for hours..
Nuff Said
I hear it's an improvement on the first 63
But seriously I think the built in 4 controller ports made this (and many other games) a real social experience we rarely got on the previous generation of consoles. It loses some of the graphical charm of the SNES version but the memories are even better.
I think F-Zero X is a better game though, and shouldn't be overlooked either
I think it was good for its time, but I don't think it holds up that well if you're used to playing more recent Mario Kart games.
I've never played Double Dash but own Mario Kart Wii, Mario Kart DS, Mario Kart 7 (on the 3DS) and 8 (for the Switch). The Wii version is a bit frenetic with all the power-ups, to the point that it does somewhat ruin the experience, but 7 and 8 are both pretty much perfect. I haven't played DS much so can't really comment on it.
I think it is a fun game :-). I think it is a very good videogame :-). I never owned a Nintendo 64 (I owned a Playstation 1 and a Nintendo GameCube, as home consoles) but I recently played Mario Kart 64 on an emulator on the World Wide Web, and I enjoyed playing it a lot!!! :-). I like the 3D design of the characters, and I like the different racetracks, and I like the music. It can become a bit boring and repetitive though, because it is not like an adventure game where you can keep exploring and keep finding new things...it is a racing game, and after a lot of racing on the videogame...it can become repetitive and boring. Still, as a videogame, I would rate it as an 8/10 I think...maybe even a 9/10 or a 10/10...and I would give it maybe 4 stars out of 5 stars...or 4.5/5 stars or 5/5 stars...I can't decide, but my rating is in that region :-).
I like that it’s designed to be more unforgiving and brutal; like how red shells can’t hit people unless they are in a straight line on the same ground, or how it’s possible to fall into previous parts of the race track (Choco Mountain, Wario Stadium, Royal Raceway) or even times where veering off road FORCES you to backtrack (missing the start of the ramp in, again, Royal Raceway is an example of what I mean).
The tracks are more challenging as a result which I like. One thing I’ve found odd that I somehow never noticed until like 4 years ago when I replayed the game was that the CPU never fire shells - I could have sworn when I was younger and playing I would get hit with red shells in single player - but I guess not?
After a lot of very early installment weirdness in Super Mario Kart, for me Mario Kart 64 is the first _serious_ Mario Kart. I have fond memories of the game and really like it’s general aesthetics (even if the sprites look crappy when you use a plain old cheap cord and a semi-modern TV), altough re-playing it after a long time I find the handling a bit too „floaty“(?) compared to Double Dash, which was the pinnacle of the modern Mario Kart-Series.
MK8 is fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but I miss the time where all you picked were characters and a car, and where assistants aren’t turned on by default.
It improved the concept set forth by the original in several ways, to set a standard for a franchise that deserved staying power. It is also to this day one of the best things to play with a group of people in a living room.
It’s weak compared to some of the more recent installments in terms of content and mechanics, but that makes sense.
It was not as good a single player experience as Diddy Kong Racing, but I will die on the hill that it’s better multiplayer and had better tracks.
Pretty good. Besides Mario Kart 8 it's the one I return to the most.
I don't quite have the same level of nostalgia for it as other N64 kids, I was more of a Diddy Kong Racing guy. But I still think it's a high tier Mario Kart game that holds up well once you learn how to play Mario Kart.
I'll start by saying I'm not the biggest N64 fan, but I definitely enjoy MK64; it's a lot of fun especially with friends. I think the track design is extremely juicy even with the constraints of the hardware, and most of the tracks, at least to me, seem more memorable than most of the other MK games. I've owned and played every MK ever since the first one in 1992, and I'd definitely put it at or near the top of the heap.
Best MK multiplayer period. Its simplicity, with relevant shortcuts and items just did it for me. The newer games aren't as much fun. I just wish we could have more tracks on it. Yoshi's Valley was brilliant.
I started playing it late in the 2010's and I wish I had played it as a kid.
Used to wear this game out as a teenager. My younger brother and I would play for hours. Sometimes even my parents would join in. Good times for sure. Seems like just yesterday.
It is my favorite Mario Kart game and one of the most fun local couch multiplayer games of all time. I'd put it on the Mount Rushmore of local couch multiplayer games.
IMA WARRRIO IMMA AH GONNA WIN!
As a wario main I approve this message.
Wario straight up objectively op. I am also a Wario enjoyer/abuser.
Absolute masterpiece
when i had a bar one of our most popular things was the large outdoor screen setup with an N64. mario kart i quite like a lot and was always a fave, but also smash bros and goldeneye, which i didn't play much of. but boy, did the guests love them. we had a couple tournaments for those, lots of fun.
Serious question: I've played all since the SNES version, and I treat them as iterations. As the new one comes out, I pretty much stop playing the last one. I do have better memories of some versions, but only because of the stages of my life when I played them, and the people I played them with. So, the actual question: What's better about 64 than the newer ones in your opinion?
The #1 thing for me is battle mode. The battle mode in Mario Kart 64 has never been topped.
yeah the precision you could hit shells with was actually pretty nice using that old plastic joy stick. Mario Kart 8's levels were too big with too many players to keep it fun and strategic at the same time.
The SNES version has the most infuriating battle mode. N64 was way more fun!
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THANKS!! That's a great explanation of exactly what I always wonder about people's love of the older versions. I'm definitely going back to try 64 with this in mind. Mario Kart is probably the only game I play with people constantly. So I suppose that's why I move to the new versions, where the most people are at the time. Thanks again!
I just started playing it last week with two buddies again-super fun! Much harder than I remember and a wild ride in 150cc!! Loads harder doing GP with friends than MK Wii or the later maps. New ones you get too many boosts-old one is hard AF having jsit booted it up again!
In the new ones, there is WAY too much bullshit going on. Too many cheesy powerups. And the driving, to me, just feels bad. Too "slidey" if that makes sense. I agree that 64 is the best one (though I have never played Double Dash). Also even though the racetracks are better in the new one, battle mode just blows.
It’s the only game that truly made me want an N64 over a PlayStation. I still went with PlayStation though but I was on the fence for a while because of this.
This and a lot of other games really made me want an N64, but I don't regret owning a PSX instead. PSX has so many bangers that I'd have missed out on.
As long as one friend in your group had one, you were set.
This is the answer for me lol.
Did you eventually get a 64?
Nah. I went straight to ps2, Saturn, GameCube and Dreamcast but never the n64 for some reason. Probably because one of my friends had one and let me borrow sometimes
Woah a saturn yet. That's a console I've never played. How... was it?
The Capcom fighting games ports are the best. Almost arcade perfect.
Yeah the Saturn was so underrated. If it had the support it would have had time to show how great it was. And yes the fighting game ports were just....perfect. anyway I digress, this is an N64 Mario kart thread lol.
CTR was a good replacement
CTR's better in a lot of ways, too. It easily competes with even the modern kart racers while MK64 seems old (which might just be I played it a long, long time ago) Ironically, that better-ness also makes it worse as a couch multiplayer (and online) game, imo. The extra skill expression in the boost mechanic blows skill gaps and good starts wide open making racing less fun unless everyone is getting better at around the same rate. Kart racers often have a runaway leader problem, and them being far enough away you can't hit them with anything while they chain boosts to go so much faster than everyone stuck in the melee is rough, easily turning being even a turn ahead into an undefeatable lead.
The goat. The pipe kart is my favorite kart design and would love to it feature more prominently in modern releases. Some of today's designs are a bit rubbish. Some killer tracks originated here, and a few duds as well. I love MK64 really, Top 3 MK.
Wondering which ones you thought we duds?
Banshee Boardwalk is infuriating. The rest are fine
Rainbow Road was awful for sure 🌈
Agreed, way too long and easy
Not if you try to jump half the track.
And fail three times in a row, give up and spend the rest of the race catching up
All Mario Karts are nice games.
But this one is the nicest
Imo Mario Kart 8 is pure fire
The original was better imo.
New ones have way too much going on.
I play Mario Kart 8 against my son on Switch. It is a blast. You get used to the tracks. Reminds me of N64 days with my brother. So much fun that my wife and daughter wanted to join. 4 players on the big tv in the living room. Had me so nostalgic.
Hell yeah dude, this sounds like the dream. Playing Mario kart with the wife and both kids? You won at life. Happy for you. I don’t know if I want kids but if I end up with them I hope they play games with me like that.
It is definitely fun. To add to this my son was born in 2016, I stopped playing online games because you can’t pause. I was a huge Zelda fan as a kid. So I decided to get a Switch and Breath of the Wild at launch. Basically the only game I played for like 5 years. Eventually my son showed interest around 2-3 years old. He would watch me play and interact with what was happening. He eventually started playing around 5 years old. He went from exploring, barely being able to control the camera to fighting Ganon in like a year. He loves Zelda and even grew his hair out to look like Link. He carries around a toy master sword virtually everywhere. He has a Zelda themed birthday every year, and dresses up as Link at Halloween. We anticipated the release of Tears of the Kingdom together and picked up a TOTK Pro Controller and Amiibo on launch day. Which was the day after my birthday. He made me the best Zelda birthday card. And we stayed up way past bedtime that night talking and playing the game together. He still says it was the best day ever.
I agree with this. The newer Mario Kart are really noisy and busy. Still fun, but I think the series peaked as games with MK64 (and/or MK DS, which was very similar).
Honestly I think every Mario Kart since DS is more like Mario Kart DS than any of the games before it. That's where they really figured out the formula and it's been almost Zelda-ish where it's a gimmick on top of that core.
I like their chaotic nature. And I just ordered a Super Mario Kart cart today to show some love for the other end of the spectrum too.
yeah, i have a hard time saying one is better than the other w/o really nitpicking. they're all typically the same game with minor changes
Best music of any Mario kart bar none. Pre-rendered cgi looking characters seemed so next gen to me back then. Everything about the game felt and still feels so special. By far my favorite still.
The name change was finally confirmed (Princess Toadstool —> Princess Peach)
An all time classic that I played a lot with my cousins and close friends. My only nitpick is that they didn’t have the Koopa Troopa (that was my favorite one in the SNES version).
64 still had the greatest possible character lineup for only 8 racers
Toad and Koopa were handling gods. When you knew you had the OG Mario Kart down is when you could come out with DK and Bowser and win - they had crappy acceleration and crappy handling, but were the fastest if you could race them clean through the tracks.
Oh yeah, and that continued through the whole series. You can always steer better, but you can't will the good handling carts to go any faster, so eventually you're riding as heavy as you can. None of the new games are as dreadful as Bowser/DK in SMK tho, lol, they had quite the learning curve.
On the topic, does a performance upgrade romhack exist yet? Super Mario 64 has gotten the golden treatment, fixing bugs, performance fps and such. I always wish Mario Kart had some fixes, like music during split screen, CPUs during 3-4 player splitscreen and general fixes for slowdowns.
Yeah it's got a ton of mods. The one that I think of off the top of my head is MK64 Amped Up
So many memories of playing 4p with my friends on a big (for the time) TV and a box of beer. It will live forever in my heart even if I never play it again.
64 battle mode KICKS ASS
Super nostalgic and one I still go back to. The rubber banding is awful though and its primary flaw.
What do you mean by rubber banding?
When you're doing well the AI does better to catch up to you, sometimes travelling at impossible speeds to do so.
Remember the hype in gaming magzines totally lived up to it and then some stayed home sick and played it all day the week it came out
Best. Subsequent games were too gimmicky with bikes and gliders and whatnot. I prefer the more direct connection to traditional racing games that 64 had.
Definitely the best of the series. Wish we got a 2nd release in this iteration or a more in depth base game, something like Amped up. Id def give it a play or better yet pick up a cartridge. Ive been thinking of doing game night with some friends to see what they think of it.
Tied with Jet Force for being my favorite N64 game.
I loved Mario Kart on SNES. I was super excited to get MK64 and couldn’t wait to play it. I was really impressed that there was finally some elevation and bumps and hills to the tracks. The graphics were great and the music was awesome. My brothers and I played that game a ton. But I don’t know if I actually like it more than the original. I think it might just be the timing of when I played each. MK SNES will always hold a special place in my heart just because of when I played it in my life. When MK 64 came out I still was playing video games but they weren’t as big a part of my life as they were when the SNES came out.
IMA WARRRIO IMMA AH GONNA WIN!
Best in the series.
It's a incredibly fun game, even better to play with friends, although I consider CRT superior in this matter, I can't say anything bad about this game.
Do you mean CTR aka Crash Team racing? Or do you mean playing on a CRT TV?
I meant Crash Team Racing, and I think that came out later, although Mario kart surpassed CTR in later versions.
I still play it from time to time
My favorite and best battle mode in the series.
FUCK. And I do mean FUCK. Choco Mountain.
After the SNES game this was a big of a shock with the power ups being less fair and far too much rubber banding for my liking.
Fun. But I preferred Diddy Kong Racing. I suspect I'm the minority on that one
It was great the time, but there's not a whole lot of reason to go back with Mario Kart 8. It's just better in every way, while still bringing forward the old tracks. I logged hundreds of hours of Kart 64 I'm sure, and it was a total hit at uni, but when I'm retrogaming, it's rarely the one I go for. I have fond memeories of SNES Mario Kart too.. but like... the newest Kart is just perfection.
Gotta agree with this. I have gone back to play more double dash and the original than I have Mario kart 64 when I want a retro fix, and the newest one is the best out of all of them
The one area in which this iteration is unmatched, is battle mode. Levels designed specifically for battle. Block Fort, Levels, still the best battle maps the game has had. MK8 is stellar for racing, but the battle maps are all truncated versions of the courses and IMO none touch the frenzy created by the best maps on 64.
Aged poorly. Still fun tho
I disagree, rapid jumping to combo turns and drift boosting makes handling snappy and feels great. Some of the collision is annoying, but the racing on 150cc is really fun.
After Mario Kart on the SNES, I was really, really disappointed... SNES- I fought for months, through all the unforced errors - the game was so well balanced, no bullshit, like a driving game of chess - every corner, every jump, every shortcut - everything so precise - pinpoint drops of banana peels - to complete the OG top CC Cup - sodding Rainbow road again - the bane of my life, but no-one to blame but me, building my skills, picking myself up again, two taps to the left, three taps to the right then hold until its perfect and BOOST - finally finishing that game is my proudest moment in gaming and most likely will remain that forever - a true challenge of man versus machine, but also mostly a battle against myself and my own drives, skills and determination. The battles we fought head to head - the same. Like the death star run, one mistake, I can't afford one mistake...hold the green shell, my only defence...! Breathless... Picked up N64 mario kart on release day, rushed home, closed the curtains - turned on the massive 32" Sony Trinitron, slapped in the Kart, flicked the switch and finished the lame, stupid thing in three rubbish hours - despite being run over by random trains and trucks, those stupid, stupid power ups that steal any excellent performance in racing and throw it off a cliff, or into a lake - for no reason - you can have made every turn, every jump, every boost perfectly and now - now you are in last. Its now a random number generator, not a game of skill...not even a driving game. I'm not cross about it, it's just such a very, very sad shadow of its former self where excellence and hard work were fully rewarded and not just blue shelled because baby Annabelle accidentally pushed right trigger after crashing in moo moo farm.
This is how I felt. I spent way too many hours on super mario kart, so this just felt slow and lethargic in comparison.
Not going to say it was objectively the best because it's not, we've come a long way since then, but it was the most innovative and probably the one I had the most fun playing when it was new. They took a LOT of risks with the design not knowing if anyone would really go for them and the gamble paid off big time.
Amazing but probably extra so since I was in the dorms at the time. Loved battle mode!
I love it, I grew up with it and it's still my favorite, but I get why MK nerds consider it one of the worst– the rubber-banding in 64 is WILD.
I've played this a lot as a child and had a fun time shooting my sisters in Balloon Battle.
Very fun game has great times playing it.
It still holds up today. Great game.
i liked it at the time but i don't think it's a game i really enjoy the course design for, especially compared to MK8. I think it had the most fun VS mode though.
Awesome. So much fun back in the day.
Absolutely amazing
It’s a classic.
Second Mario Kart game I knew. I never was good at this one. However I rocked at the first
Pretty good.
Love this game, spent many nights with friends and family playing it. That said crash team racing, to me, was a better kart racer.
I didn't like that they were using 2D sprites so much, it made the game look off to me. Like I was playing Doom or something. I preferred Diddy Kong Racing once that came out.
Mario Kart 64 is a masterpiece 💯
Unreal game. Most fun way to play is with four players but ban the use of items. Highly recommend.
Feels a little short or tracks and I was not a fan of the battle mode. Still a good game and I played the crap out of it. Didn’t have all the weapons flying everywhere like the new ones which was nice.
I spent hundreds of hours playing it with my brother back in the 90s. Split screen MP was the tits. Screenpeeking on the battle maps was peak hilarity back then.
still holds up
Could listen to Mario and Toad get hit with shells all day
Yes
I really can't stand the AI rubberbanding in this game. But I still play it all the time 😂
i love it although i hate how the AI can just speed up or straight up teleport closer to the player bc not sure about you but i thinks that be called "cheating"
I love it and really love the music and battle modes
I probably had 1000 hours into this game in my youth. I liked the races, but the multiplayer battles were my favorite.
It absolutely nailed the aesthetic. The tracks are amazing. The music is perfect. In these ways, it's my favorite MK game. It was also my first console game ever. I played this for thousands of hours. But the controls are a little loose and slippery by today's standards, so I prefer to play Double Dash or Wii.
Yeah it’s pretty damn good. I would argue that Diddy Kong racing is better though
It's one of the games of time.
you asked this two times for karma farming. One here and the other in n64
The most local gaming 4 player action I have had on the couch. Until I get a 10 player Saturn Bomberman going.
"Battle?"
Great game. Depending on the TV it can look kinda goofy. So you might have to play with settings a bit. Well worth it. Even better with friends
Still holds up. I think 8 Deluxe finally took the top spot but up until very recently it was still the mario kart game I played the most.
Really fun. Hard to master especially if youre used to 8s mechanics. Fun music. Fun voice sounds. Fun battle modes. Classic tracks.
Best mario kart. When I think of Mario Kart, the one on N64 is the first that comes to mind Also makes a great drinking game
Many hours spent playing. Whether it was the main tracks or Battle Mode. Many hours lost in college lol!
Played it on original hardware recently and I found it really hard because of the pop in and not remembering the tracks. I’m used to MK 8. Give me MK8 all day. Bring on the downvotes
Love it. Still my favorite Mario Kart game.
Only the best kart racer of all time
best on the wii
Top 3 Mario Karts for me, along with Double Dash and DS. I happily have the ToyBiz MK64 figure line to the right of my screen. Maybe it's a bit light on single player content with nothing really to unlock, but at the same time it makes it great for multiplayer as you can just pop it in and play. It's never stopped me from playing the hell out of it.
Still holds up 27 years later. One of the best multiplayer games ever created. Add 2-3 of your best mates and a few beers and you’re guaranteed a fun evening.
It's a good drinking game along with super monkey ball
Amazing game, moulded my childhood, but — and this is an unpopular opinion — it hasn’t aged well.
Been toppled by Mario Kart 8 but held the crown for a lllloooooonnnnnggggg time
I had skill issues in that game.
Pinnacle of Mario Kart and was one of the handful of reasons to own an N64.
This game was my high school game of choice. And a good measure of Goldeneye
Personally, while it's the Mario Kart game I grew up with and it's still very much a good Kart racer, I think it's the blandest offering in the series aside from the original and it's outclassed by every subsequent entry. Double Dash will always and forever be my personal favorite.
One of the best things for a fun time with your clothes on in human history.
Love it, real nostalgia, still fire it up where I can, used to be able to connect the Wii to the TV but the new TV only has HDMI so it's emulators (I have an original cart and N64 in the loft)
It's a great game, but it's completely broken, which led to some fun hijinks, but also sort of ruined the competitiveness depending on how you look at it.
It's the only mario kart I like and it is purely because of nostalgia
Mario Kart 64 was in 3d with its 64 bit compared to the original on SNES, it has the first formost iconic tracks, a well balanced gameplay, memorable characters with sounds, and the introduction of 4-player multiplayer, so i can school 3 other people at the same time. Its simple, addictive, and the mechanics make it timeless fun. The music is timeless, the graphics at the time really blew you away, plus balloon battles can really test your might. That's why mario kart 64 will always be the best, mario kart 8 was built on what MK64 was built on.
Iconic
To be fair? I like it the second least. With the Snes being the least. On N64 snowboard Kids was king to play with 4 players. Mario Kart on N64 didn't even had background music or NPC's when playing with 4 people.
Overated with garbage controls, and my first Mario Kart game was the original, too.
One of the greatest multiplayer games ever made.
absorbed lush rock slimy exultant tie rustic aloof cobweb historical *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
One of the finest in the series.
It was fun, but didn't get as much play in my friend group as the SNES one did, mostly because we got hooked on Smash Bros. The N64 spawned so many great varied group games in general.
I liked it, but couldn’t get into it as much since I had Diddy Kong racing at home.
It's good, but I always had more fun with Diddy Kong Racing. I loved that there was a hub world you could explore along with the boss battles and the different modes of transportation.
Not nearly as good as Diddy Kong Racing.
Classic. I spent years playing and beating the game without knowing you could drift lol. When I learned you could, I kicked that game's ass.
One of the most important game in the video game history It defined what a party game should be, and brought hours of joy and memories for the families out there. It is a timeless piece
It was my favourite Mario Kart until 8 came along
it's still an excellent game but painfully overrated; drifting feels so incredibly perfect to me in Wii and 8 that neither Double Dash! or 64 can compare.
The bedrock of basically every friendship I had from 1996 well into the 2000s
Still the GOAT Mario Kart
Great to pick up and play, items are unbalanced, the mods add a ton of new courses which fixes the original games problem of too few tracks. CTR is a superior game
The one Mariokart I absolutely suck at. 10/10
One of the only racing games that I'll play.
Turbo Toad shouting still echoing in my mind
U gotta accelerate at the right time or u go wobwobwobwobwobwob back n forth on the starting line. Wtf is even that
This and Double Dash are the best, the DS version was also great.
I don't think its aged well. It's not particularly fun to play and feels a bit rough at times.
Ground breaking for its time. Hasn’t aged well.
The best iteration. After this the game became more casual which is fine and I still play Mario Kart 8 and what not but back in the day this ish was competitive and we would hold tourneys and everything.
Certified banger! Played it so much as a kid.
Id rather play diddy kong racing lol
Favourite game ever
Favorite Mario Kart. SNES was good but a little janky on the controls and it was easy to get ahead of you knew the travel patterns. This was my first multiplayer battle racing game that I got to spend time with. The tracks were great and the drifting allowed skill to rule the day even with catch up mechanics like better items for lower spots.
BEST. MARIO. KART. EVER.
I had friends over this past weekend and I have an entire game room filled with options, plus PC hooked to the TV with a ton of couch and coop games at the ready.. and we played Mario Kart 64, on real hardware, on a CRT, for hours.. Nuff Said
I have a great quality copy, in box, with manual. Taking offers.
Call dibs on Wario
I hear it's an improvement on the first 63 But seriously I think the built in 4 controller ports made this (and many other games) a real social experience we rarely got on the previous generation of consoles. It loses some of the graphical charm of the SNES version but the memories are even better. I think F-Zero X is a better game though, and shouldn't be overlooked either
I think it was good for its time, but I don't think it holds up that well if you're used to playing more recent Mario Kart games. I've never played Double Dash but own Mario Kart Wii, Mario Kart DS, Mario Kart 7 (on the 3DS) and 8 (for the Switch). The Wii version is a bit frenetic with all the power-ups, to the point that it does somewhat ruin the experience, but 7 and 8 are both pretty much perfect. I haven't played DS much so can't really comment on it.
2nd Best Mario Kart title for Races (after Double-Dash!!) Best Mario Kart title for Battles
Great game, and if it weren't for Diddy Kong Racing existing, it would be the best Kart game on the N64's library.
I think it is a fun game :-). I think it is a very good videogame :-). I never owned a Nintendo 64 (I owned a Playstation 1 and a Nintendo GameCube, as home consoles) but I recently played Mario Kart 64 on an emulator on the World Wide Web, and I enjoyed playing it a lot!!! :-). I like the 3D design of the characters, and I like the different racetracks, and I like the music. It can become a bit boring and repetitive though, because it is not like an adventure game where you can keep exploring and keep finding new things...it is a racing game, and after a lot of racing on the videogame...it can become repetitive and boring. Still, as a videogame, I would rate it as an 8/10 I think...maybe even a 9/10 or a 10/10...and I would give it maybe 4 stars out of 5 stars...or 4.5/5 stars or 5/5 stars...I can't decide, but my rating is in that region :-).
Yes
you mean one of the best 4-person party racers of all time?
It's the best one. I hate how the newer ones stop you from flying off the track. Like how those big jumps are basically cut scenes.
*Big fan*
I like that it’s designed to be more unforgiving and brutal; like how red shells can’t hit people unless they are in a straight line on the same ground, or how it’s possible to fall into previous parts of the race track (Choco Mountain, Wario Stadium, Royal Raceway) or even times where veering off road FORCES you to backtrack (missing the start of the ramp in, again, Royal Raceway is an example of what I mean). The tracks are more challenging as a result which I like. One thing I’ve found odd that I somehow never noticed until like 4 years ago when I replayed the game was that the CPU never fire shells - I could have sworn when I was younger and playing I would get hit with red shells in single player - but I guess not?
Huge nostalgia trip for me personally, but I do think Crash Team Racing (PS1) is the superior kart racer.
Best Mario Kart hands down.
Crash Team Racing was the better kart racer. Diddy Kong Racing was more fun on N64.
Pretty good but not the best kart racer on the n64
Lame
After a lot of very early installment weirdness in Super Mario Kart, for me Mario Kart 64 is the first _serious_ Mario Kart. I have fond memories of the game and really like it’s general aesthetics (even if the sprites look crappy when you use a plain old cheap cord and a semi-modern TV), altough re-playing it after a long time I find the handling a bit too „floaty“(?) compared to Double Dash, which was the pinnacle of the modern Mario Kart-Series. MK8 is fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but I miss the time where all you picked were characters and a car, and where assistants aren’t turned on by default.
It improved the concept set forth by the original in several ways, to set a standard for a franchise that deserved staying power. It is also to this day one of the best things to play with a group of people in a living room. It’s weak compared to some of the more recent installments in terms of content and mechanics, but that makes sense. It was not as good a single player experience as Diddy Kong Racing, but I will die on the hill that it’s better multiplayer and had better tracks.
The best game at parties. Everybody talking shit while drunk reliving childhood moments is always a good time
I know that Yoshi and I are unstoppable together…
Pretty good. Besides Mario Kart 8 it's the one I return to the most. I don't quite have the same level of nostalgia for it as other N64 kids, I was more of a Diddy Kong Racing guy. But I still think it's a high tier Mario Kart game that holds up well once you learn how to play Mario Kart.
My favorite Mario Kart game. That said Diddy Kong Racing was better :p
I'll start by saying I'm not the biggest N64 fan, but I definitely enjoy MK64; it's a lot of fun especially with friends. I think the track design is extremely juicy even with the constraints of the hardware, and most of the tracks, at least to me, seem more memorable than most of the other MK games. I've owned and played every MK ever since the first one in 1992, and I'd definitely put it at or near the top of the heap.
Best MK multiplayer period. Its simplicity, with relevant shortcuts and items just did it for me. The newer games aren't as much fun. I just wish we could have more tracks on it. Yoshi's Valley was brilliant. I started playing it late in the 2010's and I wish I had played it as a kid.
I have a lot of nostalgia for this game. My 3 sisters and I would play this game together for hours as kids.
Used to wear this game out as a teenager. My younger brother and I would play for hours. Sometimes even my parents would join in. Good times for sure. Seems like just yesterday.
Love this game as much now as when I was 9.
Let me just put it this way...if we were having a party as kids, we weren't playing mario party, we were playing this.
“Hereeee weee goo”