This is the game we waited on for so long. It’s the new Mario Kart, the fourth in the series, finally on GameCube. Has the series run out of steam? Is Nintendo doing something wrong in how it creates sequels? Does Mario Kart need to break away from its young audience? Sorry, I won’t be answering these questions, because this isn’t an editorial. If you want to know whether Mario Kart: Double Dash is a good game and worth buying, read on.

The core of Mario Kart hasn’t changed much since the first game. It serves to make the games easy to pick up for casual players who probably played the earlier ones at some point. Most of my friends and family who tried out Double Dash had no problem at all getting into the game and being competitive. Of course, the game is also balanced so that most races are close, unless one player is an order of magnitude better than the others. The result is a familiar experience that is easy to appreciate at a party or family gathering.

For you and your gamer buddies though, Double Dash offers several new intricacies that help deepen the game. Most obvious is the addition of a second character in every kart, so now you’re controlling a team. In practice, having two characters per kart doesn’t create any drastic changes for the lone player. You can carry two items at once, and the characters you choose determine which karts you can select. It’s not much to get excited about…until you start looking into cooperative mode.

Double Dash’s entirely new co-op feature allows two players in each kart, each controlling one of the two characters. The player in front drives, while the player in the back uses items, attacks to the side, and aids in power-slide boosts. My initial fear was that the back-seat rider would have too little to do, and the role would be only good for newbies. Thanks to the new side-attack and various weapon strategies, the back-seat role is actually a ton of fun. Some of my friends will only play in the back, leaving me to drive as much as I want. The rear seat works because it focuses on the combat aspect of Mario Kart, which happens to be one of the franchise’s greatest strengths. If the two players ever want to switch roles, they can just press Z in tandem. And co-op isn’t just a gimmick mode either; you can play through every Grand Prix cup as a team, which is really useful for beating the more difficult cups to earn all the unlockable goodies. This mode is by far the most popular among my playing group, because it makes everyone communicate and work together. The two roles are perfectly balanced. When you place first, you know it’s because both players worked hard and did a good job. Co-op also works as a great handicapper, because the game lets you mix up various combinations in multiplayer races. You can race a team of players one and two against a solo player three, or race two teams of two players each. Even if a new player isn’t good at racing, he can probably wreak plenty of havoc with all the weapons and side attacks. More experienced back-seaters will know how to stop red shells with a well-timed banana, how to use the side-attack to knock an opponent off the track, and how to use the joystick to create a power-slide boost.

The other multiplayer choices are not as enticing. Battle mode has always been a part of Mario Kart that everyone wants to be great, but it still hasn’t lived up to its potential. Part of the problem is that normal racing already has so much combat, the straightforward battle mode feels stripped-down in comparison. Kart and character selection mean nothing in this mode, since performance is irrelevant and every special item is available to every character. The worst culprit, however, is level design. Even with a series high of six battle stages, there still aren’t enough choices, especially considering that some of the stages aren’t very different from each other. Nearly all the stages are way too big for four players, so you spend a lot of time just chasing around looking for your opponents. There are two new battle types, Shine Thief and Bob-omb Blast. Both are nice variations that will entertain for a while, but they too eventually get old because of the level designs and other problems outlined above.

Double Dash’s promising (if conciliatory as a substitute for real online play) LAN mode is a botched failure. This feature obviously isn’t very useful under normal settings, but it could have been great for tournaments and other gamer get-togethers. Unfortunately, the developers provided zero infrastructure for such events; there isn’t even short-term stat tracking to keep up with win streaks. Then there’s the mystifying choice to randomly select character teams for everyone on the network. I can understand why this might be a neat option to include for experienced players, but it’s incomprehensible that random selection is mandatory. Although up to sixteen players can technically play (two people on each of eight GameCubes), some other setups are not supported. For instance, you can’t have four people playing on each of four GameCubes, two people per kart. At least the LAN mode is functional on the most basic level, which means the game can be tunneled for online play with third-party applications. But Nintendo certainly can’t take credit for that capability. As a self-contained feature, this LAN mode is deeply flawed, to the point that most of its already limited uses have been eliminated.

Despite one disappointing mode and another broken one, Double Dash is still an extremely strong multiplayer title, simply for its incredible cooperative features. For playing alone, you can race either Grand Prix or Time Trial. The former works exactly like it does in co-op, except that a single person now controls both characters. Playing like this is obviously more complex and more difficult than splitting the duties, but a few subtle touches streamline the experience. For instance, if both characters are holding items, they will automatically switch places after the first one is used. Racing alone in Grand Prix is okay if no one else is around to help, or if you just want an extra challenge, but otherwise there’s no reason not to play cooperatively. You can unlock all the secret karts, characters, and battle stages regardless of how many players are participating. Time Trial is exclusive to the single-player mode and, as always, is a good way to practice the tracks and look for short-cuts. You can save a ghost of your best time and even unlock staff ghosts if you’re fast enough. Unfortunately, beating the staff ghosts doesn’t earn you anything except bragging rights, so achieving this feat won’t be worth the effort for most players.

The racing tracks are easily the best collection this series has seen. Many of them appear to be overly simple at first, but once you enter the 150cc Grand Prix and start to get owned by the computer, you’ll begin to find and appreciate the many clever shortcuts and nasty turns. One of the earliest tracks, Baby Park, is a perfect example. As a short, plain oval, it seems like a dumb inclusion at first. As you play on it more and more, you begin to appreciate how it keeps everyone in a tight pack, which increases character interaction and chaos in the ranks. Then you see how the very short race (on the order of a minute and a half for seven laps) means you don’t have much time to catch up from mistakes. Finally, you learn how to power-slide just right to minimize lap times, an ability which is in showcase form on this particular track. After playing it many times, Baby Park went from being my least favorite to most favorite track, a shift I know is not uncommon with Double Dash players. Of course, there are many tracks with much more going on than a simple oval. Waluigi Stadium sends you through a gauntlet of fire beams and piranha plants, while Bowser’s Castle has crushing Thwomps and ninety-degree turns. Rainbow Road returns as a devious combination of its previous forms, now with long turns, boost pads, and plenty of places to fall off. At times it feels more like an F-Zero GX track than one that belongs in Mario Kart, but it’s quite fitting as a finale.

The Mario Kart formula of relatively simple racing combined with wacky combat is in top form. Items are random, but the worse you’re doing in the race, the better items you are likely to get. Likewise, the first place racer is only going to get the basic items, like green shells and bananas. The item selection falters when playing with just two or three players and no A.I. racers, because the probability of getting a good weapon is based on your place in the ranks and not on your actual position. So the player in second place is still not going to get great items, even if he’s a whole lap behind the leader. The solution is to play in Grand Prix (which will supply “bots”), but it’s still a shame that one-on-one races can’t be better balanced. The balancing system means that being in first is always precarious, but expert use of your items is usually enough to ward off the onslaught of red shells and special attacks. Opponents are always waiting just a step behind the leaders, which is a good thing when you’re one of the usurpers. A series of attacks can create instant chaos, with racers moving up or down several places in the ranks. Such events are reasonably frequent, sometimes frustrating, and always funny. They are essentially the replacement for the infamous “catch up” antics of previous Mario Kart games, in which the computer racers could be magically transported right behind you to keep races tight. The A.I. no longer cheats like that, and although it now tends to group attacks on the leader for a similar result, skilled players can avoid the attacks and still remain way out in front in the lower engine classes. In 150cc, it’s unlikely that any one kart will hold the lead for more than half a lap at a time, so these races tend to stay close without any sudden mortar attacks of shells and eggs and bananas.

Most of the special items are just variants on old attacks, such as the giant banana peel or the trio of red homing shells. The new ones are a lot more interesting, and I would have liked more of these original items. It’s also disappointing that each character team (Mario and Luigi, Peach and Daisy, etc.) shares the same special item, so there are only about six total. All of the normal items have been seen before, though a few of them behave differently or have slightly different uses than before. The blue shell is still more or less pointless. You have to be near the bottom of the ranks to have any chance of getting one, but it always attacks the kart in first place, so it really just helps the karts in second and third place. The person who threw the blue shell probably won’t even see the explosion of it hitting. Things like this make me wish more attention had been paid to rebalancing the combat part of the game. Regardless, combat is certainly no worse and arguably better than in any of the previous Mario Kart games. Just being able to hold two items at once opens up some new strategies and combos.

So, if you haven’t already been playing the game, now you know how the various parts of Mario Kart: Double Dash stack up. Is it a fun game? Absolutely. The co-op gameplay is worth hours and hours of enjoyment, and it’s good to finally have some stuff to unlock in Mario Kart. The battle mode is a bit thin, but it works fine for a few rounds at a time. Even in single-player, the Grand Prix cups are fun to play through, and they get very challenging on the higher classes and advanced tracks. Is Double Dash a big step up from the previous games? No, the formula is almost untouched, though co-op adds a whole new dimension to the proceedings. The tracks have never been better, but they aren’t hugely different from the ones in Mario Kart 64. Is this game worth buying? Hell yes, especially if you have friends to race with you. Unlocking everything will take a good while, and then you can keep racing each other and taking the occasional dip into battle mode. This game is the ultimate refinement of the Mario Kart concept; if you love that concept, you’ll love the things Double Dash adds and enhances. If you were tired of the formula or never liked it to begin with, this game is not going to convert you.