[Now Playing| Wario Ware - DS]

Belmakor from GAF got a chance to play the Mario Kart arcade game and shared his impressions:

As of now, the selectable characters were Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Toad, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Wario, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and Blinky the red ghost (Akabe!!!) Wasn’t able to get any info out of any of the staff if there were hidden characters or not.

Three cups(stages) were available, Mario cup, Donkey Kong cup, and Koopa cup. Each stage had 4 tracks, and tracks also had selectable conditions(sunny, night, rain, etc.) There should be three more cups available in the final version of the game, Wario, Pac-Man, and Rainbow cups.

The game machine uses reprintable cards, and this is used for keeping track of which cups you’ve cleared. By clearing cups, you give yourself access to different, and I’m assuming more powerful items, for use in the game. Exactly how it will work though, I’m not quite sure since there are more than 100 items that can be used.

Controls are made up of just the steering wheel, which has your item use button in the center, and the gas and brake pedals. Hitting the gas and brake pedals at the same time causes you to jump. Steering while jumping causes you to power drift. Just like the old Snes version. If you’re REALLY quick about, you can actually get the jump off by letting off the gas, slamming the brakes, then slamming down on the gas pedal again. Usually I found it easier just to hit both at the same time.

So, you sit down, select your character, then have your picture taken. Cup/Track/Conditions are either selected through majority(everyone picks the same one) or randomly if people pick different ones. From there you got to item selection where you are randomly assigned three different items. Most of the old favourites seem to be back in some form, and there’s tonnes of new ones. I’ll detail some of the ones I saw in another post later.

The game, happily, plays closest to the original Mario Kart on the Snes of any in the series that have been released since. Courses are for the most part narrower. The speed is quicker, including coins which you pick up to increase your top speed. The initial speed boost is intact from the starting lights as well. Controls were nice and tight, although it took some time getting used to the gas/brake hopping for drifting.

The graphics seem better than Double Dash in various ways. Having everyone driving the same karts again makes the game feel more solid thematically. Characters and karts are higher poly, mostly due to not having to animate two characters per kart anymore. After picking up items, you can tell which item you’re carrying either in the item window in the left, or because your character actually holds the item in one hand while driving with the other. Bumping up against other drivers causes the characters to starting punching and shoving at each other.

Graphics for the courses also looked better as well. Reminding me almost of a mix of F-zero GX crossed with Monkey Ball, but in the Mario universe.

Anyway, taking pictures of the players comes in handy at the beginning, because at least right now, everyone can pick the same characters. Having four Bowsers racing against each other for example. Also tends to make things a little more personal than just seeing that Player 2 hit you with a tornado.

Game was lots of fun, and I never saw anyone walking away looking disappointed at all.
Think that’s it for now, I’ll try answer whatever questions I can if you guys have any.

You now get a crosshair to aim your weapons with. For attacks that go forward, but don’t home at all(like the classic green shell), just line up the crosshair with where you want to fire.

Homing shots now have to be locked on over time, it’s no longer an instant lock on. Keep your target in the crosshair until it turns red, then fire.

There’s items which you drop behind you banana peel style, along with at least one new type of item, which is close range melee attacks.

I didn’t see any items that affected all the players on the course at once like the old lightning bolt attack, but with so many items available, and most of them not available at this point, there could be some in there still. Couldn’t get any info out of anyone about that.

Anyway, as for newer items that showed up, I guess I’ll start with the melee attack weapon. Only saw one type, which was some kind of pink, glowing wand thing. Hit the attack button and your character starts swinging it around like a lunatic, and if you get close to someone, you just club them nice and hard with it. It lasts for about 4-5 seconds after you use it. Great when you get everyone bunched up in tight corners.

Quite a few different dropped items now. Bananas, oil slicks, marbles. Some of them just spin you out, while others cause a status effect, which basically turns you purple and slows you down. There is also a rather nifty smoke bomb, which fills your opponents view with dark purple smoke after they hit it.

All sorts of different ranged attacks now. Some seem to have basically the same effect of just knocking you for a loop, while others are quite different. Boo no longer steals items(or at least I didn’t see it happen to myself), but seems to be a ranged attack that causes a slowing status effect. There’s also a thunder cloud that acts sort of the same way, constantly zapping someone with lightning bolts for a few seconds. You can launch green and dark blue shells(didn’t see a red one while playing or watching), some kind of explosive box, puffer fish and various other oddities.

The tornado actually launches straight out in front of you and just picks up everyone that gets in its path. Good weapon for straightaways if you’re at the back of the pack.

There was some other item, not sure which exactly, which seems like it’s supposed to be a ‘cream pie’ style effect on your screen. Blocking your view before dripping off. Only problem being that it looks a lot more like something you’d find in an anime featuring tentacles in a starring role.

I’ll try and remember anything else item wise that I can. There were just so many, and you always just get three random ones, that it was kind of hard to keep track of. Guess I’ll bring a notepad next time. :/

Well, hitting someone with a green shell(and other projectile, non-homing weapons) still takes quite a bit of skill. The crosshair really just shows you where the center of your screen is. It helps in the same way that having a crosshair does in Quake when firing rockets. It shows where you’re firing, but you still need to predict their movement right and get the timing right depending on the distance to your target.

And ya, the charged homing feels really nice. You can see what weapons the players behind you have since it shows whatever item they have picked up on their facial portrait if they’re following behind you. So when you see homing items showing up there, you know it’s time to start swerving more.

So far as the items that we were able to use, none of them came in groups, or rotated around your kart to protect you from other attacks. And since the game is designed around a steering wheel, there wasn’t any way to fire objects like shells backwards instead of forwards to try and protect yourself. Pretty much just depends on your evasion skills now, and how good people are with weapons. Just don’t drive in a straight line for too long and you should be ok.

Well, had a hard time figuring out speeds in regards to powersliding. There seemed to be two different levels. One had the bottom of my kart surrounded by a green shield of sorts, and if I hit the slide more accurately I also had a green shield surrounding my character towards the outside of the turn. Not really sure if these meant I was just holding my speed better as I went through the turn or if I was gaining speed. I’m pretty sure it’s just the former though. The speed loss for not hitting powerslides is pretty significant though.”

This all sounds pretty awesome too me! I really doubt that this is going to make it out of the arcade and into the home, but Id love to be proven wrong.