DS Shroom Ridge

Shroom Ridge is the final race course of the Flower Cup in Mario Kart DS. The course takes place on a public road with traffic and runs on a mountain ridge, hence the name. For about half of the course, the right hand side has no railing and is a sheer drop. Shroom Ridge is the first traffic course to have cars moving in opposite directions, as opposed to the same direction as in all previous road tracks.

Notably, the cars not involved in the race drive on the left side of the road (which means, from the player's perspective, the cars that come against them are at the right side), as done in real life in various countries including Japan, the United Kingdom and Australia. In Mirror Mode, however, they take the right side of the road, as done in the Continental Americas or Mainland Europe.

Due to the DS's limited 3D graphics capability, vehicles cannot be seen from a far distance. Unlike the previous game, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, they will disappear from a player's sight if far enough.

Course layout
The race starts in a part of the road near to the cliff. Players go straight to encounter the first corner that turns to the left. The road becomes slightly wider and the racers leave the ridge going in between two hills. The road makes another abrupt turn to the right crossing the hills and then turns to the left. The road passes through an extense meadow with trees in the background behind one of the hills of the road that leads the racers uphill in a S turn that ends inside a tunnel traversing a hill bordering on the road. Racers run throughout the tunnel to make a slight turn to the left. The tunnel ends leading the racers again to the ridge. During the turn, the road tilts slightly downhill and then makes an S turn to the right. Racers must take now another turn to the left and lastly another to the right. The road ends in straight line towards the crossing line to complete the lap.

Official descriptions

 * Mario Kart DS European website: "In the great tradition of Toad's Turnpike and Mushroom Bridge, this race takes place on real roads packed with traffic. Shroom Ridge is downhill all the way, so make sure your breaks are in tip-top shape. There are no crash barriers either, so you'd better have perfected those power-slides..."

Sponsors

 * Fresh (Cargo trucks)
 * Mario Racing (Billboards)
 * Super Mario (Trackside banners)
 * Super Mario GP (Billboards)
 * Wario Racing (Trackside banners, billboards)

Trivia

 * On some of the trucks on Shroom Ridge there is an advertisement for Berries, and on other trucks there are ads for "Fresh Cheep Cheep", an obvious Mario franchise version of an ad for fish.
 * In pre-release versions, the "Fresh Cheep Cheep" trucks of Shroom Ridge read Flesh instead of Fresh. This is likely a translation error.
 * This is the only Flower Cup course in Mario Kart DS that has yet to become a retro course.

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