NAME: Mario Kart 64
SYSTEM: Nintendo 64
MAKER: Nintendo
PRODUCER: Shigeru Miyamoto
GENRE: Racing

GRAPHICS: 9. The characters look realistic, but the backgrounds could be more imaginative
MUSIC: 8. Well-orchastrated, but unfortunately it must be given up in 3- and 4-player modes
FUN: 10. Great by yourself, better co-op
REPLAY: 6. Finding all of the course ghosts is fun, but boring after a while
DIFFICULTY: 7. Not too hard for the shortcut-proficient
ENDING: 7. Dumb, but strangely satisfying
STORYLINE: N/A (no story)
MULTIPLAYER: 10. The only way to play (not literally)
ORIGINALITY: 5. Like the first SMK, but better
REALISM: 9. Besides the 1000-foot drops, of course
CONTROL: 9. Not too many problems
MATURITY: 3. Heh, no comment

The ultimate party game. MK64's Vs races and battles are some of the best there are are. 
But if you don't have any friends (or extra controllers), you should consider this a fun 
rental at best. The CPU opponents are breathtakingly dumb (just hang a banana off of your 
butt and get ready for fun :). A sort of multiple-player mode without multiple controllers 
is swapping memory cards with other people, although after once or twice it gets as fun as 
Chess by Mail. What surprises me is the sheer amount of glitches! A list of them is at 
http://members.tripod.com/~cranium7/TXT_Files/mk64shortcuts.txt, and almost all of them 
are, as you might have predicted, shortcuts. Another surprise is, on close investigation, 
all of the 9 (including the bomb) racers are 3-D models; in other words, a ton of 2-D 
frames of prerendered animation. If you have multiple controllers, buy this, if not, don't. 
It's as simple as that.

OVERALL: ******** 80%

Reviewed on 12/13/1998