It goes without saying that Mario Kart is the most popular racing video game franchise around. With the iconic cast of characters from the Super Mario series, exhilarating multiplayer madness, well-designed courses, and tight controls, it’s not hard to see why. There’s quite a few games in the beloved Mario Kart lineup, but the one that stands above the rest is still Mario Kart: Double Dash!! For the Nintendo GameCube.

For starters, it introduced a lot of gameplay mechanics that stuck around for later entries. Double Dash!! was the first game in the series to feature Double Item Boxes, allowing the player to obtain and hold two items at once. It’s also the first in the series that allows racers to drive in different karts than just their own go-kart. Players could finally unlock and select which kart they’d want to use along with any character. 

There was also a huge improvement to the power-slide that allows players to drift around corners. This entry made it so that the joystick can be tilted to cause a speed-boost after successfully drifting. This is another element that became a gameplay staple going forward. Double Dash!! is also the first Mario Kart game to use 3D rendered models for characters rather than 2D sprites. 

Fan-favorite courses, like Baby Park, Daisy Cruiser, Wario Colosseum, and more got their starts in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! And have since become some of the most-played tracks in modern games. The course design throughout the whole game is overall excellent. Other courses like DK Mountain are insanely fun to play on, incredibly memorable, and need to make a comeback of their own.

Where Mario Kart: Double Dash!! shines the most, though, is with its core gimmick of using two racers at once. The dual character selection changed up the strategy a lot. Switching between items and selecting which ones to hold onto for later use versus which ones to use more immediately played heavily into the game’s meta. Plus, being able to choose two characters at once was more fun than having to decide on just the one character to play as.

More importantly, for the first and only time in the series, each character had their own special item that only they could use in addition to the rest of the items in the game. Mario and Luigi threw fireballs. Peach and Daisy summoned heart shields. Bowser and Bowser Jr. launched huge, spiked Bowser shells. Toad and Toadette used Golden Mushrooms for extreme speed boosts. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong tossed down Giant Bananas. Yoshi and Birdo threw eggs. Wario and Waluigi launched Bob-ombs. Koopa Troopa was able to throw three green shells while Paratroopa was able to throw three red shells. Baby Mario and Baby Luigi summoned Chain Chomps to pull them through the course. Petey Piranha and King Boo’s special ability was that they’d get other characters’ specials at random.

Because of this, character choice mattered more than ever before. Players could mix and match their duos depending on what type of strategy they’d want to go for. Peach and Donkey Kong would make for a fantastic defense team, while Paratroopa and Bowser Jr. would be an ideal light-weight offense duo. Toad and Baby Luigi would be perfect for those wanting to zoom to first place. One could also play a defensive character with an offensive one to be more well-rounded.

Mario Kart: Double Dash!! played a massive role in progressing the series while also being especially great on its own. It played well, had a fun roster of characters, featured a unique central mechanic with the dual character selection, and offered the opportunity for more strategy than ever. Even though the series has evolved to the heights of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Double Dash!! will forever be a gem in the franchise.

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