Merry Christmas, if you are celebrating the holiday of course. For the month of December, I have kept a theme of recommending multiplayer games to play with family or friends during the holidays because that is what I usually do during this time of year. Multiplayer games are a nice break from the intensity of one player adventures so it is nice to play them once in a while. To close out the multiplayer holiday, my last multiplayer recommendation of the year is Mario Kart Double Dash.
I was torn between recommending this older Mario Kart and Mario Kart 8 but decided to go with an oldie instead, mostly because many people already own Mario Kart 8 anyway. Mario Kart Double Dash was released on the Nintendo Gamecube in 2003. It wasn’t the first Mario Kart game I played but it is the one I remember having the most fun with. I actually still have the game currently and will still play it from time to time. Though the graphics can seem a bit outdated when compared to the Wii U game, there are still a lot of things in Double Dash which I think are actually better than the ones found in Mario Kart 8. Primarily, the modes and items.
In Double Dash, there are specific special items that are tied to the characters you pick. If you are playing as baby Mario and baby Luigi, then there is a chance that you could get a giant Chain Chomp from an item box that will carry you through much of the map, hurting anyone that gets in the way. If you are playing as Bowser or Bowser Jr., then you can get a giant Bowser shell that will travel a long distance and hurt anyone it catches up to. All characters have some sort of special item that can make racing much more hectic but sadly all these items are absent from Mario Kart 8.
Also missing from Mario Kart 8 are fun game modes. Battle mode is something that all Mario Kart fans know and love and although it is present in 8, it is pretty much ruined. In Double Dash, there are special battle mode maps/arenas which can mean that there are items flying everywhere, making it an act of skill to try to avoid them all. If all your balloons are popped when you are hit by items then you lose. Playing battle mode was a fun way to get away from all the hectic racing for a while. Another one of my favorite modes in Double Dash was Bomb Battle. This modes works a lot like battle mode but instead of regular items like shells appearing in item boxes, only bomb will appears. This mode is crazy fun. You can be throwing your own bombs at your opponents while dodging a frenzy of explosions and bombardments yourself.
Mario Kart Double Dash offers a lot of variety apart from the normal racing mode, something that newer games sadly don’t. You should give this one a try if you have not already. It may be time to dust off that Gamecube with all these incredible multiplayer games available on the system. Try checking out previous installments of Have you Played for a great multiplayer holiday!
