For a game that has only had one version per Nintendo console thus far (Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo, Mario Kart 64 on the Nintendo 64, Mario Kart: Super Circuit on the Gameboy Advance, and now Mario Kart: Double Dash!! on Gamecube), Mario Kart has established itself as the cart racing game king, hands down. Other cart games have come close to topping it, such as Diddy Kong Racing and Crash Team Racing but none seem to capture that light-hearted fun and give us the good times that Mario Kart has over the last decade. However, online gaming has blown up on consoles now and with every major system having a strong online community except Gamecube, fun Nintendo games like Mario Party, Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. seem to just be missing something. Double Dash is good, no doubt, but is it good enough to hold its own against the other consoles major online racing games?

Mario Kart: Double Dash!! makes some drastic changes to the already excellent game engine and in doing so takes multiplayer, which has always been the heart of Mario Kart, to a whole new level. As the name implies, the fourth Mario Kart is all about doubles; two people ride on one cart at a time, one driving and the other taking care of the competition by using the weapons. As you drive around you pick up cubes on the track with question marks on them, which hold weapons to use against the other racers. The weapon lands in the second rider's hands, who is hanging on to a rail on the back of the cart standing on a small platform. Weapons include various turtle shells, banana peels, turbo mushrooms and even lightning strikes. If you hit a double box you get two weapons, one of which the driver will hold with one hand while driving and then toss it to the second rider when he is ready for it. With one player you control both riders at once and it works quite easily; A is gas while B is brake, X and Y control the weapons for the second player and the R and L triggers are reserved for power sliding. Don't forget about the Z button though, as it does one of the coolest things in the game: switches positions.

Double Dash not only has players going against each other but it now supports a co-op mode. One player drives while the other rides in back controlling the weapons and just to make sure the backseat rider doesn't get bored Nintendo has thrown in some extra moves to pull off. The second player's buttons all do the same things; throw an item/honk the horn (for when there is no item to throw), except for the top buttons. R and L will cause the back rider to pull the cart to the left or right, depending on what button is pushed; this is used to help dodge obstacles or get back on track and even ram into other drivers on the road. Pushing Z at the same time as the driver pushes it will cause the players to switch positions, which is a good idea as your partner can't just switch anytime he wants when you're not ready.

This new co-op mode requires good teamwork; you don't want you partner to hit the R or L trigger in the wrong direction to cause the cart to "jump" to either side while you're power sliding around a corner as it can screw you up big time. Speaking of power sliding, it works better than ever and not only can it easily be controlled but it's a blast to pull off and you feel great when you take a corner perfectly using a power slide.

No longer do carts just affect speed, handling and acceleration, but now the two characters you pick affect this as well. All 16+ characters are broken up into three groups individually: light, medium and heavy and this affects the way your cart performs on the game's 16 courses. For instance, if you pick Baby Luigi, a light character and choose one of the two Koopas (you can have the regular or winged variety) as his partner, another light character, your cart will accelerate very well and be very light but not go very fast. These statistics vary slightly depending on which cart you choose and there are a certain number of carts available for each combination. Big characters cannot fit into small carts whilst the smaller characters can't go in the big ones. Any combination can be chosen, such as Wario with Bowser, Yoshi with Birdo, Donkey Kong with Mario, or Bowser Jr with Diddy Kong. The game's full roster is as follows for those interested: Mario& Luigi, Donkey Kong & Diddy Kong, Bowser & Bowser Jr, Koopa & Paratroopa, Daisy & Peach, Yoshi & Birdo, Baby Mario & Baby Luigi, Wario & Waluigi, plus four hidden characters for you to earn. Each character has their own cart but anyone in the same weight class can ride in that cart. Some carts must be unlocked, such as Donkey Kong's barrel cart and the Bullet Bill style cart. Be warned, however, not every vehicle looks like a traditional go-cart, some even look like small hot rod muscle cars (Wario), a turtle shell (the Koopas), or an odd looking cart with a Yoshi head on the front of it (Yoshi's, oddly enough).

The weapons in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! are not very different from the last Mario Kart; in fact they're all just about the same except they look much better. Each character and their "clones" also has a special weapon of their own, such as Bowser's giant sized spiked turtle shell, Mario's signature red and green fireballs and Donkey Kong's giant bananas. Some weapons can be used in more than one way with some practice; for instance you may see a red homing turtle shell coming in to hit you, or any other homing weapon, which are very hard to dodge. If you happen to have an item such as a turtle shell, banana, or a variety of other things, you can throw it behind you and cause it to collide with the homing attack, saving you and your partner from flipping through the air and losing a position or two, or five. It is really a fantastic sight to be racing along one of the game's 16 courses and seeing green turtle shells bouncing off the walls, bananas and trap boxes scattered around and signature weapons such as a giant turtle shell or a chomp chomp carrying a cart down the track.

From the start 12 tracks are available to race on and all vary in location. Most are signature to each character such as Luigi's Circuit, Peach Beach, or DK's Mountain. All of them vary drastically in location and style, for example there is one course, Peach Beach, that takes place on Isle Delfino, the setting from Super Mario Sunshine, while DK's Mountain has you racing up and then back down a giant volcano and Baby Park is a suspended theme park area high in the sky. Mario Circuit takes place around the signature castle from Mario 64, while Sherbet Land is full of little shy guys from Super Mario Bros. 2 and takes place on ice. Of course, Bowser's Castle and Rainbow Road return to be two of the best courses and Rainbow Road takes place high above a city at night. There is even a course that is mapped out to look like an outline of Yoshi's body and it is a brilliant design to race around. Each track looks great and features characters out of the Mario universe such as giant stomping blocks, piranha plants, chomp chomps and the stacked cactus plant out of Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario World. Some courses are pretty short, in fact most of them are, but that's the Mario Kart style. Some laps can take only 30 seconds while others can take over a minute. Most courses have three laps apiece except for a long one that has only two laps and one course that has seven. Each course has its own share of shortcuts - nothing drastic like in other racings games like SSX, just short areas that will give you a few seconds of lead.

The controls in Double Dash are flawless; everything is quickly in reach and as it should be for such a fast paced game as this. Power sliding here is a great technique, dare I say it's an almost an art; you can power slide around huge areas of the course when you learn how to control it and not only does it help you take the lead but it's so stylish you feel that you deserve some Kudos as a reward. Your partner can help you in a power slide by pushing the opposite side-dash direction but be careful - if your team-mate pushes the wrong direction your cart will begin sliding the opposite way, causing you to probably lose not only control but a position or two.

Double Dash excels big time in the graphics department; everything in the game looks perfect. Baby Mario & Luigi's hats have a great shine to them and every character looks smooth and captures that signature feel of Nintendo games. Certain surfaces, specifically metallic, look perfect and have lovely reflecting effects. The course designs have no pop-ups in the distance and load up almost instantly and you can see the impact when you hit another racer, every collision looks great and is well animated. Heck, sometimes you'll even see your partner being dragged behind your cart after you test your theory to see if your cart can occupy the exact same location as another cart at the same exact moment. The sound is also very well done; the music fits the Mario world perfectly and has that light-hearted, feel good vibe to it. Every character has their signature voices and taunts from other Mario games, such as many of Luigi's voiceovers from Luigi's Mansion, Mario's well-known phrases and Bowser's roars. The carts screech around a corner at high speeds only to be hit by a turtle shell with huge impact, causing both characters to cry out as they flip through the air. It's a very fun experience.

Double Dash is full of unlockables too, which adds quite a bit of replay value. Anything from new carts and tracks to new title screens, cups and characters and unlocking everything will take a long time, as you have to win a gold in every cup on every difficulty. As in previous games the difficulty is divided up by 50cc, 100cc and 150cc from easiest to hardest. Each difficulty has three cups and each cup has four courses. Getting gold in all of these on every difficulty will unlock new items and then more cups. There is even an extra cc to unlock, which is everybody's favourite: Mirror Mode! This mode actually changes the feel of some courses and gives you a chance to try and win yet more gold medals. If all of the unlockable items aren't enough to keep you playing then there's always Time Trial mode if you like to set records. Unfortunately default records to beat are not included, so you'll have to set your own and then try to beat your best times. The ability to include a ghost of your best race is also included and you can save it if you wish.

Double Dash is honestly a lot more fun in single player mode when you have a buddy to play co-op with; it just adds more to the experience and is a lot of fun. However, the awesome Battle Modes from the Mario Karts of yesteryear return in Multiplayer mode; this includes Balloon Battle (each player has three balloons, which are popped each time they get hit; the last player with a balloon left wins), Shine Thief (one player grabs a Shine and holds onto it for a certain amount of time, while the others try to hit him to take the shine) and Bob-Omb Blast (Get one star each time you hit somebody with a bomb and the player who reaches a certain amount of stars first wins). Bob-Omb blast is quite fun and intense and at first it's also humorous to see two players carrying a stack of five bombs in your cart. Shine is much like other multiplayer modes from different games, such as King of the Hill from the Tony Hawk series or Stayaway from Midtown Madness 3. Balloon Battle is a classic right out of the older games and is just as fun as ever. While, to me, these modes are not nearly as fun as co-op Grand Prix mode, they are a good distraction for quite some time and will give you a good dose of entertainment. If you don't want to play battle mode and just want to race but without the computer opponents racing along with you, than you can also do that.

As awesome as Double Dash sounds, it must have it's fair share of problems, right? Well, not really. In fact the game is flawless. Nintendo accomplished everything they set out to do with this title except for one big omission - at a time when online gaming is the current rage and everybody is doing it, Mario Kart is left out of the fun, just like a variety of other Nintendo titles that could be amazing online. It makes me very sad when I think about the possibilities of online play, especially racing, for Mario Kart, especially with a concept like that of Double Dash [What he doesn't want you to know is that he's cried himself to sleep every night for the last week - Ed]. With that one omission aside the game is perfect; the graphics are amazing, the sound is outstanding, there's plenty of replay value with tons of unlockables, loads of tracks and characters, mirror mode, time trial and multiplayer battle modes. Trust me, get a buddy over, pop this in and play co-op Grand Prix; it is one of the most fun experiences you will ever have with a racing game.

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).