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Video Game / Mario Kart 64

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Keep road rage off the streets.

Mario Kart 64 (released in 1996) is a racing game for the Nintendo 64 and the sequel to Super Mario Kart. The game is the first game in the series to be in 3D, and allows up to four players to play.

While the formula is largely unchanged from the original, many refinements that would stick with the series going forward were introduced in this installment. For one, the game is split into four cups of four tracks each (for a total of sixteen tracks) rather than four cups of five tracks each, as in the original. Each track is unique, rather than repeating themes, and features variations in height as opposed to the all-flat courses of the original. Courses are longer, and as a result there are only three laps per race rather than five.

New items were introduced to shake things up, such as triple shells, triple mushrooms, banana bunches, and the infamous Spiny Shell. The CPU racers no longer have exclusive items in Grand Prix mode; in fact, the Spiny Shell cannot be used by CPU racers at all, giving human players an advantage. Lastly, the game would be the first to introduce Mirror Mode (here called "Extra"), a variant on 150cc where tracks are flipped horizontally.

Every track from this game with the exception of Wario Stadium has shown up in one incarnation of this game from Mario Kart DS onwards.

This game would be re-released on the Wii Virtual Console in 2007, and later on the Wii U in 2016. It was also one of the launch titles for Nintendo Switch Online's library of Nintendo 64 games.

    open/close all folders 
    Drivers 
(* denotes a character newly introduced to the series)
  • Bowser
  • Donkey Kong*
  • Luigi
  • Mario
  • Peach
  • Toad
  • Wario*
  • Yoshi

    Tracks 

    Battle Tracks 

The game features examples of these tropes:

  • Action Bomb: Players who have lost all of their balloons in battle mode turn into a Big, Bulky Bomb called the Mini Bomb Kart. Even though they officially already lost, they can still drive around run into one of the other remaining racers to make them lose a stock of their own.
  • Always Night: Wario Stadium, Bowser's Castle, Banshee Boardwalk, Rainbow Roadnote , and it's always sunset at Toad's Turnpike.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Rainbow Road, complete with the neon characters in the background and of course the road.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • If you get any place lower than 4th, the game will allow you to retry the course again with no penalty. This is extremely helpful in beating the 150cc races.
    • The game is programmed to give better items to stragglers than to those in first place so that you can make a comeback if you're falling behind.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Somehow, CPU characters in Grand Prix races sometimes find a way to spin out on their own banana peels before they even throw them. Example: Luigi at about the 0:55 mark in this playthrough video.
  • Ascended Glitch: The official Player's Guide shows off a number of "glitch" shortcuts that involve jumping over walls or tricking the game into thinking you've gone through more of the course than you really have.
  • Astral Finale: Rainbow Road, the last track of the game, takes place in space — complete with character-themed constellations.
  • Athletic Arena Level: This is the first game in its series to feature a race course inspired by extreme sports, in this case Wario Stadium. It's a muddy, maze-like monster truck circuit that takes a long time to traverse (usually 5 minutes in lower speed tiers). It uses the same background music as the Luigi, Mario and Royal (Peach) Raceways, which in turn are more traditional circuit tracks.
  • Banana Peel: Now with the probability of getting a trail of five bananas.
  • Big Boo's Haunt: Banshee Boardwalk, although there are just bats and giant Cheep Cheeps as hazards
  • Bland-Name Product: The Japanese version contains parodies of real life products, such as Mobil 1 oil, Union 76 gas, and Goodyear tires. These were all changed to be more generic outside of Japan, likely due to legal reasons.
  • Bleak Level: Bowser's Castle and Banshee Boardwalk are quite Darker and Edgier compared to the others.
  • Bonus Feature Failure: Time Trial ghosts. First, any major crash, enemy collision, course-out, or even pausing will disqualify your ghost from being recorded.note  Second, a single save for ghost data (which nets you two ghosts) takes up 121 pages on the 123-page Controller Pak, meaning that the only other thing that will be able to fit on your Controller Pak afterwards is a single small-size file for another game. Third, in the Virtual Console re-release, the ability to save your ghost is disabled entirely since the Wii's N64 emulator doesn't save Controller Pak data. This remains true for the Wii U Virtual Console version and even the Nintendo Switch Online version.
  • Bottomless Pits: Due to limitations in the game's engine, there were no true Bottomless Pits; every hazard that would force Lakitu to be summoned and respawn the player onto the track would be some form of liquid (water, freezing water, or lava) or a solid surface (such as the bottoms of Yoshi Valley and Rainbow Road, which take forever to recover from if you fall in since it's a long way down)
  • Bowdlerize: In the Japanese version, there's an ad that parodies Marlboro cigarettes. It was changed when the game released outside of Japan. The ad was removed in the Nintendo Switch Online version.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Get first place in all tracks in Grand Prix mode to get Mirror Mode, which also comes with a nice new title screen.
  • Butt-Monkey: Toad is◊ often◊ seen◊ as one in promotional renders for the game.
  • Cap: It might seem counterintuitive for a racing game, but going slowly in a Time Trial will result in you hitting the time cap. The game's engine will not count any higher than ninety-nine minutes, fifty-nine-point-ninety-nine seconds (although subsequent lap times are still counted).
  • Car Fu: Battle Mode. Each racer starts with three balloons, and damage or falling off makes them lose one. Who ever loses all three balloons is "out" but still turns into a Mini Bomb Kart, which can be controlled as a hazard.
  • Cave Behind the Falls: Koopa Troopa Beach's shortcut, which requires either a lightweight racer with good jumping skills or a Mushroom to reach.
  • Cherubic Choir: In the credits music, the Toad's Turnpike theme and the Bowser's Castle theme.
  • Color-Coded Multiplayer:
    • Player order goes from blue for player 1, red for 2, yellow for 3, and green for 4. Though it really only shows up on the character select screen.
    • Among individual drivers, Mario is red, Luigi is green, Peach is pink, Toad is blue, Yoshi is light green, Donkey Kong is yellow, Wario is purple, and Bowser is orange. However for the Battle Mode, Donkey Kong gets brown balloons, Wario has yellow, and Bowser has purple.
  • Comeback Mechanic: The Spiny Shell (a.k.a. the Blue Shell) makes its introduction here, a powerful item reserved for stragglers that screams through the track to hit the racer in first place and anyone unfortunate enough in between, becoming the bane of veteran Mario Kart fans everywhere. Thankfully it's only seen in human vs human races and is not programed to be used by computers.
  • Company Cameo: Some tracks feature Nintendo's logo printed in advertising walls, indicating that the company sponsors the races in-universe.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
    • When a player is in 1st, drifting or not, there will usually be one or two CPU drivers that trail behind the player, ready to take the lead once they wipe out. It becomes jarring when the player plays as a lightweight and has a heavyweight in either the first or second CPU positions who are able to reach speeds they otherwise can't achieve without drifting.
    • If you have a cheat enabled that allows a human player to be controlled by a CPU, you can see that the computers get almost permanent drafting bonuses while they drive, and the ability to use Bananas, Fake Item boxes, Boos, Stars, and Thunder without driving over an Item box (in fact, players must manually trigger a CPU-controlled human's item box if they obtain an item).
    • On 100cc and 150cc, you'd better not let the first CPU driver get too far ahead, or else they speed up so quickly that you'll never have a chance of catching up, short of very fast corner-cutting or Lightning.
    • If off-screen, the CPU-drivers appears to recover from falls, obstacles and weapons faster than any human player can.
  • Continuity Nod: Royal Raceway is home to Peach's Castle, which looks nearly identical to its appearance in Super Mario 64. You can drive into the courtyard of the castle which is also a dead end; causing it to be barricaded off in the Mario Kart 8 version of the track.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: There's no problem driving around Bowser's Castle and the Big Donut battle stage despite featuring lava. The former of which is surrounded by the stuff.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Extra Mode mirrors all the courses horizontally, which will screw you up at least once. Once you tackle Toad's Turnpike in Extra, now you have to face oncoming traffic rather than following it.
  • Death Activated Super Power: In battle mode, defeated players turn into bombs (if there are more than two players) and can proceed to drive into an opponent to remove one of their balloons.
  • Death as Game Mechanic: Losing all your balloons has you transform into a mobile bomb, allowing you to get revenge on the player who eliminated you or blowing up someone else out of spite. Players who are bombs can interact with item boxes, but they cannot use them.
  • Death Mountain: Choco Mountain (a brown canyon based on Chocolate Island from Super Mario World) and Yoshi Valley (a maze-like track set within a canyon whose pits are several meters deep). Yoshi Valley returns in Mario Kart 8 and its Updated Re-release 8 Deluxe, while Choco Mountain returns in the latter as part of the Booster Course Pass, as well as previously in Mario Kart DS and Mario Kart Tour.
  • Death or Glory Attack: The "Leap of Faith" shortcut Rainbow Road. Driving off the left side of the track just after the start at the right speed and angle will allow you to land on a lower tier and bypass 1/3rd of the track. Pulling this off will give you a near-insurmountable lead vs. AI racers. Miss the jump and you might as well restart.
  • Digitized Sprites: The race tracks are in 3D, but the items and racers are sprites.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • While this is the point where the series largely evolved to its final format, Nintendo was still working out some of the gameplay mechanics. The lightweight characters (high acceleration/low speed) are actually faster than the heavyweights (high speed/low acceleration). Using the lightweights (Peach, Toad, and Yoshi) properly can make them potential invokedGame Breakers, as not only are they faster and can pick up quickly after crashing, they can also drive off-road better than the other drivers. The only advantage that the heavyweights in this game (Bowser, Wario, and Donkey Kong) have is that they can bash the lightweights and the middleweights off the road or make them spin out. The original advantages and disadvantages that were present in Super Mario Kart for each weight class were reverted back in later games, starting from Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. And on another note, like Super Mario Kart, you still can't advance to the next race if you place 5th or lower (though at least there's no lives system anymore, so you can't Game Over per se). Visually, it's the only Mario Kart game to run at 30 FPS, and that's with the Sprite/Polygon Mix that has not been seen in subsequent proper-3D Mario Kart games.
    • Rainbow Road in this game is not the infamous contorting final obstacle course that Mario Kart players are accustomed to, but instead a long, flat, leisurely breather course which is fully guide railed and only has the occasional incoming Chomps as obstacles.
    • Tracks that jump over themselves, such as Wario Stadium, are favorites of players who enjoy sabotaging jumps with banana peels and fake item boxes so the computer falls down and has to repeat a chunk of the course. Later installments with such jumps, including Retro Track versions of the courses in this game, instead have Lakitu swoop in and help the racer over the jump.
    • Tracks in this game are generally a lot bigger than later examples. Rainbow Road is the obvious example as an intentional Marathon Level, but then you also have the likes of Toad's Turnpike and Wario Stadium, both of which are deceptively long in terms of race length. In this case, it's largely because the tracks are quite oversized in comparison to your karts, and later games that bring back these tracks as retro courses often shrink them down to better match the scale of the players.
    • This is the only game in the series to make use of Written Sound Effects that would appear from your kart in response to certain things. This is an oddity even within the wider Mario series, and it's never seen in Mario Kart again.
    • You can adjust the volume of the music mid race, something that no other Mario Kart game does. The music is also muted in a 3 or 4 player game and cannot be turned back on, which is likely due to the limitations of the N64's audio chip in regards to multiplayer.
    • The camera can be adjusted to either be close to the character (the default setting) or be pulled back farther. This was never used in any other game.
    • Mirror mode was called "Extra" here and the traffic in Toad's Turnpike would go in the opposite direction. Future games that used heavy traffic as an obstacle would keep the traffic flow in the proper direction in Mirror mode.
    • Swerving side to side too much could cause your character to lose control and spin out. This mechanic was never used again.
    • Red Shells would always attempt to cut across the track to reach the opponent ahead of you if they were pretty far ahead, which caused the shell to hit a wall or fall into a Bottomless Pit. Future games would have Red Shells travel along the track and only swerve when they were close to their target.
  • Earn Your Bad Ending: Finishing off the podium at the end of a Grand Prix is actually more difficult than finishing on it, as you have to actively try and finish in 4th as much as possible.
  • Egopolis: Shockingly, Wario Stadium is like this. Not only is it one of the longest courses in the game, the walls of the racetrack are one long series of Wario's face. It also has a truly massive grandstand, probably to help Wario maximize the gate receipts.
  • Exit, Pursued by a Bear: If you fail to make the podium, a bomb goes after your character as they drive away.
  • Fragile Speedster: Peach, Toad, and Yoshi are the fastest, but can be easily knocked around.
  • Franchise Codifier: The Mario Kart series started in 1992 with Super Mario Kart, but its numerous traits of Early-Installment Weirdness make Mario Kart 64 the true architect of the series and the one which drew the blueprint for the elements, presentation and structure that came to define all subsequent elements (including Mario Kart: Super Circuit, which otherwise borrows many aspects of the SNES original).
  • Gimmick Level:
    • "Toad Turnpike" features live traffic that racers must avoid, along with said traffic having several different configurations that are randomly chosen each time you load up the track.
    • "Yoshi Valley" hides both your mini-map and the positions of racers. The track features multiple splintering and winding routes, which makes it difficult to judge who is ahead until you're approaching the finish line.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: Mario and the Princess don't seem to mind a friendly round of kart-racing with the jerk who just kidnapped her last week. They even let Wario join them.
  • Gravity Barrier: Plenty, but Rainbow Road has a nice steep drop at the beginning.
  • Green Hill Zone: All of the "Raceway" tracks (known as Circuits in Japan), as they feature no significant hazards besides some easy-to-avoid Piranha Plants (in Mario's) and a lake (in Peach's). Moo Moo Farm is another track in this setting, being literally a bunch of green hills in a rural field, though the Monty Moles from underground can give some trouble to unsuspecting players.
  • Helium Speech: All the racers on the receiving-end whenever Lightning is unleashed speak in high-pitched voices. It can be particularly hilarious to hear Mario screaming his tiny head off, or if crossing the finish line hearing him cry his victory dialogue.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Happens any time a racer spins out on their own banana peel or gets clobbered by their own Koopa shell. Particularly funny when it happens to a CPU racer.
  • Home Stage: Every one of the playable racers have a course named after them. The exception goes to Peach, who doesn't have a track specifically named after her (not in this game) but still has a home track with Royal Raceway. Princess Peach's Castle can even be reached off of the road.
  • Inconsistent Dub: For this game only, Dry Dry Desert was renamed Kalamari Desert and the Circuit courses are called Raceways. Retro versions of this game's tracks in later games still retain the Dub Name Change.
  • Incredible Shrinking Man: The Lightning is an item that is often received by players who are lagging behind. When used, it zaps everyone but the user with a bolt from the skies, making them spin out and drop any items they have. When shrunken, drivers' top speeds are reduced, and they're vulnerable to being Squashed Flat if a normal-sized driver runs over them, cutting their speed as well.
  • Invincible Minor Minion: It's impossible to kill the Chain Chomps, though they only appear on Rainbow Road anyway.
  • It's a Wonderful Failure: The player who ends up in 4th place or lower at the end of a Grand Prix gets to watch the top 3 take the winner's podium and gets chased by a bomb.
  • Jump Scare: During the portion of the credits pertaining the Banshee Boardwalk (fittingly one of the two tracks with a spooky theme), the camera pans up to the front of the abandoned house, then quickly zooms in on the right-pointing arrow, filling the screen with bright (bloody?) red; it can be a bit jarring if it's unexpected, especially since up to that point it was just the camera slowly panning around views of the game's prior tracks.
  • Jungle Japes: DK's Jungle Parkway takes place in a jungle, as the name implies. If a driver is off the road, they'll be hit by coconuts from unseen monkeys.
  • Kingmaker Scenario: In Battle Mode, anyone who runs out of Balloons when there are still 2 or more players left becomes a Mini Bomb Kart. They've officially lost that match, but can drive right up to any remaining players and explode in their faces.
  • Lethal Lava Land: Bowser's Castle is surrounded in a sea of lava.
  • Letting the Air out of the Band: Placing lower than the top 3 at the end of each Grand Prix nets one in the award ceremony, where it airs out a bit when it shows your character driving away from the courtyard of Peach's Castle, then finally stops when the Bomb Kart arrives to further humiliate your character.
  • Level in Reverse: Extra Cups are similar to 150cc mode but the tracks are mirrored (e.g. where you originally turned left you now turn right). Given a nasty spin when it comes to Toad's Turnpike, as not only is the track layout flipped so is the direction of traffic — you now have to drive against all the traffic on the turnpike!
  • Long Song, Short Scene: The results screen music. It turns out that it has a hidden song that you get to hear after letting the music loop 64 times, just under 53 minutes in total. Here's the song.
  • Marathon Level:
    • Rainbow Road is the longest track in the series. Long enough that a controller pack usually doesn't have enough memory to save a track ghost. It can take up to two minutes to complete a lap. And you have to do three laps. When the track was brought back in Mario Kart 8, it was formatted as one lap divided into three segments.
    • Wario Stadium is a close second, with the manual itself stating that its length will make it tough for players to stay concentrated in the race. It has a near-labyrinthine layout that keeps the laps dragging on, taking roughly four minutes (five in the lower difficulties) to race through without using glitches.
  • Master of All: Lightweights, who are the fastest, quickest to accelerate alongside Bowser thanks to the triple tap A, have no handling issues, and can even use their light weight to jump over the other cast members because there’s nobody lighter than them. Though the weight thing is more Difficult, but Awesome compared to the easier to utilize heavyweights ramming people aside, it’s far more abusable once you learn how.
  • Master of None: While Mario and Luigi were intended to be the Jack of All Stats, their stats aren't middle of the road enough for them to qualify as jacks, and they even have the worst acceleration, losing even to the heavyweights. This is even mentioned in the Player's Guide, amusingly immediately after saying that they are "fairly well rounded".
  • Metropolis Level: Toad's Turnpike is a crowded highway with real-sized vehicles driving across it. The characters, who are driving smaller go-karts, must keep an eye on them to avoid clashing, especially in Mirror Mode when all those vehicles are driven in the opposite direction. It makes a return in Mario Kart 8 as a Nostalgia Level.
  • Mighty Glacier: Bowser, Wario, and DK have bad acceleration and the worst off-road handling, but can shove lighter racers out of the way.
  • Minsky Pickup: At the start of the Moo Moo Farm theme (which is also used for Yoshi Valley). Koopa Troopa Beach has a different version.
  • Missing Secret: There is a Thwomp stuck behind a cage in the Bowser's Castle stage. A yellow light shines on it, making it appear green. It is the only Thwomp in the game to not slam down on the floor as an attack, preferring to hover in place indefinitely. Naturally, rumors about this supposedly green Thwomp spread like wildfire, both about what it could do if set free and why it's caged in the first place. There is still no official explanation for that Thwomp. It even returned when the course was brought back for Mario Kart Wii.
  • Mook-Themed Level: Banshee Boardwalk, which features many Boos lingering in the background of the track. Averted with Koopa Troopa Beach, because it's named after the Koopa-shaped rock formation that is located in a side of the coast (there are no actual Koopa Troopas).
  • My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The computer does not need to go over an item block to get an item. This is most evident on Toad's Turnpike, where the item blocks are all in the pit area that the computer never enters, but that doesn't stop them from leaving bananas all over the place. In addition, the computer does not get certain items: they never seem to get banana chains or any of the shells, including blue ones. Every game after Mario Kart 64 has the AI only use items if they actually picked one up from an item box.
  • No Smoking: The Japanese version features Mario-based Bland Name Products parodying real life brands, including "Marioro", a parody of Marlboro. The international version changes these out of concerns over both trademarks and promotion of smoking in children's media.
  • Palmtree Panic: Koopa Troopa Beach, which is part of the Mushroom Cup. It's a sandy racetrack where the characters drive through the coastal perimeter of a rocky island. There's a cave that can be entered through a ramp, providing a handy shortcut to a later part of the track.
  • Parody Names: The Japanese version had billboards with parodies of real life companies like Marlboro (Marioro) or the Mobil 1 motor oil (Yoshi 1).
  • Poison Mushroom: This game marks the debut of Fake Item Boxes, which do about the same thing as Poison Mushrooms in other Mario games. Whereas the normal item boxes in this game spin and provide an item upon contact, a fake one will be static. Both blocks look exactly the same from a distance (the fake one changing when you get closer), but most players can avoid them by memorizing where real items boxes should appear.
  • Punny Name: "Kalimari Desert" (the infamous track with the train) is a pun on both "calamari"note  and on the real life "Kalahari Desert" in Africa.
  • Put on a Bus:
    • Koopa Troopa was left out and replaced with Wario, and would remain unplayable until Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. The most common joke at the time was that Wario had stolen Koopa Troopa's kart. Nintendo Power published a piece of fan art that had Koopa Troopa on the phone with the police, confirming that "a fat man with purple overalls" stole his kart.
    • Donkey Kong Jr. was replaced with the Rare version of DK himself, and would not be playable in another Mario Kart until Tour, nearly three decades after Super.
  • Racing the Train: Kalimari Desert can have you do this, especially given how being forced to wait for the train to pass totally wastes a lot of time. So it means a lot of karts racing towards the level crossing as the train races by, and the odd too slow racer smashing right into it. You can also literally try and outrun the train round the track by racing ahead through the tunnel.
  • Railroad Tracks of Doom: Kalimari Desert has a train which spins you out of control if you try to cross the tracks at the wrong time. However, if you time it correctly and very carefully, you can also drive on the tracks through the tunnel in a valuable shortcut.
  • Riddle for the Ages: What do you think that Thwomp in Bowser's Castle did to deserve the solitary confinement?
  • The Rival: In each Grand Prix, you are given at least two of these, and they will be the main abusers of Rubber-Band A.I. of that GP.
  • Rubber-Band A.I.: If you're good at hitting shortcuts, expect the computer to be able to suddenly hit a top speed well beyond what any human could do. The most blatant instance is Rainbow Road in Mario Kart 64, which has a shortcut that can literally skip 40% of the course (and N64 Rainbow Road, as of the Deluxe edition of Mario Kart 8's release, is still the longest course in the series' history). Even if you hit said shortcut on all three laps and use perfectly timed drifting boosts throughout the rest of the course, the computer is still able to catch up to you by the last lap. By turning on the map-view, it's possible to watch opponents suddenly accelerate to unrealistic speed whenever they are outside of the game's draw distance for the player. Allow a single CPU driver to get too far ahead in 150cc or Extra and they'll reach the finish line in times no human player, even drifting experts, can finish in- especially in hectic courses like Toad's Turnpike and Bowser's Castle. Because the AI racers aren't rendered if they're out of your view, this also means that course obstacles won't affect them, thus allowing their speed breaking rubber band to go unimpeded.
  • Sand Bridge at Low Tide: Koopa Troopa Beach uses this trope as a shortcut.
  • Sequence Breaking: There are many shortcuts in the game that can be exploited by the player to skip part of the course:
  • Shave And A Haircut: One of the car horns does this in Toad's Turnpike.
  • Shifting Sand Land: Kalimari Desert, which is always played during sunset. Its main feature is a train that is being driven through looping rails, making it a dangerous obstacle as the racers' track intersects with the train's rails in two points.
  • Shortcuts Make Long Delays: The shortest route through Yoshi's Valley is a narrow, windy path with no railing, falling off will cost you several seconds of recovery time. The Rainbow Road shortcut, capable of giving you an irreversible lead (against humans) if executed properly, will also take forever to recover from if you failed. Same goes for a similar shortcut in Royal Raceway, which will make you fall into the water; the hard part is getting the game to register your landing in a way that Lakitu deposits you ahead of the section following the ramp and near the finish line, rather than back on the ramp.
  • Shout-Out: Sherbet Land is named after a world in the original Wario Land.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Frappe Snowland (in Flower Cup) focuses on snow while Sherbet Land looks like an iceberg track. The biggest threat in the former is snowmen, as collision against them is explosive and makes the driver waste too much time in recovering; in the latter, the driver has to watch out for penguins instead.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Once again, Peach is the only female racer.
  • Snowy Sleigh Bells: Sleigh bells ring though the theme playing in the frigid Frappe Snowland and Sherbet Land.
  • Sprite/Polygon Mix: The backgrounds and some objects are 3D, while the racers and most of the hazards are Digitized Sprites (which looks pretty weird when the camera pans around the parked characters in the award ceremonies). The reason they used this was because they wanted the game to maintain a consistent framerate while having all 8 racers on screen at once, which at the time would have much harder to pull off if they were all polygon models.
  • Suddenly Voiced: Luigi, Toad and Wario are voiced for the first time. The other characters stick with the same voices or vocal effects they had in the SNES era or Super Mario 64.
  • Title Scream: Done in two different ways depending on the version. In the Japanese version, a group of Japanese children is heard yelling "Mario Kart!", while in the overseas releases, Mario yells "Welcome to Mario Kart!".
  • Uncommon Time: The results screen music is played in 11/8 time signature.
  • Unending End Card: At the end of the credits, the game leaves you hanging on a shot of Peach's Castle from Royal Raceway. You'll need to reset the game to continue playing.
  • Unlockable Difficulty Levels: All games from this one onwards, with the exception of Mario Kart: Super Circuit, have four difficulty levels: 50cc, 100cc, 150cc and Mirror Mode (the latter known as Extra Mode in 64 itself). The first three are available from the start, while Mirror/Extra is unlocked once you win all Gold Cups in 150cc.
  • Video Game 3D Leap: Since it's part of a racing series, the leap is only aesthetic.
  • Wacky Racing: Par for the course. The only rule in the competition is: Reach first place. The means are irrelevant. Many weapons can be used to attack other racers and get past them. And if they fall into water or a pitfall, Lakitu will bring them back to the course with no punishment (there are no Coins in this game) other than wasting precious time.

 
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Mario Kart Flattening

In the Mario kart series, racers can be squished flat by hazards on the tracks

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Squashed Flat

Choco Mountain ...

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Mario Kart Flattening

In the Mario kart series, racers can be squished flat by hazards on the tracks

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Mario Kart Flat...

Choco Mountain ...