Mario Kart 64 HD: Intro & Player Select (Dolphin)

Channel:

Dyno Mike Gaming

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4,440

Published on December 24, 2022 7:37:47 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coAC8lyMdVY

Game:

Mario Kart 64 (1996)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 1:56

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2

#mariokart #nintendo #mario #n64 #retrogaming

An incredible fan remaster project has brought Mario Kart 64 into the HD era, remodeling and retexturing all the game's original characters and environments with an eye toward a crisp, clean presentation.

Mario Kart 64's characters used a technique similar to that of Donkey Kong Country. The devs created what were, for the era, highly-detailed 3D character models, and then converted them to 2D sprites that could be easily displayed on the old hardware. The effect was pretty impressive at the time, but these sprites don't hold up so well when blown up to modern display resolutions on today's screens.

The folks behind Mario Kart 64 HD have taken the next logical step, then - they've recreated those old 3D models from scratch in order to make more detailed sprites and insert them back into the game, alongside the usual texture upgrades you'd expect from a fan remaster project. The mod has been in various stages of development and availability for years at this point, but a newly-released trailer shows just how good it can look.

The mod is available on GitHub (opens in new tab), though you might have better luck getting it up and running if you follow the instructions available through the Enhanced64 Discord (opens in new tab). The upgraded textures can be run alongside the game through a variety of N64 emulators, or through Dolphin.

Project lead Andrat is already working on their next mod, too - a similar HD upgrade for Mario Party 2.

Ran remaster projects have been getting increasingly robust in the past few years, with efforts on the way to do things like inject 60 FPS and ray tracing options directly into emulated N64 games. Fan-made PC ports of games like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time are offering even more impressive improvements.

Mario Kart 64 is a racing game that is part of the Mario Kart series, originally released for the Nintendo 64 in 1996 in Japan and 1997 worldwide. Being an upgrade from its predecessor, Super Mario Kart, it features a similar base to that game in which players select Mario cast members to drive in karts, employing a weapon-based system to benefit the player and hinder opponents, though it has expanded gameplay, such as the introduction of Mini-Turbo boosts from drifting and four-player support. It is the first game in the series to use three-dimensional graphics for its environment design, such as the addition of elevation, advanced collision physics, expanded camera controls, real walls that can obscure views, and increased aesthetic fidelity; however, the characters, the items, and some track obstacles in-game remain as two-dimensional, pre-rendered sprites, which are rendered for game optimization. Additionally, the game contains unique track designs rather than multiple variants of the same track, and it introduces various track tropes that would later be reused in later Mario Kart installments, such as Luigi Circuit being the first track. Other elements would become series mainstays, such as its racer weight classification, the introduction of Wario and Donkey Kong as playable characters, and several new items such as the Spiny Shell and triple variants of Green Shells and Red Shells.

The game was commercially successful and received a Player's Choice edition, being the second-best-selling game on the Nintendo 64, beaten out only by Super Mario 64, and it was generally well-received by critics. Mario Kart 64 later became available for the Wii's Virtual Console in 2007 and the Wii U's Virtual Console in 2016, and it is one of the launch titles for Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online.

The above text is from the Super Mario Wiki and is available under a Creative Commons license. Attribution must be provided through a list of authors or a link back to the original article. Source: https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Kart_64

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