Mario Kart has been one of my favorites for a long time. Super Mario Kart accounts for a good deal of my happiest childhood memories, while Mario Kart 64 provided a great nostalgia rush, with bigger tracks, new items, and improved ideas. It?s been years since the last major-console release of a Mario Kart game, but here it is. Mario Kart: Double Dash for the Gamecube finally shows its face.

For a long time Nintendo kept very quiet about their ?big change? for the Mario Kart franchise, saying that it would dramatically change the way the game was played. The change, of course, is the addition of a character to the back of the kart. So now THIS GUY* is a total poseur. What a nerd. He only thinks he?s Mario. I mean, where?s the guy in the back. Pshh. Dork.

Anyways, the idea is that the character in the back of the kart is in charge of the weapons, while the person in front is the driver. The problem with this is that if you don?t have two people playing on one kart, nothing really feels much different about Double Dash as compared to previous iterations of the game. It does add a tad bit of strategy, i.e. when one character has an item, switch positions, run over another item box, and now your loaded up with two items on one kart, to be used at your discretion. Other than this, playing single player feels pretty much the same as it always has.

Getting two human players in one kart, however, is a totally different story. And getting two players in two karts is even grander. Four people in a room, everyone yelling at each other. ?Switch! Go! Use the red shell! Don?t run in to that wall! Random obscenity! And so on. This is really the new greatness of Mario Kart. But you?re gonna? need friends. I can?t even fathom what it would be like to get a 16-player LAN going. Someday, I like to think that the good lord will bless me with this opportunity. One can only hope.

Back to the single player, Double Dash sports some great unlockable characters and multi-player tracks to keep you playing through the different difficulties. The tracks are also pretty sweet. Usually not to short, not to long, just the right amount of items and obstacles. Like its predecessors, Double Dash is addictive, goofy, and all around fun.

In short, Double Dash isn?t the huge change in the series that everyone expected (unless you have allot of friends), hints its mediocre reviews. However, if you go in to the game expecting nothing but a good time and improved and updated? pretty much everything, you?ll enjoy yourself. I promise.

*THIS GUY is really Scott Miller. Please don?t beat me.

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