YMMV / Mario Kart DS

• Awesome Video Game Levels: Waluigi Pinball, Luigi's Mansion, Tick Tock Clock, Delfino Square, Peach Gardens, and Airship Fortress have all been solid fan-favorites since they were introduced in this game thanks to their Shoutouts and unique designs. Due to their popularity, Waluigi Pinball, Airship Fortress and Luigi's Mansion returned in Mario Kart 7, Delfino Square and Peach Gardens in Mario Kart Wii, Tick Tock Clock in Mario Kart 8, while Waluigi Pinball and Peach Gardens also returned in both Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's Booster Course Pass and Mario Kart Tour. This game's iteration of Rainbow Road is also considered to have been one of the best due to having a loop-the-loop and corkscrew, things that would not appear in Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe)'s anti-gravity mechanics.
• Broken Base: Snaking, the tactic of doing a continuous sequence of mini-turbos in alternating directions, leading to a very sore thumb and possibly broken D-pad. This led to a lot of heated debates over the ethics of snaking in online matches, especially non-friend matches. Opponents of snaking argued that snaking is a cheap exploit that takes away the fun from racing and often turns online matches into "snake or lose", while proponents argued that snaking is a valid tactic to perform that adds an extra layer of skill to the game and that people who didn't snake did not deserve to play online. This debate would only worsen after Nintendo altered the drifting mechanics to remove snaking in later games.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Retro Grand Prix ends with GCN Yoshi Circuit, which feels a bit lackluster when compared to GCN Rainbow Road. Not that it's a bad track, and it was unique in its design, but it's a weird choice for the final Retro track, since its challenges are mainly the sharp and abrupt turns, but nothing too tough or extravagant. Later games would end up with a better-received retro course each, namely Mario Kart Wii with N64 Bowser's Castle, and subsequent console games with a retro Rainbow Road.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Dry Bones, the spiritual successor to Koopa Troopa in Super Mario Kart. He was popular in both DS and Wii online, especially so in DS where one of his karts, the Dry Bomber, was far and away the best in the game (alongside Yoshi's Egg 1). Predictably, when he was announced for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, many fans rejoiced.
• Even Better Sequel: Compared to Mario Kart: Super Circuit, this game actually showed the power of the Nintendo DS by being much much closer to a console counterparts, even down to including a few track(s) from the console counterpart itself. Also, the return to a more standard configuration coupled with more freedom in the controls made the game more appealing to players who were unfazed by Mario Kart: Double Dash!! two-characters-per-kart gimmick - though as the latter became Vindicated by History, most people tend to rank the two games as being on-par with each other. Additionally, DS expanding the course selection from the standard sixteen tracks to thirty-two via past courses being brought back has remained a mainstay of the series ever since and has given each title much more replay value, as have the single-player Mission Mode levels that fans still request a return to.
• Fan Nickname: Thanks to Schaffrillas Productions, Luigi’s Mansion is jokingly nicknamed Boston Building by a lot of the fandom.
• Goddamned Boss: King Boo's fight. It takes place in a large arena full of platforms over lava where you're challenged to collect 50 coins as Peach, making it a Level in Boss Clothing. Every so often, King Boo will dive at Peach and steal all your coins, as well as all of the ones in the arena, then run for it, and you have to bump into him to get him to drop your coins and return the ones in the arena. It's not particularly hard to get all 50 coins in time even with King Boo's interference, and the lava is also pretty easy to evade, but the fight is still more time-consuming than any other boss.
• Growing the Beard: For starters, this was the first Mario Kart to implement online capability. Furthermore, while this game was not the first to introduce Retro Tracks or the ability to pick your Kart, it did end up defining how the former was implemented and refined the latter:
  • Retro Tracks from every previous Mario Kart game were selected, a trend that would continue in every subsequent game. Some tracks were also given updates or facelifts to match the look of the more modern tracks.
  • Mario Kart: Double Dash!! allowed the player to choose which Kart they could drive, however it was based on weight restrictions. This game does away with that and allows any driver to drive any Kart, allowing for more customization. Future games would implement even more customization following this trend, culminating in the ability to fully choose between various bodies, wheels and gliders from 7 onward.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Dry Bomber and Yoshi Egg 1 are the most used karts in online races because of their high acceleration which allows players to spam boosts.
  • Rob-BLS is the privileged vehicle of time trials because of its max speed and decent acceleration.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Waluigi's unlockable kart, the Zipper, was actually a motorcycle. Then both Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 8 featured motorcycles for every racer.
  • DK Pass being a snowy course, nine years before the release of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.
  • The walking trees from the Luigi's Mansion track look a lot like Evermeans.
• Most Wonderful Sound: As if the chiptune music and sound effects of Waluigi Pinball weren't enough, the fanfares that play when you go up in places also qualify, especially the one that plays in 1st place.
• Nightmare Fuel: The walking trees in the Luigi's Mansion track did scare a lot of fans, especially because they sound and look like spiders crawling. The uncannily detailed appearance they have in this game with blotchy bark and tentacle-like legs is especially unsettling, to the point that versions of the track in future games give the trees a far more rounded and cartoony appearance.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The idea of having a "reserve" of balloons in Balloon Battle is pretty neat, adding an extra layer of strategy and a potential Self-Imposed Challenge to the game, with one big black mark on it - to inflate the balloons, you have to come to a halt and physically blow into the DS's microphone (you can also hold the select button, but it's far less effective). To say it kills the pacing is an understatement, not to mention how ridiculous blowing in the mic makes most people look.
• Signature Scene: Waluigi Pinball, which has become one of the most famous tracks from the series and is generally cited as a high point for Mario Kart's creativity with its tracks.
• Spiritual Successor: Not only to the previous Mario Kart games, but the snaking gimmick also makes this game a successor to Crash Team Racing which also required a low drift stat to spam boosts on straight lines.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Parts of the Battle Mode theme sound an awful lot like Iceberg.
  • Parts of the music for Waluigi Pinball and Wario Stadium sound very similar to She Blinded Me With Science.
• That One Level: When it comes to balloon battles, Tart Top is particularly despicable because the only way to get item boxes is to boost to the top of the tart. If you don't aim carefully, you could miss all the item boxes and have to try again, allowing other players waiting at the bottom to take advantage of you. It's also really easy to put things like bananas and fake item boxes all over the bottom, and shells are particularly unreliable due to either breaking on the bouncy strawberries or not locking onto players who evade them at the last second by boosting to the top of the tart. Battles here tend to take twice as long despite it being one of the smaller stages.
• Underused Game Mechanic: More of an Underused Game Mode. Mission Mode contains fifty-six regular missions and seven boss missions. However, completing these doesn't unlock anything for the other modes, and the missions only use the eight starter characters in their respective standard karts, only letting you play the character the game gives you. So the incentive to play the Mission Mode is very small.
• Unexpected Character: R.O.B. being a secret character in the game took a lot of fans by surprise, given he's an obscure Nintendo accessory from the 1980s rather than a proper Mario character.

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