This version of Zelda looks completely different from the other versions. It’s very toony and the main character doesn’t really look like the Link we know. He wears a Hawaii shirt at the start, but you get the well known green bug suit quite quick.

Avada kedavra….. ow…. It’s link.

One of the first things you’ll notice, is that Hyrule is transformed into a bunch of islands, with a lot of water between them. So how on earth will you get to the islands? Yes, with a sailing ship. This sailing is a quite important part of the game, without it, you can’t get anywere. That’s a pity, because it takes some time to get from one island to another, and the sailing is quite boring most of the time. But I have to admit, it gives the game a unique feel.

yes, endless sailing trips are part of the game

Weapons, puzzles, evil bosses, etc.
Zelda wouldn’t be Zelda without the usual thinking, the puzzles. In this game, the puzzles aren’t very tough, Ocarina of Time and The Oracle of Ages were harder to solve.
The bosses are also very simple. Normally I get stuck at the bosses, but here I had only trouble with 1 boss…
Your weapon collection is much the same like in the other games, hookshot, boomerang, the hyrule sword and of course the master sword. They’ve added some other stuff like the dekuleaf (floating in the air) and the grappeling hook.

Tingle, the weird tingely creature…

Tingle
A nice new function in the game, that you can use if you have family or friends, is the so called “Tingle Tuner”. You can use this if you have a GBA with the Cube connection wire, and if you’ve got the tingle tuner in the game, then you can call tingle (hooray) and throw bombs at the enemy, heal Link and do other nice stuff.
But be warned, if your friend is in a evil mood, he can kill you throwing bombs on your head… I must say, that will make the game a bit harder.
You can get lower prices for this tingle stuff with special tingle-sidequests.

Of course, if the world ends, Link seeks help from a tree…

And, what’s to do?
Enough, it takes some time to finish the main mission, but if you’ve done that, there are enough things to keep you busy like to get all the heart containers, all the treasures, take pictures of all the evil creatures and characters in the game (I say, 300 or more?). If this bores you, you can also play weird mini games or make up stupid music with your magic wand, or play Harry Potter (it’s two games in one if you see it that way). If you’ve killed the last boss, you can always start all over, and play the whole game in a Hawaii shirt….

Conclusion
An ingenious game that really is one of the best games on the Gamecube, a must-have for your game collection.
Graphics: Very nice, but I hoped it would be some more realistic like the Ocarina of Time version.
Sound: The music isn’t irritating and it gives the dungeons their right ambience.
Gameplay: Smooth controls, but maybe the game is a bit simple…
Lifespan: There is really a lot to do, to beat the game 100%, you probably need months. If you only want to clear the game in a very basic way, you will have at least one month of fun.

Score: 9

Yoshi Touch & Go,
To touch or not to Touch, that’s the question.

Yoshi Touch & Go is a long expected game for the DS and I’ve got to say that the waiting hasn’t been for nothing. Yes, this is a very good game but the game developers did forget something: A STORY.

The game lacks a story?????

Yes my friends, they forgot a story and why??????. This game could be a killer app for the Nintendo DS if it had one. It would be one of the best platformers ever created. Its difficult to forgive the creators to make such a big fault but well…. The yoshi games give you what the name states: Yoshi’s island brings you to an Island and there You have an adventure, Yoshi’s Story gives you a story and well…. Yoshi Touch & Go does not give You a story, but it lets you touch the screen and lets you go, Its all in the name.

Is it??

Yes its all in the name. The controls of this game are very simple and you only need the touch screen. Each level you start as Baby Mario who falls from the sky with balloons attached to him which keep him in the air. The objective of this part is to get Baby Mario safely to the ground, while getting a lot of coins. You can get this coins by killing an opponent by drawing a circle round him or by guiding Baby Mario to the coins that float in the air already. This “guiding” happens when you draw a cloud. Then he will fall on top of the cloud and he slides via the cloud to below. The amount of coins that you get will determine which color your yoshi has and thereby what amount of eggs it can carry. When you get below, you will go further on the ground on the back of yoshi. Now you will have to draw clouds to get yoshi over abysses and you can also kill creatures in the same way as Baby Mario. Then you have the eggs. Just click on the target with your stylus and yoshi will shoot an egg. Very simple.

OMG, IT HAS 4 MODES……… a bit small innit??

……. Yes it is a bit small. You’ve got two levels (an ending one and one that does not ends) and some different backgrounds. The four modes are score mode, marathon mode, time attack and challenge mode. In score mode the objective is just to get the most coins you can and in marathon to get the longest way without dieing. These to are the modes you have from the beginning. You can get the other two by getting a topscore (#1) in this modes. In the next mode time attack, you’ve got to get to the end of the level as quick as possible and in challenge you must get as far as possible before your time runs out, but you can get extra time by killing creatures. But honestly, its not a big shame that its so small because the game is nearly perfect in this way. Its rather difficult to get real big scores and you can keep getting better. And the gameplay is just perfect now, You can see that they’ve been thinking about this game and that they did not forget the story but purposely left it behind, because now its addicting too and more people (people who do not like to play for hours at the time) can play it. In this jacket, a beat the highscore game, it’s a very, VERY good game that’s really addicting. And the multiplayer ( 2 players get the same playfield and the objective is to get to the other side as quick as possible and the fastest wins) is very cool too, and one gamecard so in that way its just becoming a better game all the time. So even if this is a small game, it’s a very good game no doubt about it.

screenie from the multiplayer mode

Graphics: very nice yoshi style graphics, which make it a colorful and very happy game. (NO 3D IS NOT NECESSARY)
Music: the music is a definite plus of the game. Typical yoshi again and not irritating to listen to, in other words very nice.
Gameplay: good and simple controls, the levels are not to simple and to get very high scores you need some practice.
Lifetime: to get a #1 score in every mode does take some practice but not to long, but then you can try to get a higher score everywhere and naturally you can play the fantastic multiplayer with your friends afterwards.

Conclusion: a rather small, but in its size and in the way it is a very VERY VERY VERY good game, Not a killer app. But still a game not to miss. Now its waiting for a continuation of the game with more mods and maybe even a storyline………..

The images are from gamesarefun.com and gamespy.com

Score: 9

If you buy a Wii Remote, better known as the ‘Wiimote’, you can choose if you want to buy Wii Play with it for a few dollars more. It’s not much for a Wii game, but should you buy it? Is Wii Play worth the few dollars you must spend in addition to your new Wii Remote?

Wii Play is a collection of 9 mini games to let you show the use of the Wii Remote and the Nunchuck. The game presents itself as a “how to use the Wii Remote” tutorial. You begin with pointing, and every mini game ads a new move you can perform with the Wii controller. Of course, you must unlock the games one by one, because the next mini game can be a bit to hard if you’ve skipped the first one…?

laserhockey… a shocking original name

Don’t ask me what’s the use of this, the mini games don’t offer a lot of game play, and you won’t learn to use the Wii remote. When I play this game I get the idea it’s a sort of Wii promotional material, to show of the things you can do with the Wii remote and get people interested in the Wii so they buy it. But I’ve already bought this console, so what’s the point getting me interested in it?

Not that you will get interested in the Wii because of Wii Play, they offer you 9 games you can play on millions of sites on the internet (table tennis, air hockey, shooting things), with only one difference: the controls. Luckily the controls do work smoothly, some game producers could learn a thing or two from this.

A duck hunt variation, the reason why I’ve bought the game, I guess the original duck hunt is more fun…

Well, we know which parts of this game aren’t interesting, so, what is interesting? You can compete against your own high scores, and win medals if your scores are high enough. It will actually take some time to reach the platinum medal scores, giving the game just a small bit of entertainment and a big challenge (it’s quite hard to get the platinum scores, and I believe some are impossible to reach).

There’s also a multiplayer function: two players can compete against each other. This function really increases the lifetime of the game, the billiard game is actually fun to play against someone.

yes, poking the eye is more fun than the game itself

If you buy a new controller, and you don’t have a multiplayer game yet or if you just like ping pong and billiards, you could have some fun with Wii Play, but if you have a low budget, rethink, the game doesn’t offer much and you probably won’t be spending hours playing it.

Score: 6

It’s already the 4th Wario Ware game, and I think this is again the proof that follow-ups aren’t much better most of the times, but I can’t be totally sure about that, this is the first time I’ve played a Wario Ware game, and when I play this game I’m glad about it, it’s not total crap, but also it’s not a game where you want to stuff your money in… Or I don’t like the whole idea of this game, or the game sucks, to make it more simple for me to say something positive, I’ll take the first as the problem.
This is a game for the hardcore minigamer, the goal of the game is to play minigames till you drop dead, faster and faster and faster. You must use all the utility’s of the Nintendo DS: the microphone (yes, it looks stupid when you are playing in the bus and you must blow into the microphone) and the touch screen, which they’ve used very well.
The game starts very slow, but to make it a little bit more exiting, the games are going faster and faster till you got a headache and you are irritated by the fact that this game is to fast for your simple human mind J. When you gain new high-scores you unlock new characters, more mini-games, and get toys for your toy room.
The idea of making use of the touch screen in this Wario Ware as for controlling mini-games was a good idea, it is fun, plays simple and therefore feels natural, the only point is that after you hear the screen squeak, you are more worried about your touch-screen then about your highscores. This of course is totally useless, if you don’t press to hard, your screen shall be fine.
The mini-games contain a large portion of toilet-humor and already has gained the status: what a nonsense (in the positive way). Another nice idea is the mix, you can play the minigames in different mixes, making the game harder and more surprising. In this way you can stay mini-gaming for the rest of your life, and it’s the ultimate game for the people who are screaming for mini-games, but not for the gamers that want a large game, with a nice story in it.

The cursor and the upper screen is fake, the screen below contains the real game

Story?
Hmmm, where did I left it…. It is the missing link in this game, they’ve could at least make one nice story in it, I don’t like the method of a own story for every character, that even don’t have a cross point or a funny plot in it, an extra drive to play the game. The little movies in it are (luckily) good, and contain a large chunk of Nintendo humor.

Nice kitty…. Ehhh doggy

Err, are there more missing elements?
Well, I do miss some things, I didn’t even told you the most important thing, the multiplayer system. After seeing a review about the cube version of Wario Ware, I at least expected a multiplayer on the DS. But except of a little ping pong toy, with which you can really play a sort of 2d ping pong with a friend on one DS *WOOOW* I couldn’t find it. I think it’s a bad thing, especially because the DS multiplayer WIFI system is very handy, and the game is perfect to base a multiplayer mode on it, shame on you, Nintendo….
Another thing I really missed was the 3d, I hoped they would make a little more use of it, for the most games they’ve used the GBA graphics.
The last bad thing I want to mention (phew) is the simplicity of the game. In a astonishing short amount of time I had unlocked all the games, mixes and characters. I hoped that it would be a little bit harder, but I still had hope that making high scores with playing individual minigames was harder. I must say that it was even very simple to get enormous highscores with the most of the games (+- 600 and then you don’t want to play even more), after you’ve made it 50 times, the game won’t be going faster, and the minigame stays the same. Luckily the mixes are harder to play.
The last thing I want to mention (sorry) is that the highscore system isn’t very good, you can’t even set your name in the highscore list, something that excludes the one system battles with friends, but for the people with a good memory it is still a nice thing to have.

Finally you can legally draw moustaches under drawings

Conclusion
Unless al my comments on the game, it stays a nice game, not a fantastic one or one with a new idea, but you can have good fun with it.

Marks
Graphics: It suits the game, but it’s a pity that they didn’t have used the full power of the DS
Gameplay: A bit simple, no multiplayer and nog Story, 3 things that kill the game a little…
Sound: Nice sounds, that don’t annoy you, even at full speed
Length: Not very long if you don’t like minigames (one or two weeks) otherwise you can have fun for a year, or maybe longer.

Score: 7

A couple of years ago, it took me ages to find a free multiplayer game on the internet, but now the web is full of free games. There’s probably a market for it. Next to the flash games, MMO’s are probably the most popular free games on the web. Most of them are MMORPG’s. I was searching for a few MMO strategy games, but it’s quite hard to find a good one in this forest of MMO spam. After a lot of sites that required payment for most of the functions, I now found a semi-free javascript based MMO strategy game: Tinywarz, and most of it’s functions are free.

Tinywarz is a MMO turn based strategy game with some RPG elements in it. You can level up your units and your commander. Your commander can learn new commands as he proceeds trough the game. The whole RPG system and the army maintain system look a lot like the one used in the Fire Emblem series: you maintain your army out of battle in your base, and if you want to fight, you need to deploy your army.

The maintenance of your army is the most important thing in the game. You have to create new vehicles for your soldiers to drive in, and upgrade them with modifications. Also, you must configure an army which you can deploy on planets. The army consists of soldiers in vehicles and a base you can create.

building a mod

To make the vehicles and the base structures, you will need ore. This ore you can mine from the planets you can deploy to. This adds up to the gameplay because you can deploy to a planet for three things: training your army, mining ore to expand your army or to PVP. Depending on what you want, you can deploy to different sorts of planets, and play the game.

If you deploy your army, you will walk on the planet for a couple of turns. These turns are time based, so if you have a large army, you will need quite some time to move it to the right location, so you must be fast. This gives some problems with the controls, because you must command every unit separately, and this is time consuming. Also the battles you will fight are somewhat strange, because the enemy moves in the same turn, making it rather impossible to be on the same space on the map to attack in a good way. So it’s a game of clicking and hoping. Something I don’t like is that there aren’t any battle animations or something, making the game quite boring.

The base creator tool

Because every deployment takes half an hour or more, the game is very slow, and will take a lot of time. Nevertheless, if you are a strategy fan, and you like turn based strategy, you will probably like this game. You can really improve your army in the game, even if you don’t have the paid options. It also has a very active community, there are always enough players on-line to chat or to play against. If you’re an active player, you can even join into some factions (clans) which will give you some advantages like new units and some allies in the game.

Tinywarz is not the best game I’ve ever played, but it’s the best MMO strategy game I’ve found so far. The controls are not the best ones, and so are the graphics. There are enough unit types to put in your army, and the people who pay don’t have a very big advantage over the free accounts.

You should play this game if you: Like strategy, don’t mind the bad graphics, have enough time.
You should not play this game if you: Like great graphics, want a real time strategy game, want good controls.

You can check out more screenshot on http://www.tinywarz.com/screenshots.html

You can click here to register to this free game.

Score: 6

Silkroad Online isn’t the first free MMORPG. In Asia, game companies make big profit on this type of games. What’s the deal? The game is obviously free, but you can buy premium content. Fair enough. But is it fun to play without buying stuff or is it just dog shit?

I must say, SRO was my first MMO experience, and it was great… for the first 30 minutes. The first quests really give you the sense that this game might be something. You walk around, deliver some useless stuff, kill some mobs. All right not bad. But what then? You walk around, deliver useless stuff, kill mobs that respawn every second. Sounds familiar? So, is that what you do the whole game? Basically yes, that’s the game in a nutshell.

Big guy: “I just shat in my pants, so I’m not in a good mood”.

If you’re bored with killing mobs, you can open a stall and wait I don’t know how long till somebody buys your stuff. Pretty original, isn’t it? Instead of getting rid of your shit by giving it to the auction house, you open a stall and wait countless hours before someone finally buys your shit. During this, you can’t play. So if both your inventory and storage are full, your fudged.

Something else that pisses me off. What’s up with the fudging lag? Sometimes the game is pretty much unplayable because of the stupid lag. Where the hell are these servers anyway?
There seems to be some kind of a players limit, because it’s almost impossible to log in regardless the time of day. The servers are allways full. Every time you open the game, you need to fill in you password and username, and most of the time you press conect, the game says: “Cannot connect due to server traffic”. Sometimes actually you  can log in, that is, you have type in a “KLAPKA” code, each time. But that doesn’t mean shit. 90% of the time the game says cannot connent bla bla bla disconnected from the server. BAM! Your instantly back where you began, your desktop. That’s right, the game just shuts off, whether you want it or not. So if you don’t have much patience, you need a tremendous amount of luck to log in.

Looks real nice huh? Appearances are deceiving…

Am I done? No of course not. There is much more to do in the game rather than killing mobs and selling shit. What about the jobs? There are three jobs: hunter, merchant and thief. You can imagine what they do to earn money. Is it fun? No. If you’r low level, there’s no chance you can be any of these three, because there is always a bad ass with a higher level who will spoil the fun.  

But still, the game isn’t that bad. The skills and spells are fun, and I got hooked to the game, just to get all the cool stuff and spells. But what then? There are no guild quests, no decent PVP system. You can fight other players, but you don’t get stats whatsoever. It’s just pointless. A complete waste of time.

There is also premium content, which is also a complete waste of time and money. The game doesn’t become a whole lot better with a monkey or a dog running around you collecting stuff and taking a shit. Or a XP helper that makes leveling a less dreadful. It’s still a pain in the ass. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that leveling up takes ages.

Closing comments

So if you aren’t cheap just “buy” a game. I can’t imagine WoW or Guild Wars being as shitty as this game. This is just a watse of time.

Score: 4

I’ve seen many shameless rip-offs, but this game is not just a rip-off. Not only has Volition stolen the concept from Rockstar, everything else looks almost exactly the same. But who cares? Are there developers that make original and ground braking games? There are, a few. As for the rest of them, they all steal elements from one and other. There isn’t anything I can blame Voltion of. The game is faithful to the GTA games, but does it also match its gameplay?

Saints Row is not a rip-off of Grand Theft Auto by any means. The sandbox concept has already been used by a number of developers, and I’m not even sure whether Rockstar “invented” this genre. After all, Driver was the first free-roaming 3d racing game. With GTA III, Rockstar combined free-roaming driving with everything else a decent action game contains. Rockstar gave people a giant city to play with. The game didn’t force players to do anything at all. Rockstar did a great job by putting all these elements in one game. But was the game entirely ground braking on every level? Obviously not.

Fudge tha police coming straight from the underground…

But back to Saints Row. In Saints Row, you play a gangster, who joins the 3rd Saints. This gang competes with three other gangs over the control of the city of Stillwater. There is a Latino gang, a gang that is obessed with cars, an African-American gang that specializes in music and prostitution and of course your gang, a racially diverse one. Your gang must gain control over every inch of territory by competing with the other gangs. Once Stillwater is won, your mission is completed. Obviously, the other gangs prevent you from doing this.

Although the gangs are different from each other, the city isn’t very diverse. There are minor differences, but it’s not that the Latino’s territory is significantly different from yours. That’s a thing I liked about Vice City, the different areas. The Hispanic area is different from the beach area. Different cars, different architecture etc,.

In the begining of the game, you have to create a character. There are dozens options to choose from. You can be either an African-American, a Caucasian or an Asian. Furthermore, you can modify almost every part of the body. This also goes for the multiplayer. I’ve seen a bunch of different characters, which is really cool. You’re also free in how you dress up your character. Again, there are a bunch of different garments, chains, tatoos, everything. This works, especially in the multiplayer. Online gangs can identify themselves by wearing the same clothes. A nicely done feature.

She’s on fire, and she burns through the night
At the speed of light, She’s on fire,… lol.. I’m on fire.

The missions are great fun, but not any different from other action games. Steal a load of drugs, capture enemy territory, compete other gangs in a race or in a fight. The tasks feel mostly right, not too hard not too easy. However, there are fewer missions than in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas or Grand Theft Auto Vice City, which is why you’re done with the single player in an hour of 10. There are also activities, which give you all kinds of unlocks. Too bad you won’t get any unlocks that add up to the gameplay. A new chain, a garment, a new paint job for your car. Nice, but it’s not that the game gets more fun or you can beat something without clearing the activity. It would be more interesting if an unlock gave you access to a new mission. I wasn’t all that interested in finishing all the remaining activities after completing the main story line.
You do unlock Xbox 360 achievements, and that’s the only reason why I wanted to beat every activity in town. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do it. There are various activities: racing missions, insurance fraud, mayhem, escort service. There are three of each of them and they’re all the same, which is why it became boring on some point.

Volition put a lot of different vehicles in the game, though there are only cars. There are many different cars, but a plane, or a motorcycle would have been nice as well. The devoloper admitted that due to a lack of time, they excluded other vehicles.

There are several radio stations that air nice songs which you’ve never heard of. Unlike Rockstar, Volition included mostly unkown bands and artists. The music is fine, I liked most of it, though the tracks aren’t as flashy as in the GTA games.

Hand to hand combat my ass, drive-by pwnage, mulaghaka!

What does Saints Row have, what everyone wanted from the GTA games? That’s right a multiplayer. There is a multiplayer in Saints Row, which disappoints on some level, but is entertaining though.
There is a death match mode, a capture flag variant which is called “Big ass chain”, “protect the pimp” in which one team must guide the pimp to the exit point, while the assassins must prevent him from doing so, there are team based modes, and the most intersting one: “Blinged Out Ride”. This game type involving cars, lets you compete other players by pimping you car. You earn money by killing other players, you use the money to pimp your car. The first team that reaches level 4, can win by showing it off. The other team can prevent them fron winning the game by destroying the car.
This mode proved to be very entertaining. Players must work together in order to win.
But now my biggest problem with the game, which limits the amount of time you are going to spend with the game.
There are too few maps. Each mode has only three maps. I was really hoping that the players would get the chance to create maps. And why not? The maps from the multiplayer were taken from the single player map. Now we have to wait and let Volition do the job. It’s a shame that they charge you for every new map they release. The game would have been much more interesting if players could make their own maps and use them in the online multiplayer. Now players are limited to just a few maps.

Closing comments

Saints Row is not orginal but is a blast to play. The singe player lasts 20-30 hours, and when you’ve beaten the game, there is a fun multiplayer which will keep you busy for many months. However, if the players were able to create their own maps for the multiplayer, the game would have been much better.

Score: 8

Pseudoquest is a brand new MMORPG. It’s so new that it’s still in the beta fase, so there’s still more content coming. I’ve played this game for a while, so here’s what I think about this game so far.

It’s a browser based MMORPG. This means that you don’t have to download install packages and such, you only have to sign up to the game, and you can play (it’s totally free). The bad side of a browserbased game is that the graphics suck. And yes, the graphics aren’t next-gen, it’s quite old-school… pixel art.

So the graphics aren’t really great, what about the gameplay?
Well, the gameplay is not bad, you only need a mouse to play. It’s 99% click based, so no hard controls, nothing, just clickin’. The 1%? is chatting… as far that’s possible… there aren’t many people on-line, and you can only chat with people in your region. There is no whisper function, or a general chat. Well, we are lucky the chat function isn’t needed very much: it’s a turn based MMO.

A turn based MMORPG isn’t something I’ve ever seen before, but it works for me. The basic principle is that you get a few turns every hour. You can use them to walk through the map or to pick up a side quest. This has some positive effects: the game is still fun after a week and you won’t become addicted, putting a lot of time in it that could be spent better. It also has some negative effects: you can’t become a higher level than your friends if they play each day, and there aren’t a lot of people on-line at the same moment, making it hard to call it a MMORPG, which makes the chat function pretty useless… but maybe this will change in the future.

So you get SNES graphics and the gameplay isn’t the best MMORPG gameplay there is, why should you play this game?
Because it’s a very original game. The game isn’t about the graphics, it’s about making fun of RPG’s. All the descriptions of the items and monsters, and the text of the quests are hilarious. The nonsense in RPG’s is reflected in these texts: why does it help to kill exact 10 slimes? Why are the weapons so standard in all the RPG’s? If you look at the game from this parody point of view, the graphics don’t really matter, they fit the purpose. If you think that the chat isn’t needed, the message board on the site is good enough.

So: if you have played a lot of RPG’s, you will probably understand the humor in this game, and you will probably like this game. You will even have a good time if you aren’t a hardcore RPG player, there are a lot of quests in this game, so you will have something to do.
If you’re looking for a real MMO, this isn’t the game you are looking for.

Score: 7/10

You can play this game and read more information about it on www.pseudoquest.com. Please use this (http://www.spymac.com/details/?2110843) link if you want to be my referral.

Score: 7

Of course, a new Mario Kart for the Gamecube, but is it a real improvement?
The basic idea of the game is still the same, power ups to kill your enemy’s, a multiplayer mode, funny Nintendo characters and of course time trails.

The Characters
In this new Mario Kart, there are a lot of characters that you can choose to race with, and the new thing is that two of them race on one kart. This is also the first version of Mario Kart in which the characters have their own abilities like the weight and the special attacks. The babies have a large chomp that pulls you a few places higher, hitting other karts, Mario and Luigi shoot fire balls etc. This way the players have more strategic choices to make.
 
If you’ve won a few races with gold, you get new faster karts and new characters with better special powers, therefore you must fight in the multiplayer selection screen for the best racers.

Bowser’s final solution: getting them both killed by driving on the wrong side of the road

The Cars
Another new thing in this game, is that you can choose from more cars, that all drive differently: some are faster, some accelerate slower. It’s a pity that you only see the difference if the car is from a completely different weight class, the cars from the same weight class drive nearly the same.
There are 3 weight classes: heavy, normal and light. All the characters are one of these classes, you can only get the car from the class of the heaviest character in the team. The heavy class is the fastest class, but if you get off the track, you will go very slow, the light class is not very fast, but you will still have speed if you lose the track, the medium class is more all around.

 
One of the nicest tracks in the game where you will be launched in a canon

Gameplay
The gameplay has stayed much the same like in Mario Kart 64, only now you must share the kart with someone else (that’s why it’s called Double dash, you stupid).
It’s still a lot of fun, but if you play on your own, the game is more difficult. In the Mario Kart 64 version, I only played at 150CC, and the special at cup 50CC and 100CC, but when I started here at 150CC, I finished all races first. But like I said, playing on your own, is a bit more difficult, so if you are lazy (like me) you can better do the Grand Prix with 4 persons, a new thing in Double Dash, because it’s easier..
The courses aren’t very hard, and are sometimes very boring, so you won’t get the idea ‘hmm, it would be fantastic to get a record on this course”. This makes the time trial option quite useless. It’s 100% sure the game wasn’t made to set  times on courses.

Multiplayer function
It’s clear that Mario Kart Double Dash is a multiplayer game, you will probably have enough fun with it if you got enough people to play with. But there’s something that would be better if they hadn’t changed it: the battle function. There are some new game modes:

Battle original: like in the old game, shooting on each other with a lot of power ups, and you loose If you loose all the balloons. But there are some things that they’ve changed, like the arenas, they all look the same, and they are boring.
One of the best things from Mario Kart 64 has been demolished. If you die, you will not change in a bomb to take revenge like in the 64 version. The good specials are too strong. So you probably will loose if the other players got the players with the best specials.

Shine Thief: get the shine, and hold it till the time is up.

Bomb omb battle: the second best mode in the game. Throw bombs at each other.

Unfortunately, they made this game in a way that the nicest thing in the multiplayer mode is the Grand Prix option. The battle arenas aren’t just enough fun to play a long time with your friends.

A little snapshot from the multiplayer

Conclusion:
It’s a good game and you probably have enough fun with the multiplayer. Too bad that the battle mode isn’t as good as I hoped. If you play the game by yourself, I cannot recommend it. The game becomes much better if you play it with friends. Playing it on your own is quite boring.

Graphics: very nice, everything is smooth and no graphic errors.
Sound: the music on the courses isn’t bad, but the music at the prize presentation is very irritating.
Gameplay: the controls work smoothly. It’s only bad that the single player is just frustrating and boring. The multiplayer is a lot fun.
Lifespan: the single player gets boring very fast. If you’ve unlocked all things, it’s game-over. Playing the multiplayer will keep you busy for some time. The bomb omb mode and the grand-prix will stay fun with more players.

Score: 8

This was the first game that I’ve played on a DS, and when I played it for the first time, I went crazy. The first reason for this was that I had never seen 3d graphics on a handheld (and they are pretty good), the second reason was that my Nintendo 64 was stolen with the 60% save game of Mario 64, and now I had a new chance to beat the game. I pretty soon realized that there were things not as I remembered them: you start with Yoshi (WHY?? I hate that… thing) and some stars had disappeared/were replaced by other stars. Also moving around was not as I remembered it, small ridges are were deadly as ever, and now and then you stop running when your thumb is in the screen corner, but after a few hours it played like the old version and I got used to it.

The four characters: Yoshi, Wario, Luigi and of course Mario.

Positive changes
This new version has some new, really nice, extra’s in it: the four extra characters add more varying game play, there are new stars so you can search a bit longer for them and (maybe the best addition) are the mini games. Also the rabbit hunting season is opened, and you must catch bunnies, hopping around the whole level, to get new mini games. These two features are quite addicting.
The mini games make a good use of the touch screen, and consist of rolling, shooting, jumping, rolling and even betting. These new factors and the highscore system make sure that you can stay playing this game for (nearly) ever against your friends, beating each others highscore, a nice way to spend time after making yourself angry about stars that you can’t get. In a nutshell: the mini games add much tot the game.
The only bad addition are the four new characters, they make the game to easy, because they all have their own powers, and if you use them very smart, you can skip hours of walking and puzzles, and in that way get stars that where a lot more challenging in the old version in roundabout 1 minute.

return of the Bowser

Old stays gold
Luckily the old elements are still in there, like swinging Bowser around (something that;s a lot harder with the touch screen). If you’ve played the old N64 version, the memory’s shoot back into your mind, and you will know that this version is even a little bit better then the old one, everybody seems a bit better. The old sounds are there, and the graphics are at least equal to the N64 version, and maybe even better.

Multiplayer
How is it even possible, a multiplayer in a game like Mario, but it is really in it. It is a funny option that isn’t worked out enough, you must hunt for the stars and punch players that already have a star.. a bit boring. I don’t get  why they even put it in there, it is to simple to force a draw, a better option was to make multiplayer mini games or something like it….

to conclude…
 It’s a nice made game, and an enormous must have for retro gamers, but of course also for non retro gamers. A beautiful game play that doesn’t bores quick, and with the mini games it will get a nice and long life length. It isn’t very hard to finish the game, to many things are made just to easy if you use the characters wise enough. It’s a pity that the multiplayer doesn’t adds much, but it’s certainly the best game in the first load DS games.

Marks
Graphics: 9, Not bad for the first 3D game that I see on a handheld, the quality is nearly the same as on the N64.
Gameplay: 9, it plays very sweet, no bugs and nearly no shocking camera work, it’s a pity the game is a bit simple…
Sound: 9, not very new, but it doesn’t matter very much, it are nice sounds to sing along, and drive your parents crazy with.
Lifetime: 9, A long time, till you’ve played the whole game, and longer till you’ve been driven crazy by the mini games (if you are motivated that is).

Score: 9