The 'Shroom:Issue XLVIII/Should Have Been
Should Have Been
by MrConcreteDonkey (talk)
Hey, MrConcreteDonkey here to give you an awkward feeling the Should Have Been section for this month.
I received no PMs again…
…anyway, enough of my petty sorrow, let’s move onto this month’s game: Mario Kart DS.
What should have been in this game?
The game was good in my opinion, but the graphics weren’t that great (among other problems) and I didn’t enjoy it as much as many of the other games in the series. There were things I liked and things I disliked about it. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the world of immoral criticism suggestions for improvement.
Firstly, I’d have liked to have seen more playable characters in this game. While I’m glad that R.O.B. was brought back into the video game world, I can’t help but think there could have been more characters playable. One may argue that the Nintendo DS would not be able to handle so many characters, but Mario Hoops 3‐on‐3 did this, so I don’t see much reason why this game can’t. I mean, at least one more character would be fine.
I would also like to say that I disliked the way every character had access to every kart. While I thought it was amazing when I was younger, now, it seems to take uniqueness away from the characters in the game. Also, it can look stupid in some situations (I mean, come on, imagine Bowser or Wario in one of Toad’s karts). The constant animations of the characters on the character select screen kind of annoy me – why can’t they stay still? It’s a distraction when choosing your character. The characters should have stayed still and been limited to the same karts as other players of their weights.
I thought it was a good idea to have Wi‐Fi connection in the game, but it didn’t appear to work out very well. I can understand that there would be difficulties in having eight players at a time, so I’m not going to talk about that. However, it was hard to find friend codes, so I think the friend code for your opponent should have been displayed when you were playing with someone you didn’t know, so you could play against them again. Another annoyance is that many people come into the room and immediately leave, and then do the same again. It’s really annoying, and loads of people do it. Back when I used to play Mario Kart DS online, I couldn’t enter a room without finding at least one person doing it.
Going on recently, I found online mode to be pretty laggy – my opponent didn’t appear to be using any hacks and was leaping around in front of me all over the place (my fault for choosing Waluigi). I also found that two players disconnected; one by choice, the other by losing, which can occasionally trigger a glitch. Also, turning off the connection counts as a win, which is quite unfair. Plus, only half of the courses are playable in Wi‐Fi mode. All of these problems should have been fixed, if possible.
Back off Wi‐Fi, I’d now like to talk about some of the graphics. Things such as trees in Luigi’s Mansion, among many other things, look completely two‐dimensional, and other things are three‐dimensional, so the two don’t particularly blend. I believe that everything should have been 3D – I mean, it’s only to be expected. Nintendo doesn’t want us to see behind the backgrounds, but I find I continuously do it accidentally.
Now onto a fairly controversial topic – snaking. Snaking is when a player gets many consecutive mini‐turbo boosts, going in a wavy snake‐like pattern. Some people love it and find it an extremely useful tactic, while others believe that it is cheating. I believe they should have made this tactic harder to use, so only the greatest players could make use of it, or taken a page from Mario Kart Wii's book and not had it at all, as it is unfair on less skilled players.
I loved the return of some of the retro tracks; it was great fun to revisit my old favorites. However, I felt that quite a few of them were missing something, and some of them, let’s face it, weren’t the best choices to return. Therefore, I believe that the retro course selection should have been swapped around as follows:
- Dino Dino Jungle replaces Baby Park
Dino Dino Jungle was arguably one of the best tracks in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. It had a bit of everything – a wooden boardwalk, a cave with colorful rocks, and mostly, a jungle with giant dinosaurs! On the other hand, Baby Park’s music gets annoying, it’s really small, and the only detailed part of the track is the background, which is really bad for this game.
- Lakeside Park replaces Peach Circuit
Peach Circuit is a little bit bland, to be honest. Lakeside Park has a volcano that erupts on the second lap! If I remember correctly, no other circuit has implemented something in the background that happens, let alone after a certain lap, let alone affecting the circuit itself. Beautiful park, dangerous scenery. :O
- Vanilla Lake 2 replaces Choco Island 2
Choco Island 2 is kind of boring too, and there already is a chocolate‐based retro course in this game. The Vanilla Lake courses were my favorites in Super Mario Kart, and I find the design of Vanilla Lake 2 very interesting.
However, when it came to bringing back battle courses, I think Pipe Plaza and Block Fort were great courses to pick.
Characters who could have been playable
- Shy Guy – I know he/she was playable in Download Play or whatever‐you‐call‐it, but I think Shy Guy could have easily been a playable character in the regular game.
- Birdo – It would have been nice to see Birdo playable, despite all the hate she gets.
- Toadette – Who doesn’t like Toadette? She was created for the Mario Kart series, so she would have been a sensible choice.
- Petey Piranha – Petey was one of the very few characters that wasn’t playable in Mario Kart Wii despite having been in the series previously. If he was in Mario Kart DS, he probably would have been in Mario Kart Wii, and I really like him. I’m sure other people do too.
Beta elements
For some reason, Professor E. Gadd was going to be playable at one point. His name appeared on a file, found by hacking, and there is a folder called “oyama”, his Japanese name. His emblem also appeared on the Poltergust 4000. He was replaced by Dry Bones in the final version of the game. Yoshi and Wario both had different karts at one point; Yoshi had a pink Egg 1, like a Birdo Egg, while Wario had a completely different kart, which can be seen to the left.
There were a lot of course changes. Pictures can be seen in a gallery underneath. The file named “old_mario_gc” was, as the title suggests, the old Mario Circuit from Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. “luigi_course” has a similar route to Waluigi Pinball, along with shared objects, but is incomplete, while “dokan_course” and “test1_course” were very strange, confusing courses, possibly used for testing.
“donkey_course”, despite the strange name (which really would fit if it had MrConcrete before it :D), was the beta version of Waluigi Pinball. It has a similar route to DK Pass (which explains the “donkey” name). The grass is checkered and the road is brown. “nokonoko_course” could have hinted at a new Koopa Troopa Beach‐like course. “test_circle” was just a circle, and a debugging stage. “mini_block_course” was going to be Block City from Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. Wario Stadium (or “wario_course”) had no fireballs and darker textures, while the slot machine in Waluigi Pinball was part of the course.
The menu resembled that of Double Dash!! at some point. Also, there were two unused items: the Bowser Shell and the Chain Chomp. I think they both would have worked the same way as they did in Double Dash!!.
Finally, here is the promised gallery:
Early version of DK Pass. 
The unreleased pipe course, which its file name is dokan_course. 
GCN Block City. 
Early pinball based course. 
GCN Mario Circuit. 
The unreleased Koopa Troopa Beach course. 
A beta version of GCN Pipe Plaza with orange sky. 
The mysterious Test1 course. 
Test Circle. 
Beta Bob‐omb. 
Beta Boo. 
Beta Shell. 
Beta Mushroom. 
Beta Star. 
Beta Bowser Shell
Well, that’s all for this month’s gargantuan section. PM arachnidsGrip on the MarioWiki Forum if you have a disagreement/suggestion and I’ll put it in… if I ever get any.
