Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is a racing game made by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development and released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2003. It is the fourth Mario Kart game.

New things have been added in this game. The most popular change is that you can play as two characters at a time. If you have a special cable for the Nintendo GameCube, you can plug it in to play against up to 15 people. Nine characters returned, while 11 new characters appeared. A special item for each character has also been added. Lots of people liked Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Its score on Metacritic was 87 out of 100. People liked the looks and the new characters, modes etc., but people did not like the character's voices. Lots of people liked this game. 3.8 million Mario Kart: Double Dash!! CDs were sold in the United States, and more than 802,000 Double Dash!! CDs were sold in Japan.

Gameplay

Double Dash!! is different to the other Mario Kart games. You can now use two characters at a time. One drives and the other one uses items. You can not put an item at the back of the kart as a shield against shells, so you will have to quickly move away from them instead. This is the first game where the characters lose their items when they get hit. Players can also steal items from other characters. If a character makes blue sparks, they get a small boost (called a mini-turbo). 

Up to four people can go against each other in this game. As well as the other games, the race tracks have lots of twists and turns and things to try to drive away from. There are some mini-games in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Double Dash!! lets 16 people play against each other if one of them has a special type of cable.

There are twenty playable characters. Eleven of them are new to the series. Characters have their own items/special abilities. The characters speed, acceleration etc. depends on the weight. There are 16 race tracks. There is also a "150cc Mirror Cup". In Mirror Cup mode, you are still playing the normal game but looks like you are looking into a mirror and playing Mario Kart (minus your own face).

Development
Double Dash!! was first shown in 2001. People saw Mario and Luigi driving their karts on a flat floor for seven seconds. It was being made and was basically Mario Kart at the time. In April 2003, Nintendo showed pictures of the game and said that the game would be called "Mario Kart: Double Dash!!". In 2003, some people were able to play a demo of the game (not all characters and tracks were in it). New things, like having two characters drive one kart, had been added. A new demo with some new things was shown at the Games Convention in August 2003. In September, Nintendo showed people a nearly complete and more sped up version of Double Dash!!. The Gamers' Summit also said that the game would be out in North America on the 17th of November, 2003.

The guys who made the game struggled to come up with new stuff the fans would like. Kiyoshi Mizuki, the main director, had a hard time with was how to hook new fans into the game; he decided to make it as simple as possible. Producer Shigeru Miyamoto gave the staff some pointers about stuff to put in the game the best they could. He let them pick out how they wanted to do the graphics.

The staff wanted to let people play online but the technology was not good enough for that yet. They also wanted to do something with a Game Boy Advance connection for this game, but they decided Double Dash!! did not fit anything like that. They wanted to make sure the really good plaers and the not-so-good players were all able to have fun with this game, so they took out things like not slipping when you hit a banana.

The game music was made by Shinobu Tanaka and Kenta Nagata. A lot of the main Mario voice actors came back for this game, like Charles Martinet as Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Baby Mario, and Baby Luigi; Jen Taylor as Princess Peach, Toad, Toadette, and Birdo; Deanna Mustard as Princess Daisy; Kazumi Totaka as Yoshi; Scott Burns as Bowser; and Dolores Rogers as Bowser Jr.

Tracks
An asterix shows that the track reappears in Mario Kart DS.
A plus sign shows that it reappears in Mario Kart Wii.

Mushroom Cup
Luigi Circuit (*)
Peach Beach (+)
Baby Park (*)
Dry Dry Desert

Flower Cup
Mushroom Bridge (*)
Mario Circuit
Daisy Cruiser
Waluigi Stadium (+)

Star Cup
Sherbet Land
Mushroom City
Yoshi Circuit (*)
DK Mountain (+)

Special Cup
Wario Colosseum
Dino Dino Jungle
Bowser Castle
Rainbow Road

Reception

Most people liked Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, and it sold a lot. This game got the "Multiplayer Game" award from ITV's Game Stars in 2004. It's sold about 4.67 million times around the world, 3.8 million in the United States, and over 802,000 in Japan. The NPD Group says Double Dash!! was the best-selling game of November 2003. It's also the third best-selling GameCube game in Australia. In October 2006, the NPD Group said this game sold seventh best for the GameCube in the United States.

References

Other websites
Official website
Official Australian website 

2003 video games
Cooperative video games
Nintendo GameCube-only games
Mario Kart games
Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development games

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