Mario Kart games will always have a lot to live up to; the first on the Super Nintendo was just so good that anything less than perfection is always going to suffer the slings and arrows of rose-tinted comparison. The N64 version was competent but eclipsed by Rare's wonderful Diddy Kong Racing, so can MKDD snatch back the karting krown? A memory full of respect bordering on love for the original Mario Kart may tinge this review, but hopefully not.

Double Dash gets its 'double' from the fact that now all of the karts carry two characters. One drives while the other one uses pickup bonuses as weapons in true Mario style. The array of vehicles varies from things that look like prams, to rapid 50s-style US motors or buggies of various kinds.

   

Certain karts suit certain tracks, and as previously you will find a favourite handling/character/weapon combination to suit your tactics. Mario and brother Luigi fire err... fireballs, Koopa shoots shells, Donkey Kong has giant banana missiles etc.. (I'm sure you get the idea). There are bonus tools as well, for instance Bowser's spiky shell can smash anyone who gets too close.

At the start you can select from three classes (50cc, 100cc and 150cc), three different cups, sixteen characters and twelve tracks. As you'd expect, the races and cups get increasingly difficult, but the 150cc class disappointingly ends up feeling completely unfair and fixed - coupled to a relative lack of tracks, DD soon loses its initial appeal. Golds in races unlock new characters but there really isn't enough variation in the tracks, the handling or the weapons to make you want to see the game to the end. Obviously a lot of racing games suffer from repetitiveness, but with scant reward at the end, working your way through DD will feel terribly repetitive.

   

The multiplayer game has a standard battle mode with 'Balloon Battle' (shoot the three balloons on your opponent's kart to win), 'Shine Thief' (capture and hold on to the Shine for as long as you can), and another bomb game that was so tedious and unexciting that I can't be bothered to describe it. A general lack of size in the multiplayer levels that games rarely hold any excitement, and maybe it's just the rose tinted specs, but two player games on the SNES seemed like more fun than 4 -player battles on the Gamecube. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! So badly needed online play but there is none, it allows for LAN play with the Nintendo GameCube Broadband adapter, but let's face it, how many Cube owners are ever going to get to use that option? A fun co-operative 2-player mode (one drives while the other handles the weapons) saves Double Dash from complete multiplayer insignificance.

   

DD's graphics are nice and colourful, but everything seems less impressive and pleasing than I was expecting it to be. The drivers, passengers and karts all have lots of detail but the tracks and scenery lack definition. This means that everything moves smoothly, but there's little sensation of speed even in the 150cc class - certainly less than the original game managed to convey with its glitchy Mode 7 graphics. A karting game with no feeling of speed? - Oh dear… There are of course also moments of gaming magic, but again they are few and far between. DD is pleasant and easy to play up to a point, but never approaches the expected quality or fun levels of a Mario Kart game - which is obviously "double disappointing"!!