Mario Kart 64
is a 1996 kart racing game for the Nintendo 64. Developed and published by Nintendo, it is the second installment in the Mario Kart series after 1992's Super Mario Kart. The game retains the gameplay of its predecessor: the player, controlling a Mario franchise character, races opponents around tracks based on locales from the Super Mario platform games. Tracks contain obstacles to slow the player down and item boxes which give the player power-ups to aid in their progress. Mario Kart 64 contains different single-player and local multiplayer game modes, including a Grand Prix racing mode and a last man standing battle mode.
Mario Kart 64 was first revealed in 1995 alongside the N64. The development team focused on best utilising the console's technology for smooth gameplay, rather than innovating significantly on its predecessor, in order to appeal to a wide audience. Developers were bounded by the N64's processing power and made use of rendering techniques to save on memory, and used car physics simulations to aid the game's kart design. Mario Kart 64 was released in late 1996 in Japan and in 1997 worldwide, months after the launch of the N64.
Mario Kart 64 was received positively by critics. The track designs, multiplayer, and presentation were lauded, while criticism was directed towards its technical issues and difficulty. The game sold 9.87 million copies worldwide, making it the second-best-selling N64 game. Mario Kart 64 was nominated for awards following its release, and retrospectively has been considered one of the greatest video games of all time. The game has a notable speedrunning presence online. Mario Kart 64 was rereleased digitally for the Virtual Console line on the Wii in 2007 and the Wii U in 2016, and for the Nintendo Classics service in 2021.
Gameplay
Mario Kart 64 is a kart racing video game featuring characters and elements from the Mario franchise largely similar in gameplay to its predecessor Super Mario Kart. The player controls one of eight Mario franchise characters and races opponents in karts around tracks based on locales from the Super Mario platform games. The game's 16 courses are populated with obstacles to slow the player down, shortcuts letting the player skip sections, and boxes labeled with question marks which give the player a random item based on elements from the Super Mario series. Items can be either power-ups, such as giving the player a speed boost, or offensive, such as causing an opponent to spin out. The player can also drift around corners or enter an opponent's slipstream to receive a speed boost. Playable characters are divided into three weight classes which determine characteristics such as speed, acceleration, and handling. Princess Peach, Toad, and Yoshi are lightweights; Luigi and Mario are middleweights; and Bowser, Donkey Kong, and Wario are heavyweights. There are three difficulty levels based on engine classes—50cc, 100cc, or 150cc—with the harder difficulties' more powerful engine classes providing increased maximum speeds and control difficulty.There are two single-player game mode options in Mario Kart 64: Grand Prix and Time Trials. Time Trials is a solely single-player mode, and GP can be played in single-player or with two players. In GP, the game's main mode, the player races seven computer opponents in one of four "cups" consisting of four tracks, with the objective of achieving the highest points across all four three-lap races. The player must race on every track in the cup, and points are given out at the end of each race based on position—nine for first place, six for second, three for third, and one for fourth. The player must come in at least fourth place in each race to continue racing for a trophy. Achieving the maximum number of points on all cups in the 150cc difficulty unlocks a "mirror" mode in which all tracks are flipped left-to-right. In Time Trials, the player races on any of the 16 tracks with the aim of achieving the lowest time across three laps. There are no opponents or items on the track; the player is given three speed boosts to use across the whole race. The player can race against another player's time by sharing "ghost" data using the Controller Pak, a memory card that plugs into the back of the Nintendo 64 controller.
Three local multiplayer modes are present in Mario Kart 64: GP, Versus, and Battle. The game utilises a split screen to display each player's gameplay. GP is unchanged from its single-player version, but allows for two players. In VS mode, two to four players race around any track without computer opponents. Battle mode sees two to four players compete in one of four arenas rather than tracks. The player begins with three balloons over their character, with the objective of popping other players' balloons using items. Players are knocked out upon losing all their balloons—though can control a bomb with wheels to attack remaining players afterwards—and the winner is whoever remains the last man standing.
Development
The game was provisionally titled Super Mario Kart R during development—the "R" being short for "rendered". Mario Kart 64 was developed concurrently with Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time by Nintendo's Entertainment Analysis & Development division. The game was revealed alongside the N64 console itself in November 1995 at the Shoshinkai trade show via a videotape given out to journalists. The game was reportedly considered "95% complete" at the time of the show. Mario Kart 64 was intended to be released alongside the N64 itself in mid-1996 but was delayed after development resources were directed towards Super Mario 64, itself a launch title for the system.Developers did not focus on innovating significantly on the gameplay of its predecessor Super Mario Kart, intending for the game to appeal to a wide audience. Nintendo instead focused on the game's use of technology and internal processes through using the full extent of the N64's processing capabilities, especially in regards to the performance of multiplayer gameplay. Hideki Konno, the director of Mario Kart 64, stated that developers wanted a racing environment in the game where all players were "in it until the end". Konno claimed that they were not able to achieve this in part due to the processing capabilities of the N64 not allowing eight players on the screen for a prolonged period of time. Developers created a simulation of remote-controlled vehicles and did research on the physics of cars to aid in designing the game's kart mechanics. Ultimately, it was decided the gameplay derived from this research was too "realistic" and unenjoyable for game testers, and developers settled on a more straightforward approach to controls in the final release. Game designers wanted freedom in regards to where the player can race on tracks. This caused programmers to struggle with collision detection, trying to find a balance between not overloading the processor and not wanting to cut corners such as by letting players overlap each other.
The game uses a rendering technique known as billboarding to represent characters. Characters are represented by a two-dimensional image kept perpendicular to the camera rather than being rendered in 3D. This technique allowed developers to save on memory—the game's Battle mode and ability to render eight players on the track at once were made possible by this. Producer Shigeru Miyamoto credited the game's technical performance to the N64's use of ROM cartridges over disc-based CD-ROMs for game media, due to the way they handle pre-loading data to the game system. During development, a hard disk failure resulted in designers remaking "about 80%" of the game's character models. An early alpha version of the game appeared in the Nintendo Gigaleak, a 2020 data leak of internal material at Nintendo. The alpha used assets from Super Mario Kart as placeholders. A pre-release version of the game originally featured Kamek, a villain in the Yoshi series, before being replaced by Donkey Kong. Other features cut during development include a racing game mode without items—scrapped due to disinterest from game testers—and two tracks. The cut tracks were based on a parking garage and a large city, respectively.
Release
Mario Kart 64 was released in Japan on December 14, 1996, in the United States on February 10, 1997, and in Europe on June 24—the American release of the game was moved forward a week from the initially announced date. It was the second entry in the Mario Kart series after Super Mario Kart. Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln stated that the difference in time between the Japanese and American releases of the game was due to the company's desire to release the game during the holiday season in Japan, considering a lack of N64 releases in the region. Marketing for the game included a 5 million advertising campaign. Coinciding with the game's release in Japan, Nintendo released a special edition of Mario Kart 64 which came with a specially-styled black-and-grey N64 controller. It was released in China on December 25, 2003 on the iQue Player through the Chinese localization company iQue. Mario Kart 64 was digitally rereleased on the Wii and the Wii U through the Virtual Console, releasing on the Wii worldwide across January 2007. On the Wii U, the game released on January 21, 2016 in Europe and on December 29 in the United States. Mario Kart 64 was also rereleased as part of the digital Nintendo Classics service on October 25, 2021.The Mario Kart 64 soundtrack, composed solely by Kenta Nagata, was released on CD several times across 1997 in Japan and the United States. The American releases were published by Nintendo on March 1, 1997 and April 1 respectively, and the Japanese release was published by Pony Canyon on September 19. The releases include the game's songs as well as different sound effects and remixes of songs from the game, and each includes a different track listing. A remix album containing club remixes of the game's soundtrack, Mario Kart 64 on Club Circuit, was published by on December 26, 1997. The soundtrack was also released as an album on the Nintendo Music streaming service on July 15, 2025.