I can really relate to this one. Once I stopped judging Metroid Fusion for what I wanted it to be (another Super Metroid) and accepted it for what it was, I liked it so much better.
Reading the comment and then the username gave me a sentimental feeling I didn't know existed, even knowing your rant on TGC's video on the game was intentionally exaggerated. It's weird. This entire channel is like a window into a real-life storyline with setups, payoffs, and arcs in a way that no other channel has ever been for me, and I think this one just really cemented that. Congratulations on the change in perspective, mate.
I mean considering super metroid plays like shit, has dumb scanner you need to run through the game with a second time, doesn't mark doors on map and has that glass tube... People really have a low bar for game's quality.
@@kauelima2233 classics are classics because everyone copied and improved upon them, and only gamers refuse to accept that for some reason. No cinemaphile is going to tell you that citizen kane or seinfield holds up
If anything, Double Dash’s longest lasting impact on the Mario series as whole was probably Toadette. It’s wild to think one of the most reoccurring and popular side characters in the series was made for a Mario Kart game just so Toad could have a partner.
Double Dash to me was one of the best games in the series. It's also one of the most technical games, as you can actually fight the rubber band effect. You can legitimately dodge red and blue shells and other honing projectiles with a well-timed turbo slide and Turbo mushroom.
For all the downsides of getting steadily older and creakier, I appreciate the superpower of _perspective_ that comes with it. The ability to look back and say "ah, the kids weren't crazy, this was just _their_ formative experience and there's some cool stuff here even if I still think it's messy".
It's not as shocking as it seems. If you change your mind on things and reevaluate, so do other people, because you're other people, it's just that we tend to have moved on from talking about those things so you don't see it.
The Joe Hendry Bird Dad pretty much guaranteed a like if nothing else. As far as Double Dash, I think it underscores why the GameCube experimentation was so critical for Nintendo series long term. The easy and probably financially safe thing as to have the franchise sequels be the proverbial SNES follow-ups to the N64's NES predecessors. But the company went or big new directions like the art style with Wind Waker, the first-person viewpoint with Metroid, the FLUDD mechanic with Sunshine, the Bongo controls with DK Jungle Beat, and obviously the dual karts with Double Dash. They consistently did not go the conventional route (in an era where they arguably should have given the GC"s final market position), but eventually the benefits of that approach would pay off. WW Zelda would excel as an aesthetic for future games/appearances, developers cutting their teeth on Jungle Beat helped craft Mario Galaxy, Metroid's FPS adjacent style would allow it fans that might not have considered it otherwise, and lessons about various carts/items from Double Dash would pay off in more refined form in later titles. Mainline Pokémon and even the NSMB series demonstrated the dangers of excessively sticking to formula and the eventual stagnation that ensues when real experimentation stops. I'm not terribly big on Double Dash in comparison to other MK titles but the genesis of so many critical elements of the latter era of the franchise is all over that wacky little game, and we're all the better for it being the birthplace for them.
the idea that Zelda could go into different art directions and styles added so much to the series in general. even twilight princess the game that tried to apologize for the backlash. well it looked like no game before it and no game since has looked like it.
I had no idea who Jone Hendry was before seeing this video. Had to google it. But the song is catchy haha. The best part of the Bird Dad song is the super cheap shot it took at Other M.
Josh, never stop doing what you're doing. Your approach to writing about games was uniquely compelling to me when I was first getting into Metroid 7 years ago, and remains so today. Your ability to blend analysis, critique, and personal narrative together is unmatched.
I legitimately think Double Dash has the best controls in the franchise, but at the same time if you expect it to control like any other game in the franchise you're going to be taken for a ride. You steer with the rear wheels and pivot at the front like you felt. It's not very intuitive, especially since the animation shows the front wheels turning, but it allows you to do some crazy stunts.
the drifting and mini turbo is addictive, i can't play the newer mario karts cause u just hold a direction for mt. takes so much skill and feels great to pull off, it's a time trialers paradise
Those two combined give such fine control over your cart. Drifting and fine control. When you get it right the carts do not feel like they want to hug the wall. Modern nintendo has forgotten mario kart is suppose to be fun and experimental. They even banned the drifting and snaking. Make the tracks more interesting that will fix the problem. The ability to have special weapons make dd crazy good. So many of the specials have weaknesses towards each other.
I've always described the game as being very oversteery, honestly. It feels like the kart enters full-on slip angle without even drifting. The controls are twitchy but precise.
Not sure how you could think that, it's my favorite Mario Kart game but the controls are awful. You slide in the direction opposite of where you're turning, making it impossible to avoid obstacles at mid to close range, because any immediate diversion you make is negated. But it did add a whole bunch of other things worth talking about.
Not sure how you could think that, it's my favorite Mario Kart game but the controls are awful. You slide in the direction opposite of where you're turning, making it impossible to avoid obstacles at mid to close range, because any immediate diversion you make is negated. But it did add a whole bunch of other things worth talking about.
Well, that was meant as a bit of a joke, yes, but also to reassure the viewer that watching those old videos REALLY isn't necessary to understanding this one.
Another great video! I love seeing your cautionary tales of “The Dark Side of Nostalgia”. You always bring such a great level of nuance to your reviews that I don’t really see anywhere else.
I’ve repeatedly encountered this issue with certain reviews/retrospectives of series I enjoy; Someone will say something along the lines of “this game is awful, this is where the series took a turn into the dumpster, and became something incredibly different from what it was meant to be” While the “worse, changed” version is the only one I’ve ever known, and enjoyed. In this case, “this is where Mario Kart became a party game first instead of a racing game first”. When I tried playing Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64, I hated them, because it felt so boring and uneventful compared to the Double Dash I was used to. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn was my intro to the series, and I loved it. Double Dash remains my personal favorite Mario Kart. I loved Smash Brothers Brawl. And it always frustrated me that the older fans always seemed to be denying my fun, saying my enjoyment of these things was invalid But now, as I crest 24, I find myself on the other side of that a little bit. It frustrates me more than I would like to admit that tons of people still enjoy modern Pokémon, after they removed what I thought was the most important and critical thing about it (the ability to transfer Pokémon forward and choose any Pokémon as your adventuring partner) I guess the point of this ramble is just to say Maybe, as fans, we shouldn’t look at entries in series as “this isn’t what this series was meant to be, this wasn’t what I wanted or expected” And instead try to, not only examine them on their own merits, but ask people who enjoy them “hey, what do you think about this has merit?” And listen and appreciate those different opinions
Yep, ~24 was when I first started to find myself on the other side of that. It only gets worse from here, I'm afraid! But you'll hopefully learn a lot along the way.
Well, it's easier today because there are so many indie and fan titles that basically make new games in the old style while the official route changes so that older fans can still enjoy new things. I don't think anyone has made a double kart game though
I had skipped MK64, but when I bought Double Dash and brought it to a friend's house, we played it all night. It was my first literal all-nighter in my life. But the catch? Everyone else wanted to just play Baby Park. ONLY Baby Park. That bombastic, ever increasing melody is burned into my mind. And now, like 20 years later, I STILL have a soft spot for Double Dash and Baby Park. I mean, it's no MK8D or Mount Wario, but I will always cherish it as a beloved memory.
Baby Park wouldn't be the same without it getting littered with items each lap. It's so much fun to send a Bowser shell ricocheting around the track or chucking a bob-omb over the centre wall to ruin the day of the player about to cross the finish line.
@@TFSnedIf for some inexplicable reason anyone wants to see Baby Park without items everywhere... MKDS Baby Park exists for some reason and is possibly the most outright regressed retro track ever made. Sure, there's an argument made for other retro tracks being worse, but it's usually because they were already bad and did not do enough to improve (see: most SNES tracks). I'd argue that even the worst MK8D Booster Course tracks are still better than Baby Park, because it fundamentally cannot work in DS's engine, and they didn't even really try to.
I can say that as someone who grew up with the original SNES game, I only ever saw the series as improving. I loved playing double dash with my brother who is only a little over a year younger than me. Though maybe because we found a way to become a team on a single kart is what made me love the game. The character unique items were awesome, and my brother loved the bombs Wario and Waluigi had. So we always had the Badwagon as our kart in later difficulties. I preferred Koopa and Paratroopa for the triple shells, but eventually went Peach or Daisy so we had defense. Once we learned that you could hit a single button to have the driver toss their item to the passenger, we locked in our roles. I was the dedicated driver responsible for learning the steering mechanics and the maps. My brother became my gunner and we unleashed hell on the CPU. I forget which items Petey Pirahna and King Boo had, but unlocking them was fun. I still lament my 1000+ memory card getting wiped because of a bug that forced it to be reformatted. 22:48 the driver and gunner thing a second chance. It might be a gimmick, but I could see my brother and I driving his kids around as they toss items. Not needing the auto kart stuff on to prevent crashing over the edge.
Man, you really dropped some cold hard facts right at the end there. It's something that WAY more people need to hear. Critiquing should always (in my opinion) be about what you don't personally value in a game, rather than trying to arbitrarily define what "good" should be. I know it's what you're trying to achieve with these videos, documenting what certain games mean to you and always taking developer intent into account, rather than simply going "what the fuck were these developers on in 1992?" I've seen many people defend Double Dash's hyper-saturated art style, saying that it's the way cartoony games have to be because they're cartoony. Why do they ALL have to look like that? There's other gamers with other tastes in art direction. It's so critical to understand why we need games that differ from the norm, why we need to support multiple things like linear and open formats, even if we don't personally like them. Because somewhere out there, other people do. BOTW and TOTK made huge splashes when they first came out, but now people are starting to crawl out of the woodwork and declare that "this isn't how Zelda should be made." Sure, I prefer the old formula too. But some people DO want that kind of unmitigated freedom in their exploration, to be able to go anywhere, at any time, right from the get go. And in my opinion, those games did it best. We already have multiple decades worth of legacy to build off of in Zelda's case, we don't need to keep doing the same things. I love your videos SO SO much, and it's always great to see a critique-er that not only sees both sides, but WANTS to see both sides. Thank you, TGC.
I really enjoy listening to peoples critiques and opinions on games when it's clear it's their opinion. Not when they're trying to prove their opinions are facts. Geek Critique has nuance and knows the difference. Most critics and reviewers do not. They believe their opinion is the be all end all of what is quality and what isn't.
@@chozochiefxiii3298agreed. The rise of people claiming their criticism is "objective" is one of the worst things to ever happen to criticism. Makes it absolutely exhausting even to read peoples takes sometimes.
@@ahumanbeingfromtheearth1502 It has unfortunately ruined some games for me. Games that I used to love. While these same people tear other people's work down in the name of "objectivity" using their own opinions. Yet they never put their own work out there or even create.
It's funny because when I think of Zelda I remember always having to preface that my favorite Zelda game was SS, knowing that either the Snes or the N64 games were considered objectivly better.Thus I was always getting asked why I liked it so much (character interactions/my boy Ghirahim) or being attacked for not playing the old games even though I did. Seeing Ocarina get supplanted, as the "best Zelda game" was surreal and while I still prefer linear Zelda there is such an appeal to just exploring and vibing without worrying about a story that I get why some may not want to go back, to linear Zelda. I realized with Skyward Sword that you can like one aspect so much that it covers most flaws which means any game can be someone's favorite and that is great. I think a similar thing is about to happen with Pikmin I have already seen some people call Pikmin 4 a bad Pikmin game because strategy is not the main focus. Which is exactly what happened to Fire Emblem when Awakening came out. Just because a game shifts directions or breaks the mold it is not precluded from having a subjective appeal all its own that fits into the series.
It's funny you bring up the art style of Double Dash, because I've heard people who praised it go on to dunk on Wii's style for being unsaturated, but I had a different thought. I thought the less saturation made it more cinematic, and fit well with the X-treme sports approach the game was going for.
Genuinely, learning that you hated DD before was a shock to the system for me because it was MY FIRST VIDEO GAME. This was what introduced me to what would become my biggest hobby back in 2003/4 as a tiny little 3 year old. The idea that someone could even have problems with this game was absolutely wild to me, but it did lead to me having a similar mentality that you have regarding age and eras of video games so win-win?
Oh my god that crochet bird is adorable. Despite firmly being a SNES and N64 kid, it's that purple cube that I keep coming back to. When friends and family get together - Double Dash, Mario Golf, Metroid Prime (we love Prime 2's multiplayer lol), the Mario Party games, we're all kids again. I could play those all day long. That cube... that damn purple cube. Also I disagree about the items being too punishing. I feel like it's the most forgiving Mario Kart in the franchise. SNES and 8 are both way harsher and not just with items. Collide with the wall? Complete stop. Grass? Slowed to a crawl. Everything put you to a complete stop, and the longer recovery period + slower acceleration means you're often multi-hit. It's common to see someone waiting a full 10 seconds before moving. While in DD, there's not many times you're sitting there at zero, waiting to move again. Even bombs or blue shells may pop you up in the air but as soon as you hit the ground you're already moving again.
Honestly, as a 20 something zoomer, I have no clue whether a central ""gaming narrative"" even exists anymore. I feel that there's a pretty clear through line up until a certain point, you have the NES kids in the 2000's, the 16-Bit Generation defines a bunch of gaming site and RUclips discourse in the late 2000's/early 2010's, and then the late 90's nostalgia kicks on somewhere down the line. But after that? Sure, there's PLENTY of creators who have put out content lamenting the lost days of the 6th and 7th gen, but it's not as if those SNES and N64 diehards aren't still out there on websites and platforms making content. It's like we've been stuck in this era of... decentralized centralization? Everyone uses the same three open platforms, and the generation gap is so wide that people playing games for 40 years can be subjected to the opinions of 15 year olds. It's moved in a direction AWAY from say, every Top 100 Games List ever having SMW, ALLTP, and Super Metroid in the Top 10, but can I name any games that would consistently supersede them? Probably not. 10 Years ago if you asked if Halo or Final Fantasy were still relevant you'd get shot out of a cannon, now I see people ask that same question and you get 30 different answers and several dead bodies in the comments.
I don't think I could ever wholeheartedly hate a game these days. One of my formative Internet experiences was not the fandom forum posts you often speak of, but a community of sharing ideas for a game, run by someone who values being constructive over all else. Sure, I can dislike something, but if I'm going to say anything about that? Well, it was very much encouraged to explain *why*, what led you to the opinion, and how you think it could be fixed. Am I saying that's the objectively correct way to go about things? No, of course not! Still, it taught me quite a bit! Through that community, through the places that branched off, and through channels like yours, I learned to view things through different lenses, appreciate the flaws I had always known, and find the ones I never even considered problems in the first place. I don't really think there's any such thing as "objective", but it's certainly nice to be able to see other peoples' perspectives. I'm now going into college for game design, and I hope to some day make something worth critiquing, worth looking at through all those lenses.
The," it wasn't as good as I had wanted it to be" at first glance definitely hit me NOT on double dash (this one's my favorite, followed closely by 64, and ds), but mkwii. The loss of the snaking abilities I had spent my time learning and mastering on the previous two console generations were just, gone. Bikes felt weird with inside drift, battle mode was just the most terrible version ever released until mk8 on wii u. I liked wii when i got it, but it was NOT my multiplayer mario kart game. After the modding scene changed up so much stuff, It really freshened up the game and tweaked it where you could have a more fun experience. Great video Josh, and the All Cup tour is in all speed classes, as well as not actually making computer players harder in any class either. Glad that the rose tints cracked on both of our different experiences and let us enjoy our respective changes.
I need the Bird Dad advertisement on its own, so I can share it with my Metroid fan friends without having to convolutedly explain to watch a specific section of a Mario Kart video for the bit
I couldn't understand why so many people liked Mario Kart 64 as a kid. I can't remember what it felt like to me, but nothing about it felt as good as Diddy Kong Racing. So when Double Dash came out, I didn't have that attachment and experience with MK64. Ever since, Double Dash has been my favourite Mario Kart. But what I find weird is that the experience described in this video with the items in the Double Dash all cup races is how I feel the Wii version behaves in the second half of the last round of every single multiplayer game on Wii. I could be lapping NPCs (or players), then end up in 5th by the time I cross the finish line. I never felt like the Wii version required skill, just stay in the lines and collect items and you had as equal a chance as anyone, I thought. MKWii felt like a party game to me. I had the honor of being able to set up two GameCubes with BBAs in two separate rooms and played a 4-player game on two GameCubes (I think we got to 5-players, but I can't really remember). We played using projectors with surround systems in Pro Logic II audio, one of the rooms had an LFE transducer platform the couch sat on. When the Dinosaur walked around in Dino Dino Jungle, it was almost a Jurassic Park T-Rex experience. This was at a business call The Game Academy, a video game theatre. Gosh that place was a good time. Anyways, I couldn't stand that so many people seemed to have an opposite opinion to me and I couldn't relate. I often wondered if I was weird or if most people just couldn't have an opinion of their own. I always felt like I was weird because I liked different games from everyone else. Many of those games are finally starting to get more recognition, so it's great to see this video. Thank you.
The Bird Dad segment making cheap shots at Other M gets automatic likes from me. I wish I could add an extra like for that portion but you can only like a video once.
Josh, I'm loving the way you've progressed as a writer since you started. You've come a long way and really developed your own identity and I couldn't be happier that you're still making these videos. Thanks for being here with us.
One thing that you miss in this review, and I think contributes to your end point, is the uniqueness of co-op in Double Dash. Like you have fond memories of MK64 (as do I; loved the battle mode in the game) because of playing it with friends, I have have fond memories of playing DD's Grand Prix with a couple of friends. I had two who were brothers, and DD only let's you play Grand Prix with two carts split screen. Since we couldn't play Grand Prix in three-player split screen, one person had to play the second character on the back of the first player's cart. Two of us would race ahead while the third stayed in the back to take out the computers from behind so that it was easier for the other players to finish first. All of us working together to unlock everything in the game against what often times felt like unfair play by the computers was a unifying good time, but that's not the only thing that made it a special gaming experience. It's an entirely unique co-op experience when one person focuses on driving and the other one managing items, having to communicate when the best time to use the item or timing the press of the Z button to switch positions. There is also a mechanic that is only available in two-player cart mode: the bump punch. The player in the back of the cart can hit the shoulder buttons to lunch them and the cart sideways, punching carts to the side of them and stealing their item in the process. However, the side ways launch came at the risk of the driver losing control because of the sudden shift in direction. It added an additional element requiring both players to be on the same page and communicating with each other and made for hectically fun cooperative gameplay.
The original double dash video was how I found this channel in the first place around 2017. I was contemplating buying a used copy of the game at the time and wanted to see if there were any videos that covered any negatives of the game, as they all seemed to be positive. You can’t get any more clearly negative than “double trash” in the title!
I feel like Double Dash has only gotten more beloved with age. Not only is the Double driver gimmick unique to it...a good chunk of its BEST tracks just haven't come back in so long. Playing DD nowadays is so unique compared to the other Mariokarts.
I warmed to Double Dash pretty quickly. It’s got a lot of charm, and what it lacks in quantity it has in quality. The aesthetic is quite unique, the music is good if a bit repetitive, the tracks are great, the character selection is better than any of the three previous games, and the two characters in one kart gimmick is a good idea and adds a bit of extra strategy. Double Dash also has quite possibly my favourite versions of Rainbow Road, Bowser’s Castle and Mario Circuit.
My favorite Double Dash item was the Bowser Shell. I already enjoyed causing trouble with the bouncy green shells, but the Bowser Shell was a monster, bouncing like a green shell, smashing anything in its way, and still keep going. I loved to wreak utter chaos in Baby Park, sending Bowser Shells careening all over the place. And in the narrow passage leading to the finish line on Peach Beach, I liked to shoot a Bowser Shell straight behind me, flattening anyone behind with no way to get to the side.
The more I think about it, the more I see just how much the Super Mario RPG/Paper Mario really changed how you reflect on games. I remember being disappointed about how you didn't get to Superstar Saga, but honestly these re-critiques have been just as engaging (plus with Brothership on the way and your history with both BIS and Dream Team, who knows). Great vid as always.
It wasn't those games that changed my perspective, but more what I was going through. But yeah, in terms of TGC, you can draw a very clear line between how I approached games before that point (especially ones I played when I was younger), versus how I've done it since.
Glad to see you coming around on this one. I've always been lost on the hatred towards Double Dash. Then again my Double Dash was your Kart 64. Of course we're going to defend it. I really like how you describe it, as a controlled chaos you must get used to and cart weight and style you're not used to.
Man, I had NO idea about Double-Dash's reception. It was the first MK game I ever played, my childhood consoles were GCN, PS2 and Xbox (then eventually Wii, PS3 and 360), and occasionally played N64 at my aunt's house. I just never got into MK64, the game felt barren and clunky, and the AI rubberbanding felt unfair, although it does have an amazing soundtrack. Meanwhile, as a little kid, with only a couple years of experience in games, was kicking the butts of my siblings who, from yougest to oldest, are 8, 10, and 11 years older than me, because the chaos and controls just clicked in a way I can't describe. I absolutely LOVE the soundtrack, it's in my top 10 best soundtracks of all time, and the track design is amazing. I still play it to this day, it's so damn fun, but I guess I was just in the minority lol
The drifting in this one was amazing. You could almost drift through an entire lap for those sweet sweet turbo boosts. I would always pick bowser as the driver and yoshi as rider for his homing egg special, in bowsers car. It was so balanced,defence and offence, weight,speed, and handling. I miss playing this one with friends.
Double dash has always been my favorite. It was when it came out and we had 4 people playing on a 13" crt in my college dorm. It is now playing against my 6 year old and with my 3 year old as my gunner. Why do devs keep putting motorcycles in the only racing series i like? Looking at you, Burnout. I don't want a bike. I don't want a glider. I do want a million unlockables, but not as DLC. I want to earn them. I want to do a nightmare run of every course in the game with a team member. I want two goombas one kart. I want double double dash two.
I'm not sure how big the Venn Diagram circle is of "wants a TGC level critique", "tears up at discussion of how nostalgia anchors our expectations" and "BELIEVES IN JOE HENDRY" is, but I am in it and I thank TGC for hitting it
Turning/Handling in Double Dash is SO good. So tight. Mario Kart Wii by comparison feels like trying to turn a tractor trailer in a coaldasac. Just miserable. And that's before getting into the incredibly bad item balancing with an increased lineup and terrible AI. After Double Dash, Nintendo basically salted the earth on everything that came before for Mario Kart.
I want to say, when I first came across your channel in 2018, I liked the videos you were making "good enough". They weren't my favourite thing in the world, but they were interesting enough to spend my time watching. I've really enjoyed seeing the way your content has grown and shifted over the years since (as I myself have grown and shifted), and when it comes to video game retrospectives, I think I can comfortably say that this is now my favourite channel on RUclips. Keep up the good work!
I think that a big reason that I loved Double Dash was the co-op multiplayer. My younger sister and I could compete on races, but we could also work together as a team.
Something I try not to do anymore that I did for a long time, is assuming that every fan of a series has the same opinions. Because of what reviewers said I assumed most people liked the light-hearted dialogue of Sonic Colours, and thought that the more serious tones of Adventure 2 and 06 were considered to be taking themselves too seriously. Then years later I see video essays, usually from people who grew up with Adventure 2, saying that Colours was more annoying than funny and lacked the grand scale of previous games. I don't think either opinion is objectively wrong, but it's helpful to know that not everyone shares the same opinion
The bit from 3:24-3:34 really resonated with me. I've come to call it "waking up" or "waking up for the first time" so to speak. When I relisten to an album, replay a game, rewatch a movie, etc. and discover all sorts of new opinions on it - appreciating things I couldn't before, and be able to criticize things I hadn't noticed before. It's like I'd been asleep the whole time before that moment. I'm glad you were able to put to rest or at least forget some of your animosity towards Double Dash. I love that game, and not just because of nostalgia. It's just genuinely a fun experience for me, every single time I'm in the driver's seat. Never stop critiquing man. Bring on the SMK reappraisal.
Excellent video. You talking about the All-cup tour really got me feeling nostalgic for my experiences with it growing up. I remember watching your original video when i found your channel 7 years ago and was sad to see your feelings on one of my first ever games was so negative. Made this video all the more special for me and I appreciate that you took another look at Double Dash. Keep up the good work with videos!
Double dash was kinda sacrificed on the alter of the lan adapter. It sad to say, because despite everything, including being raised on 64, double dash is still my favorite. The games really ride or die by its items. Your drifting being near instant instead of doing a hop, inability to hold a item behind you, even one heavy weight kart option being acceleration focused. And peeling half of your effectiveness and putting it in a second character. The game comes to life when you co op it, and thats cuz they withhold the punch in single player. They worked damn hard to make the shot gun character keep their eye on the game. The punch does alot for this game. Its a semi permanent offensive option, but also a corrective option for avoiding items, stealing items, tightening turns, or just fuckin with the driver. Its exclusive to co op too. Sadly, to get the full double dash experience, you need the lan adapter and 16 players and controllers, 8 cubes, and 8 TVs. And all of those players would uave to be fine with either just driving or just items. You could do it with less, granted, but it just couldnt beat out mario kart DS only needing 1 ds and a wifi connection, or 1 game card and 1 DS per player. I love this game, and I love its differences with its older brothers, but I will never play that perfect round at a party
A big part of the appeal In my opinion is the coop mechanic. We all know the joke of having a younger sibling wanting go play with us only to get an unplugged controller. But the reality is very real that a lot of the time, it is no fun to play with them. The coop mechanic really did allow you to play with a sibling or parent that is bad at the game and have it actually be fun. Another aspect that has become possible is the recent addition of the Rally mode AR code on CG-forever. it disables the z button and forces a character change on a lap completion. Its great fun doing the racing by passing the torch. And is also a great equalizer. even if say 1 player is really, REALLY good, They only race for half of it. With the other half being them supporting their driver I do see why folks dislike the mechanic. But there was a lot of strategy to it if you are able to get 16 players in LAN mode. No other MK has come close to the excitement to me.
As somebody who grew up with Double Dash, and never ‘got’ 64, despite everybody thinking it was a masterpiece, this video really speaks to me. Such a fascinating perspective.
The part you brought up, about playing Mario Kart with your brothers, and them moving away... That hit me pretty hard. I grew up, and I was late to the gamecube. I was early teens and the gamecube had been out long enough that I started with Metroid Prime, Prime 2, Double Dash, and a Splinter Cell game. The eldest of my 4 younger sisters and myself would play Double Dash constantly. She would always be the one on the back of the cart, passing items back and forth as needed. She was a killer at working with me to line up the shots on forward bananas. We golded that game. First place in every single race on every single track in every single difficulty mode, including the onslaught 16 race bonanza. Now, years later, for reasons I don't care to delve into, I am seperated from my family. Having lost that. I still boot up the game, now and again, in Dolphin. I don't know what happened to my old GC memory card. I don't know what happened to my original disc anymore either. But sometimes, I'll just boot it up, not to play it, not to really race; just to sit there and listen to the menu music and pretend everything is okay again. Pretend I haven't aged nearly twice over since then. Pretend that everything is okay. Pretend that I'm *happy* for a while. Double Dash was, and always is, my favorite Mario kart game, because the co-op aspect and the handling and the items being crazy always felt really good once you got a solid understanding of how everything played out. I always keep silently hoping they'll do something else like this, but couch-co-op isn't as popular and was on the decline well before 2020 happened to make it even less popular. Thank you, for your videos, TGC. I started here, following this channel off and on, with the Metroid stuff. I was excited to see someone go through all of the games and learn and experience a series that I found myself in the middle of; to go back and play through and enjoy all of these titles that I couldn't even play, but respected nonetheless. I hope life is going, has been going, and continues to go well for you. You truly make time capsules.
Not much to say other than this was a fantastic one, and the ending was really heart felt and insightful. There is a real inverse to this that I do not think is talked about as much, but I find, now at the age of 42, that I often do not have the patience to play some of the games from when I was younger. Even newer entries in genres that I love, games that when I get into them I love playing them, I think about strapping into some skill based 2d difficult game and I just know it is going to be exhausting. I definitely feel the loss of being all about plugging into one title for months at a time and until I master it. There were definitely some benefits to having your options limited.
Honestly feel like a lot of these reviewers in the 2000’s have trash taste. I enjoyed Double Dash when I played it when visiting the doctor and later emulating it. I would legit love to see it get another go. Especially on the Switch 2 since it could differentiate itself from Mario Kart 8.
A lot of people had trash taste in the 2000's, because gaming now needed to be more grown up and gritty, though it just made games look more dull and washed out. In other words, I HATE the piss-filter.
The early internet was dedicated to hating things, either calling it “inferior to the originals” or “needing more realism”. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would’ve been a lot better received if not for the internet, and people wouldn’t have slandered George Lucas as much.
Great video. For me, the funniest is how Ocarina of Time used to be the universally accepted "best game ever", then it was "overrated", then it was "actually still a masterpiece", then "a clunky aged mess that DESTROYED the Zelda franchise", and.... not so sure what's the majority opinion now, but I feel like I need to defend it quite a lot.
This is really interesting. Mario Kart 64 is (weirdly) the only Mario Kart game I never owned. I rented it a lot, but I never had as deep a connection to it simply due to the fact that I didn't play it as much. But you know what I did own? Diddy Kong Racing. It would be very difficult for someone to convince me that MK64 was the best kart racer on its own system, let alone the best in the series. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.
I always feel like I have odd perspectives on old games. I didn't grow up with Double Dash, I /had/ a GameCube, but by the time I got it the Wii was already out. So my collection only went as far as Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess. I never heard anyone talking about Double Dash during my earliest adventures into the internet, all I knew of it was an old tournament series I watched once or twice. So when I started having my own funds, and being able to buy retro games, the GameCube was the library I was most interested in. I first played Double Dash in 2020, and the fact it was so different, so unlike what I grew up with (Wii & DS) and what I was most used to (8 Deluxe) made me instantly fall in love with it. I struggled, make no mistake. But the snappy, kinetic, HEAVY weight of everything made it feel so RIGHT to me. Like it was a game I had always been missing. I settled on DK and Toadette as my team, and while the unlocking process was hellish. (I only completed the game this year.) I truly, wholeheartidly loved it. It's a similar experience to what I had with Sonic Unleashed. I didn't grow up with it, but I had heard either nothing, or very negative things about it. And now it's my favourite! It's funny how these things work out, huh? I think the most important thing with games is to always have an open mind, if you go in just expecting something to be exactly like what you already like, you're just setting yourself up to be hurt, and setting yourself up to hurt others who connect with the game you're tearing down. And I'm guilty of this myself, I'm a Paper Mario fan after all. But I think introspection on games is so, so important, and this video was a very interesting look into how opinions can change over time. Great to see another video in this style, Josh.
3:04 Tangent: Why was your mattress on the wall? Do you sleep in zero gravity? Do you strap in like an astronaut? 🤔 EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not making fun of you. I'm honestly curious.
My perspective is as someone who’s grown up on MarioKart Wii. I picked Mario on Mach Bike the first time I ever played the game, and I’ve almost never touched any other option since. I know those exact controls and physics better than any other vehicle in video games or in real life, I can effortlessly make any turn or adjustment that I need to at any speed. I adore that game, and while I don’t dislike 8 at all, I’ve always preferred Wii over it when it comes to the little things (the physics, the menus, the voice lines, the items, and ESPECIALLY the music. I get that live recorded big band sound is more technically impressive and higher budget, but nothing beats Wii’s synthy beats to me. The character/kart/track selection menu music is one of my favorite video game songs period, and DK Summit’s music is my happy place). I never checked out the previous Mario Kart games until I was in late high school/early college. I love retro games, grew up on the classic Sonic games thanks to Mega Collection Plus, and Super Mario World thanks to the GBA port. So playing older Mario Kart games is a neat novelty to me. What I found when I checked out Double Dash was something special. Having never played it as a kid, I went into it for the first time from the perspective of someone who grew up on modern Mario Kart games and I could NOT control it. But as I got better, as I looked up tips and tricks from people online (I didn’t have a manual), learned about pre-Wii mini turbo mechanics, learned about the kart and character combos and the special items each have, I found a Mario Kart that feels like it has perhaps the highest skill ceiling of any of the others. It has a hell of a learning curve, but mastery feels so far away yet so tantalizing that it becomes so satisfying to get better over time. Trouble is, my friends and I are used to playing Mario Karts that are easy to get into and have a ton of tracks. Only 3 cups unlocked from the start and only 4 cups total? It’s hard to convince people to play the game with me, especially since the difference between a skilled player and a newbie is staggering in DD. But the rare times I get to, it’s a total blast.
16:46 Still one of my favorite videos you've made! Makes me feel special to recognize it after all this time! (One might even say...nostalgic! :O) I found your entire ending speech to be pretty relatable by the way. Not just with games but with internet discourse in general. There was this feeling for me back then when I was younger and more formative, even after familiarizing myself with internet culture to such a strong degree, that it felt like a second home, that even the people who thought differently than me, weren't too far off that I couldn't at least contextualize myself as being in the same place as them. It was all very validating needless to say. But now I've grown up more, and the internet algorithm's couldn't keep up with that development, most people my age aren't into the same stuff anymore, thus all the people talking about video games online now are either younger and are repeating the same discussions I've heard a decade ago but with less nuance/maturity...or a very specific subgroup of people who are very very knee deep into this stuff, and even then a lot of my old favorite youtubers have slowly drifted away anyways. (Thankfully you are not one of them! :D) As for the pendulum shifting drastically, I feel that as well, though granted in my case I see it a lot with the Sonic series, which I share your sentiment that I've felt more sane after not engaging with online discussion about it as much as I used to. (Though in my case I think it was mainly just me not vibing with Twitter in general, haven't gone there in forever and I think I'll keep it that way...) But I'm starting to notice it even outside of that series. For the longest time I felt this strong urge to defend SMB1 and Mario 64 a lot when it was really just my online circle not appreciating those games much for whatever reason, its like historical appreciation is just a lost technique for certain people. It just feels like a lot of younger people these days engage with games as more of a social statement or their stories/characters as opposed to their gameplay...which is completely fine, but it runs so drastically to the more gameplay oriented culture I grew up in (at least comparatively) For what its worth I relate to your actual opinion of MK64 vs DD as well...granted on a more vicarious level. As I did grew up with 64, I never played DD until much later, in which case my impression of the game was basically the same as yours...just chaos and confusion. It wasn't helped that some of the friends I made later on in life grew up with the gamecube (I grew up with PS2) and held the game in strong adoration, so I felt like the odd one out in some cases. Though due to online influence, I started to see its merit more, as there's a twitch streamer I've been following for several years now that plays the game every now and again to the point that I question "Huh...maybe this game is actually as good as people say it is?" But I imagine if I were to try the game again, my experience would probably be the same as yours. That is if I tried it by myself...if I were to play Mario Kart with my friends again...I'd probably just stick with 8 since its accessible and I own it...but if I were to pick another one...I'd definitely just stick with 64...even if its purely for nostalgic reasons! :D Great short video by the way! Not that I don't like the longer ones, but its a lot harder for me to make a meaningful comment when you say SO much in those videos! Haha! Hope your doing well by the way! :D (I'm doing ok/good I think right now! lol :P)
Great video once again! It’s always nice to see someone come around on a game they weren’t huge on in the past, and double dash deserves to be remembered fondly if for no other reason than its uniqueness among both its contemporaries and in its own series
As some one who loved the original Mario Kart and Mario Kart Super Circuit on the GBA, which was effectively a sequel in terms of mechanics and presentation. I have to admit it's hard to go back to, it's pretty rough trying to steer with a d-pad and having to pulse the accelerator to even get around corners, and the AI simply spamming special items that they clearly did not pick up off the ground, it's not nearly as pick up and play friendly as any of the future games. Which ironically, I did not play those games first, I played 64 the most and played that game to death as a kid first. It wasn't until late n64 or maybe early Gamecbue era I first played the SNES/GBA games. I've gone back to try to replay them in recent years, and I'm confused how younger me was able to play, enjoy and consistently win on 150cc. Clearly there's something there to love, but it really hasn't aged so well.
MK64: Supported 2-player Grand Prix. MKDD: Allowed up to 4-player Grand Prix on a single system. MK Wii: 1-player Grand Prix only, plus horrible motion controls. (The newer ones may be better, but this is as far as I got in the franchise). Also, anyone who's a fan of Double Dash should check out MKDD Extended. It has lots of additional tracks from other games, including MK64. The one downside is that I think it's a bit easier, a little too easy.
7 and 8 do have multiplayer GP if you wanted to know, and the motion is completely optional in MKWii, _every_ other supported control scheme plays way better.
I have purchased every Mario Kart on launch day. I was 6 when SMK came out on the SNES. Double Dash has always been, and will probably always be, my absolute favorite. It is the best in the series. Period.
Double Dash sits in a funny spot for me. I missed Kart 64, but I LOVED Super to death, it was the first game I rented and when I finally got to own it it means a lot to me as a kid. Beating 150cc Special Cup was a monumental foundational memory for me as a gamer. So when I got Double Dash, I of course wasn't expecting it play like the original game, because the original game was a SNES racer. In the interim I had cut my racing teeth on Star Wars Racer, LEGO Racers, and most importantly of all, F-Zero GX, so I already had a feel for what different racing games would feel like... so, Double Dash didn't bother me at all as "Mario Kart". But then the other hand comes, and I found myself far more interested in other racing experiences over Mario Kart period, namely the aforementioned F-Zero GX. So my memories of DD are fond and enjoyable, but nothing... monumental. When I had the Mario Kart itch, it was there, but it wasn't a titan of my Gamecube library like other games were for me then. Fortunately I still own my copy (goes for like 150 bucks now, fuck OFF Gamecube Secondhand Market), and can give it the more thorough appreciation it deserves, but I feel bad that such a great game that I had no problems with failed to leave impactful memories on me. But, growing up is weird as they say, lol.
i cant really relate to how hard you think the game is! the mini boosts feel so good and fast once you get a feel for them, but im so glad you gave it another go and had a nice time playing it! i surely know the pain of having to restart that last cup from the beginning after half an hour in, your review abt how punishing it can be is spot on tho skjsjks but i think its because it lets you pick up the pace so easily afterwards, its very fast and snappy thats what I like! when it comes to mario karts i believe instead of comparing it to what u are used to, you gotta make grind a bit to understand each one, muscle memory is for sure a b*tch, but its really abt the nuances of each game's physics that let us compare each one of them in an more specific level, and from there comparing the different things each game lets u do with your characters is where I can measure the weaknesses and strengths of each mario kart, i can for sure say which one my favorite one but i can never say theres a "bad" mario kart, each one is so fine tuned, theres so much to enjoy and suffer about in each one of them. i hope you give it a few more tries and make it so that u can zip thru the tracks comfortably~ hehe excellent video!
Something to add in the Steering part, you can Drift Brake. It’ll save from tight spots but also helps in a track like DK Mountain if you want to adjust to do the shortcut.
Double Dash means to me what 64 means to you. I also grew up with 64 as a child, but DD is the one that I really sat down and played forever and ever. Especially with my sister. My sis and I used to have this ritual where we would put on two hats of Mario and Luigi and play Double Dash and Smash Bros. Melee back to back. It was the best. But even looking back on it, I think that DD objectively has a claim to be the best in the series. In changed the formula in a way no game ever did again. The items, some of the tracks, the modes...I felt like a king whenever I won a cup. Double Dash is still in my top 5 favorite games ever. I will play it till the day I die. And I still pop it in whenever my now adult sister stops by and we remember the times from 15 years ago. :)
I've noticed as someone who grew up with the gamecube era and started with things like Double Dash or DKC Returns- I have a MUCH easier time with games that have heavy momentum to them. I have somewhat of an opposite problem going back to older games where I have too much blockage in my brain getting me killed because I do things like expect to be carried by momentum a bit further or get killed by momentum. It also meant that I had a really easy time going back to Super Mario Bros 3.
I love this video! It also helped me rethink my strong distaste of Mario Kart 64. For me it was the same "I want teenage me to enjoy this game as much as a game from my childhood. It doesn't live up to that impossible standard therefore it's a garbage disappointment no matter what people online say decades later" type of thing. Less directly, the clips from Sonic Heroes juxtaposed with this idea have me rethinking my position on that game; I might have to dig out my old Gamecube and give the game another shot all of this time later. It will still be my "oh I guess they aren't going to refine the SA1/SA2 engine into a masterpiece" game that left me disillusioned me as a teenager, but perhaps I've been too harsh on it all of these years. Also we may have drifted apart over the years but I suppose this means we can talk about Mario Kart and still be friends now =P
Double Dash co-op was an amazing experience in my youth. I always took the driver seat while my brother took the back seat as a straight up hitman! No enemy racer was safe from his accuracy with items or his ability to punch at adjacent karts.
This was unironically my favourite Mario Kart before 8 Deluxe. I haven't gone back to it in years, but I think it was still the last time Nintendo really tried to shake things up, it felt amazing (from what I remember) and the ability to play all the cups at once felt like a final boss
This was my first Mario Kart for my first home console, and it's my favorite one. The biggest reason for it though isn't out of nostalgia because I don't see myself as a very nostalgic person. No, honestly the number one reason this one is my favorite, and I realized this upon replaying it in recent years, is just because of how FAST it is. No other Mario Kart has the sense of speed this one does. Wii comes close but Double Dash has the most white knuckle driving in the series. It's like the F-Zero GX of kart racing, which is funny because that game came out in the same year and is my favorite racer of all time.
This is a game I bared played back in the day. In fact the only thing I remember was riding up and down the edges of the bridge Radical Highway style. And then I remember being excited for that level to return in MKDS, only to be saddened by the bridge being changed so you can't do that.
Heh. It's funny coming at this from the opposite angle. For me, DD *was* that sacred untouchable game. I genuinely liked most of the MKs that came afterward but in the back of my head it was always: "Where's the double items? The crazy items? The faces on everything?" I didn't even know that DD was so disliked. I just assumed that everyone was *shrug* about it and moved on. Relating to that online bit - I'm kinda glad that I grew up in an era where a lot of the stuff I liked was derided. It kept my mind open to alternate possibilities but it also taught me to be able to shrug and say "Well, that's what *they* think!".
When I was 18, and it felt like I really had disposable income and lacking school responsibilities, I ended up with a bunch of GCN games that I played with my best friend, who was living with me at the time. Double Dash is nostalgic for me, but for a different era of my life from Super Mario Kart, a game I played in 1994. As for the Geek Critique, I've always loved you as a critic because you never made the audience feel bad for not sharing your opinion. Even when I disagreed, I felt like I could understand your perspective, and that's what kept me coming back. I look forward to seeing if you ever come around on Sonic Heroes. Not holding my breath, I watched your original video, but it'd be neat.
The self introspection on video games and your opinions on them are why I love TGC so much, not many channels (that i know) go there, really makes for a great watching and rewatching experience. Shoutout to bird dad
Really insightful video not just about Double Dash but how time and nostalgia can severely warp your perspective on the media you consume and had consumed in the past. As it marches ever forward not only do *you* change but so too does the cultural zeitgeist ever so slightly until one day you wake up and you're in a totally different world. You put so much effort into your scripting and the love you have for the art form just oozes off the page and into your delivery. Happy to see you back and here's to many more.
Believe it or not, my dad and brother used to play Double Dash so much back in the day that they were eventually able to beat the All Cup Tour together with a perfect score. 1st place in all 16 tracks.
Man, double dash was MY game back in the days, I remember getting the silver GameCube bundled with it and basically having the same experience you had but between double dash and Wii.
I love this channel. I love the willingness to revisit and rethink the past with new eyes. It makes me happy to be growing older, which isn't always a common feeling. I remember watching those old Mario Kart videos over five years ago at this point, and I remember being so invested even though Double Dash is definitely my nostalgic Mario Kart. I remember being like "how can this guy have such different opinions than me, wow he's so wrong. I can't wait to watch the next video" hahah
It’s so nuts how perception can be so different, I grew up hearing the Double Dash was the best one, most likely because the internet discourse at the time was headed by people who grew up with the GameCube lol you’re such a great creator dude, I never realized people used to genuinely think Sonic and the Secret rings was a breath of fresh air and now this? No other channel has shattered my perception of things like you have. I hope to make some cool RUclips videos one day and I hope they can be anywhere as cool as yours :)
Yep, I remember when it seemed like "everyone" agreed MK64 was the best one. And now we're up to Wii, it seems like? We're not TOO far from MK8 being both the newest AND most nostalgic at the same time!
@@GeekCritique MK DS was my first, but MK8 (wii u) was the first one i grew up with so I wonder how im going to feel about MK9, I don’t think i’ll call it trash or anything but I do wonder if i’ll flat out reject it or if I’ll be able to see it for how cool it hopefully will be
Nice video! Gamecube was most of my childhood, but even then, i always felt a little dissapointed with this "reboot feel" many of these sequels had, taking nintendo's IPs in these wacky and new directions. Double dash had one of the craziest physics in the series, fast and chaotic, but in terms of features and modes, it still didn't have 4player GP or 1p versus modes, with still 16 tracks, shorter than MK64. I was actually surprised when i discovered youtube back in the late 2000s and saw many of the older nintendo fans prefering super mario kart, and even disliking mk64 for its longer tracks and greater focus on item luck
Good to see you back Josh!!! I grew up with Double Dash and it was my FIrst Mario kart so that was my standard and boy was it great, Glad to see you've come around to it.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
I can really relate to this one. Once I stopped judging Metroid Fusion for what I wanted it to be (another Super Metroid) and accepted it for what it was, I liked it so much better.
Full circle from the original Metroid Fusion video 🤝
Reading the comment and then the username gave me a sentimental feeling I didn't know existed, even knowing your rant on TGC's video on the game was intentionally exaggerated. It's weird. This entire channel is like a window into a real-life storyline with setups, payoffs, and arcs in a way that no other channel has ever been for me, and I think this one just really cemented that. Congratulations on the change in perspective, mate.
I mean considering super metroid plays like shit, has dumb scanner you need to run through the game with a second time, doesn't mark doors on map and has that glass tube... People really have a low bar for game's quality.
@@vazazell5967dude, you dont mess with the classics. 😅
@@kauelima2233 classics are classics because everyone copied and improved upon them, and only gamers refuse to accept that for some reason. No cinemaphile is going to tell you that citizen kane or seinfield holds up
If anything, Double Dash’s longest lasting impact on the Mario series as whole was probably Toadette. It’s wild to think one of the most reoccurring and popular side characters in the series was made for a Mario Kart game just so Toad could have a partner.
They call it Double Dash because it takes Double the time to Dash into your heart
the guy from South Park: That's pretty good.
(I still love Double Dash tho, despite their directions.)
Take your like
Double Dash to me was one of the best games in the series. It's also one of the most technical games, as you can actually fight the rubber band effect. You can legitimately dodge red and blue shells and other honing projectiles with a well-timed turbo slide and Turbo mushroom.
Oh yeah, dodging a red shell always feels awesome.
On the other hand you get me, who managed to get hit by my own red shell
I dodged a blue shell once. ONCE. I could never replicate that experience after no matter how hard I tried.
Yes that is the many reasons why I love this game. It was Technically challenging but rewarding after Mastering it
Double dash is easily my fav
Adding this to my playlist of 'video essays of early 2000s Nintendo games, made in July 2024, where the reviewer mentions Flowers For Algernon'.
Bonus points for the Rugrats shot.
When we learned about Flowers for Algernon in high school, that was the first place my mind went. "OH, that's what that was!"
Everyone should go watch Freezer's newest video covering WarioWare! I swear we didn't collaborate on that.
For all the downsides of getting steadily older and creakier, I appreciate the superpower of _perspective_ that comes with it. The ability to look back and say "ah, the kids weren't crazy, this was just _their_ formative experience and there's some cool stuff here even if I still think it's messy".
Honestly it's incredibly refreshing to see someone on the internet actually talking about changing their mind about something, massive repect
In a positive way, that was seemingly brought on by social media peer pressure…objectively speaking of course lol! 😅🤷🏾♂️🙃
It's not as shocking as it seems. If you change your mind on things and reevaluate, so do other people, because you're other people, it's just that we tend to have moved on from talking about those things so you don't see it.
The Joe Hendry Bird Dad pretty much guaranteed a like if nothing else.
As far as Double Dash, I think it underscores why the GameCube experimentation was so critical for Nintendo series long term. The easy and probably financially safe thing as to have the franchise sequels be the proverbial SNES follow-ups to the N64's NES predecessors. But the company went or big new directions like the art style with Wind Waker, the first-person viewpoint with Metroid, the FLUDD mechanic with Sunshine, the Bongo controls with DK Jungle Beat, and obviously the dual karts with Double Dash.
They consistently did not go the conventional route (in an era where they arguably should have given the GC"s final market position), but eventually the benefits of that approach would pay off. WW Zelda would excel as an aesthetic for future games/appearances, developers cutting their teeth on Jungle Beat helped craft Mario Galaxy, Metroid's FPS adjacent style would allow it fans that might not have considered it otherwise, and lessons about various carts/items from Double Dash would pay off in more refined form in later titles.
Mainline Pokémon and even the NSMB series demonstrated the dangers of excessively sticking to formula and the eventual stagnation that ensues when real experimentation stops. I'm not terribly big on Double Dash in comparison to other MK titles but the genesis of so many critical elements of the latter era of the franchise is all over that wacky little game, and we're all the better for it being the birthplace for them.
the idea that Zelda could go into different art directions and styles added so much to the series in general. even twilight princess the game that tried to apologize for the backlash. well it looked like no game before it and no game since has looked like it.
I had no idea who Jone Hendry was before seeing this video. Had to google it. But the song is catchy haha. The best part of the Bird Dad song is the super cheap shot it took at Other M.
Josh, never stop doing what you're doing. Your approach to writing about games was uniquely compelling to me when I was first getting into Metroid 7 years ago, and remains so today. Your ability to blend analysis, critique, and personal narrative together is unmatched.
I legitimately think Double Dash has the best controls in the franchise, but at the same time if you expect it to control like any other game in the franchise you're going to be taken for a ride. You steer with the rear wheels and pivot at the front like you felt. It's not very intuitive, especially since the animation shows the front wheels turning, but it allows you to do some crazy stunts.
the drifting and mini turbo is addictive, i can't play the newer mario karts cause u just hold a direction for mt. takes so much skill and feels great to pull off, it's a time trialers paradise
Those two combined give such fine control over your cart. Drifting and fine control. When you get it right the carts do not feel like they want to hug the wall. Modern nintendo has forgotten mario kart is suppose to be fun and experimental. They even banned the drifting and snaking. Make the tracks more interesting that will fix the problem. The ability to have special weapons make dd crazy good. So many of the specials have weaknesses towards each other.
I've always described the game as being very oversteery, honestly. It feels like the kart enters full-on slip angle without even drifting. The controls are twitchy but precise.
Not sure how you could think that, it's my favorite Mario Kart game but the controls are awful. You slide in the direction opposite of where you're turning, making it impossible to avoid obstacles at mid to close range, because any immediate diversion you make is negated.
But it did add a whole bunch of other things worth talking about.
Not sure how you could think that, it's my favorite Mario Kart game but the controls are awful. You slide in the direction opposite of where you're turning, making it impossible to avoid obstacles at mid to close range, because any immediate diversion you make is negated.
But it did add a whole bunch of other things worth talking about.
"This video is part of a series on Mario Kart. If you haven't seen the earlier episodes... *DON'T!"* I don't blame you
Well, that was meant as a bit of a joke, yes, but also to reassure the viewer that watching those old videos REALLY isn't necessary to understanding this one.
@@GeekCritique I guess things just get Super Annuated sometimes (especially Mario Kart 8, seriously was anyone expecting it to triple in size?)
Another great video! I love seeing your cautionary tales of “The Dark Side of Nostalgia”. You always bring such a great level of nuance to your reviews that I don’t really see anywhere else.
Hey, right back at'cha! Everyone reading this, check out Sunshine Feeler! :D
Insert Game Dude's "Look how much longer it takes to select Wario" meme here.
Eevee! You pick……
WWWAAAAARRRRRIIIIIOOOOO!
“What a pointless minuscule inconvenience not even worth mentioning”
@@thenerdgamer22 Don't blame me, blame GameDude. XD
I’ve repeatedly encountered this issue with certain reviews/retrospectives of series I enjoy; Someone will say something along the lines of “this game is awful, this is where the series took a turn into the dumpster, and became something incredibly different from what it was meant to be”
While the “worse, changed” version is the only one I’ve ever known, and enjoyed.
In this case, “this is where Mario Kart became a party game first instead of a racing game first”. When I tried playing Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64, I hated them, because it felt so boring and uneventful compared to the Double Dash I was used to.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn was my intro to the series, and I loved it. Double Dash remains my personal favorite Mario Kart. I loved Smash Brothers Brawl.
And it always frustrated me that the older fans always seemed to be denying my fun, saying my enjoyment of these things was invalid
But now, as I crest 24, I find myself on the other side of that a little bit. It frustrates me more than I would like to admit that tons of people still enjoy modern Pokémon, after they removed what I thought was the most important and critical thing about it (the ability to transfer Pokémon forward and choose any Pokémon as your adventuring partner)
I guess the point of this ramble is just to say
Maybe, as fans, we shouldn’t look at entries in series as “this isn’t what this series was meant to be, this wasn’t what I wanted or expected”
And instead try to, not only examine them on their own merits, but ask people who enjoy them “hey, what do you think about this has merit?” And listen and appreciate those different opinions
Yep, ~24 was when I first started to find myself on the other side of that. It only gets worse from here, I'm afraid! But you'll hopefully learn a lot along the way.
I’m still annoyed the Zelda is basically no longer the series I loved for so long, but who knows? Maybe Echoes of Wisdom will convince me.
Well, it's easier today because there are so many indie and fan titles that basically make new games in the old style while the official route changes so that older fans can still enjoy new things. I don't think anyone has made a double kart game though
I had skipped MK64, but when I bought Double Dash and brought it to a friend's house, we played it all night. It was my first literal all-nighter in my life. But the catch? Everyone else wanted to just play Baby Park. ONLY Baby Park. That bombastic, ever increasing melody is burned into my mind. And now, like 20 years later, I STILL have a soft spot for Double Dash and Baby Park. I mean, it's no MK8D or Mount Wario, but I will always cherish it as a beloved memory.
Baby Park wouldn't be the same without it getting littered with items each lap.
It's so much fun to send a Bowser shell ricocheting around the track or chucking a bob-omb over the centre wall to ruin the day of the player about to cross the finish line.
@@TFSnedIf for some inexplicable reason anyone wants to see Baby Park without items everywhere... MKDS Baby Park exists for some reason and is possibly the most outright regressed retro track ever made. Sure, there's an argument made for other retro tracks being worse, but it's usually because they were already bad and did not do enough to improve (see: most SNES tracks). I'd argue that even the worst MK8D Booster Course tracks are still better than Baby Park, because it fundamentally cannot work in DS's engine, and they didn't even really try to.
I can say that as someone who grew up with the original SNES game, I only ever saw the series as improving. I loved playing double dash with my brother who is only a little over a year younger than me. Though maybe because we found a way to become a team on a single kart is what made me love the game. The character unique items were awesome, and my brother loved the bombs Wario and Waluigi had. So we always had the Badwagon as our kart in later difficulties. I preferred Koopa and Paratroopa for the triple shells, but eventually went Peach or Daisy so we had defense. Once we learned that you could hit a single button to have the driver toss their item to the passenger, we locked in our roles. I was the dedicated driver responsible for learning the steering mechanics and the maps. My brother became my gunner and we unleashed hell on the CPU. I forget which items Petey Pirahna and King Boo had, but unlocking them was fun. I still lament my 1000+ memory card getting wiped because of a bug that forced it to be reformatted. 22:48 the driver and gunner thing a second chance. It might be a gimmick, but I could see my brother and I driving his kids around as they toss items. Not needing the auto kart stuff on to prevent crashing over the edge.
Man, you really dropped some cold hard facts right at the end there. It's something that WAY more people need to hear. Critiquing should always (in my opinion) be about what you don't personally value in a game, rather than trying to arbitrarily define what "good" should be. I know it's what you're trying to achieve with these videos, documenting what certain games mean to you and always taking developer intent into account, rather than simply going "what the fuck were these developers on in 1992?"
I've seen many people defend Double Dash's hyper-saturated art style, saying that it's the way cartoony games have to be because they're cartoony. Why do they ALL have to look like that? There's other gamers with other tastes in art direction. It's so critical to understand why we need games that differ from the norm, why we need to support multiple things like linear and open formats, even if we don't personally like them. Because somewhere out there, other people do.
BOTW and TOTK made huge splashes when they first came out, but now people are starting to crawl out of the woodwork and declare that "this isn't how Zelda should be made." Sure, I prefer the old formula too. But some people DO want that kind of unmitigated freedom in their exploration, to be able to go anywhere, at any time, right from the get go. And in my opinion, those games did it best. We already have multiple decades worth of legacy to build off of in Zelda's case, we don't need to keep doing the same things.
I love your videos SO SO much, and it's always great to see a critique-er that not only sees both sides, but WANTS to see both sides.
Thank you, TGC.
I really enjoy listening to peoples critiques and opinions on games when it's clear it's their opinion. Not when they're trying to prove their opinions are facts. Geek Critique has nuance and knows the difference. Most critics and reviewers do not. They believe their opinion is the be all end all of what is quality and what isn't.
@@chozochiefxiii3298agreed. The rise of people claiming their criticism is "objective" is one of the worst things to ever happen to criticism. Makes it absolutely exhausting even to read peoples takes sometimes.
@@ahumanbeingfromtheearth1502 It has unfortunately ruined some games for me. Games that I used to love. While these same people tear other people's work down in the name of "objectivity" using their own opinions. Yet they never put their own work out there or even create.
It's funny because when I think of Zelda I remember always having to preface that my favorite Zelda game was SS, knowing that either the Snes or the N64 games were considered objectivly better.Thus I was always getting asked why I liked it so much (character interactions/my boy Ghirahim) or being attacked for not playing the old games even though I did.
Seeing Ocarina get supplanted, as the "best Zelda game" was surreal and while I still prefer linear Zelda there is such an appeal to just exploring and vibing without worrying about a story that I get why some may not want to go back, to linear Zelda. I realized with Skyward Sword that you can like one aspect so much that it covers most flaws which means any game can be someone's favorite and that is great.
I think a similar thing is about to happen with Pikmin I have already seen some people call Pikmin 4 a bad Pikmin game because strategy is not the main focus. Which is exactly what happened to Fire Emblem when Awakening came out. Just because a game shifts directions or breaks the mold it is not precluded from having a subjective appeal all its own that fits into the series.
It's funny you bring up the art style of Double Dash, because I've heard people who praised it go on to dunk on Wii's style for being unsaturated, but I had a different thought. I thought the less saturation made it more cinematic, and fit well with the X-treme sports approach the game was going for.
Genuinely, learning that you hated DD before was a shock to the system for me because it was MY FIRST VIDEO GAME. This was what introduced me to what would become my biggest hobby back in 2003/4 as a tiny little 3 year old. The idea that someone could even have problems with this game was absolutely wild to me, but it did lead to me having a similar mentality that you have regarding age and eras of video games so win-win?
Oh my god that crochet bird is adorable.
Despite firmly being a SNES and N64 kid, it's that purple cube that I keep coming back to. When friends and family get together - Double Dash, Mario Golf, Metroid Prime (we love Prime 2's multiplayer lol), the Mario Party games, we're all kids again. I could play those all day long. That cube... that damn purple cube.
Also I disagree about the items being too punishing. I feel like it's the most forgiving Mario Kart in the franchise. SNES and 8 are both way harsher and not just with items. Collide with the wall? Complete stop. Grass? Slowed to a crawl. Everything put you to a complete stop, and the longer recovery period + slower acceleration means you're often multi-hit. It's common to see someone waiting a full 10 seconds before moving. While in DD, there's not many times you're sitting there at zero, waiting to move again. Even bombs or blue shells may pop you up in the air but as soon as you hit the ground you're already moving again.
Honestly, as a 20 something zoomer, I have no clue whether a central ""gaming narrative"" even exists anymore. I feel that there's a pretty clear through line up until a certain point, you have the NES kids in the 2000's, the 16-Bit Generation defines a bunch of gaming site and RUclips discourse in the late 2000's/early 2010's, and then the late 90's nostalgia kicks on somewhere down the line. But after that?
Sure, there's PLENTY of creators who have put out content lamenting the lost days of the 6th and 7th gen, but it's not as if those SNES and N64 diehards aren't still out there on websites and platforms making content. It's like we've been stuck in this era of... decentralized centralization? Everyone uses the same three open platforms, and the generation gap is so wide that people playing games for 40 years can be subjected to the opinions of 15 year olds. It's moved in a direction AWAY from say, every Top 100 Games List ever having SMW, ALLTP, and Super Metroid in the Top 10, but can I name any games that would consistently supersede them? Probably not. 10 Years ago if you asked if Halo or Final Fantasy were still relevant you'd get shot out of a cannon, now I see people ask that same question and you get 30 different answers and several dead bodies in the comments.
Sherbet Land is my favorite track theme in Mario Kart Double Dash ❄️
I don't think I could ever wholeheartedly hate a game these days. One of my formative Internet experiences was not the fandom forum posts you often speak of, but a community of sharing ideas for a game, run by someone who values being constructive over all else. Sure, I can dislike something, but if I'm going to say anything about that? Well, it was very much encouraged to explain *why*, what led you to the opinion, and how you think it could be fixed. Am I saying that's the objectively correct way to go about things? No, of course not! Still, it taught me quite a bit!
Through that community, through the places that branched off, and through channels like yours, I learned to view things through different lenses, appreciate the flaws I had always known, and find the ones I never even considered problems in the first place. I don't really think there's any such thing as "objective", but it's certainly nice to be able to see other peoples' perspectives. I'm now going into college for game design, and I hope to some day make something worth critiquing, worth looking at through all those lenses.
We sure came ten long years since "Double Trash", eh? Good to have you back!
Wait, people called it that? My friends and I have always loves this one and considered it the best one in the series! :o
@@AegixDrakan That's what TGC's original video on Double Dash was called
@@acegamergoldie1008 Oh wow, glad I missed that one then. XD
Hey, pro tip on the rainbow road spiral: don’t drift. The way it’s sloped and angled makes drifting in it pretty awkward. Just turn regularly instead.
The," it wasn't as good as I had wanted it to be" at first glance definitely hit me NOT on double dash (this one's my favorite, followed closely by 64, and ds), but mkwii. The loss of the snaking abilities I had spent my time learning and mastering on the previous two console generations were just, gone. Bikes felt weird with inside drift, battle mode was just the most terrible version ever released until mk8 on wii u. I liked wii when i got it, but it was NOT my multiplayer mario kart game. After the modding scene changed up so much stuff, It really freshened up the game and tweaked it where you could have a more fun experience.
Great video Josh, and the All Cup tour is in all speed classes, as well as not actually making computer players harder in any class either. Glad that the rose tints cracked on both of our different experiences and let us enjoy our respective changes.
I need the Bird Dad advertisement on its own, so I can share it with my Metroid fan friends without having to convolutedly explain to watch a specific section of a Mario Kart video for the bit
seconded. yes please 🐦
I posted it on Twitter, but I'll make it a short here soon: x.com/TGCritique/status/1816817598501171500
That was great, I have no idea who Joe Hendry is (I don't watch TV, haven't owned a TV since 1998), but the song and the parody of the song are great.
I couldn't understand why so many people liked Mario Kart 64 as a kid. I can't remember what it felt like to me, but nothing about it felt as good as Diddy Kong Racing. So when Double Dash came out, I didn't have that attachment and experience with MK64. Ever since, Double Dash has been my favourite Mario Kart.
But what I find weird is that the experience described in this video with the items in the Double Dash all cup races is how I feel the Wii version behaves in the second half of the last round of every single multiplayer game on Wii. I could be lapping NPCs (or players), then end up in 5th by the time I cross the finish line. I never felt like the Wii version required skill, just stay in the lines and collect items and you had as equal a chance as anyone, I thought. MKWii felt like a party game to me.
I had the honor of being able to set up two GameCubes with BBAs in two separate rooms and played a 4-player game on two GameCubes (I think we got to 5-players, but I can't really remember). We played using projectors with surround systems in Pro Logic II audio, one of the rooms had an LFE transducer platform the couch sat on. When the Dinosaur walked around in Dino Dino Jungle, it was almost a Jurassic Park T-Rex experience. This was at a business call The Game Academy, a video game theatre. Gosh that place was a good time.
Anyways, I couldn't stand that so many people seemed to have an opposite opinion to me and I couldn't relate. I often wondered if I was weird or if most people just couldn't have an opinion of their own. I always felt like I was weird because I liked different games from everyone else. Many of those games are finally starting to get more recognition, so it's great to see this video. Thank you.
The Bird Dad segment making cheap shots at Other M gets automatic likes from me. I wish I could add an extra like for that portion but you can only like a video once.
Josh, I'm loving the way you've progressed as a writer since you started. You've come a long way and really developed your own identity and I couldn't be happier that you're still making these videos. Thanks for being here with us.
Every time this man uploads, I immediately drop whatever I am doing to watch.
And I absolutely appreciate it! :D Thank you!
One thing that you miss in this review, and I think contributes to your end point, is the uniqueness of co-op in Double Dash. Like you have fond memories of MK64 (as do I; loved the battle mode in the game) because of playing it with friends, I have have fond memories of playing DD's Grand Prix with a couple of friends. I had two who were brothers, and DD only let's you play Grand Prix with two carts split screen. Since we couldn't play Grand Prix in three-player split screen, one person had to play the second character on the back of the first player's cart. Two of us would race ahead while the third stayed in the back to take out the computers from behind so that it was easier for the other players to finish first. All of us working together to unlock everything in the game against what often times felt like unfair play by the computers was a unifying good time, but that's not the only thing that made it a special gaming experience. It's an entirely unique co-op experience when one person focuses on driving and the other one managing items, having to communicate when the best time to use the item or timing the press of the Z button to switch positions. There is also a mechanic that is only available in two-player cart mode: the bump punch. The player in the back of the cart can hit the shoulder buttons to lunch them and the cart sideways, punching carts to the side of them and stealing their item in the process. However, the side ways launch came at the risk of the driver losing control because of the sudden shift in direction. It added an additional element requiring both players to be on the same page and communicating with each other and made for hectically fun cooperative gameplay.
Ah. I would love Double Dash for All-Cup alone. I’ve always wanted that to come back.
The original double dash video was how I found this channel in the first place around 2017. I was contemplating buying a used copy of the game at the time and wanted to see if there were any videos that covered any negatives of the game, as they all seemed to be positive. You can’t get any more clearly negative than “double trash” in the title!
I feel like Double Dash has only gotten more beloved with age. Not only is the Double driver gimmick unique to it...a good chunk of its BEST tracks just haven't come back in so long. Playing DD nowadays is so unique compared to the other Mariokarts.
I warmed to Double Dash pretty quickly. It’s got a lot of charm, and what it lacks in quantity it has in quality. The aesthetic is quite unique, the music is good if a bit repetitive, the tracks are great, the character selection is better than any of the three previous games, and the two characters in one kart gimmick is a good idea and adds a bit of extra strategy. Double Dash also has quite possibly my favourite versions of Rainbow Road, Bowser’s Castle and Mario Circuit.
My favorite Double Dash item was the Bowser Shell. I already enjoyed causing trouble with the bouncy green shells, but the Bowser Shell was a monster, bouncing like a green shell, smashing anything in its way, and still keep going. I loved to wreak utter chaos in Baby Park, sending Bowser Shells careening all over the place. And in the narrow passage leading to the finish line on Peach Beach, I liked to shoot a Bowser Shell straight behind me, flattening anyone behind with no way to get to the side.
The more I think about it, the more I see just how much the Super Mario RPG/Paper Mario really changed how you reflect on games. I remember being disappointed about how you didn't get to Superstar Saga, but honestly these re-critiques have been just as engaging (plus with Brothership on the way and your history with both BIS and Dream Team, who knows). Great vid as always.
It wasn't those games that changed my perspective, but more what I was going through. But yeah, in terms of TGC, you can draw a very clear line between how I approached games before that point (especially ones I played when I was younger), versus how I've done it since.
@@GeekCritique I meant to say videos and then my brain blanked haha. Love your stuff!
Glad to see you coming around on this one. I've always been lost on the hatred towards Double Dash. Then again my Double Dash was your Kart 64. Of course we're going to defend it. I really like how you describe it, as a controlled chaos you must get used to and cart weight and style you're not used to.
Man, I had NO idea about Double-Dash's reception. It was the first MK game I ever played, my childhood consoles were GCN, PS2 and Xbox (then eventually Wii, PS3 and 360), and occasionally played N64 at my aunt's house. I just never got into MK64, the game felt barren and clunky, and the AI rubberbanding felt unfair, although it does have an amazing soundtrack. Meanwhile, as a little kid, with only a couple years of experience in games, was kicking the butts of my siblings who, from yougest to oldest, are 8, 10, and 11 years older than me, because the chaos and controls just clicked in a way I can't describe. I absolutely LOVE the soundtrack, it's in my top 10 best soundtracks of all time, and the track design is amazing. I still play it to this day, it's so damn fun, but I guess I was just in the minority lol
The drifting in this one was amazing. You could almost drift through an entire lap for those sweet sweet turbo boosts.
I would always pick bowser as the driver and yoshi as rider for his homing egg special, in bowsers car.
It was so balanced,defence and offence, weight,speed, and handling.
I miss playing this one with friends.
Double dash has always been my favorite. It was when it came out and we had 4 people playing on a 13" crt in my college dorm. It is now playing against my 6 year old and with my 3 year old as my gunner. Why do devs keep putting motorcycles in the only racing series i like? Looking at you, Burnout. I don't want a bike. I don't want a glider. I do want a million unlockables, but not as DLC. I want to earn them. I want to do a nightmare run of every course in the game with a team member. I want two goombas one kart. I want double double dash two.
Was not expecting a Joe Hendry reference but it made me laugh
I'm not sure how big the Venn Diagram circle is of "wants a TGC level critique", "tears up at discussion of how nostalgia anchors our expectations" and "BELIEVES IN JOE HENDRY" is, but I am in it and I thank TGC for hitting it
Turning/Handling in Double Dash is SO good. So tight. Mario Kart Wii by comparison feels like trying to turn a tractor trailer in a coaldasac. Just miserable. And that's before getting into the incredibly bad item balancing with an increased lineup and terrible AI. After Double Dash, Nintendo basically salted the earth on everything that came before for Mario Kart.
I want to say, when I first came across your channel in 2018, I liked the videos you were making "good enough". They weren't my favourite thing in the world, but they were interesting enough to spend my time watching. I've really enjoyed seeing the way your content has grown and shifted over the years since (as I myself have grown and shifted), and when it comes to video game retrospectives, I think I can comfortably say that this is now my favourite channel on RUclips. Keep up the good work!
I love the feel of the vehicle handling and controls in this one
I think that a big reason that I loved Double Dash was the co-op multiplayer. My younger sister and I could compete on races, but we could also work together as a team.
Something I try not to do anymore that I did for a long time, is assuming that every fan of a series has the same opinions. Because of what reviewers said I assumed most people liked the light-hearted dialogue of Sonic Colours, and thought that the more serious tones of Adventure 2 and 06 were considered to be taking themselves too seriously. Then years later I see video essays, usually from people who grew up with Adventure 2, saying that Colours was more annoying than funny and lacked the grand scale of previous games. I don't think either opinion is objectively wrong, but it's helpful to know that not everyone shares the same opinion
Finally...a mid-video promotion I can get behind!
The bit from 3:24-3:34 really resonated with me. I've come to call it "waking up" or "waking up for the first time" so to speak. When I relisten to an album, replay a game, rewatch a movie, etc. and discover all sorts of new opinions on it - appreciating things I couldn't before, and be able to criticize things I hadn't noticed before. It's like I'd been asleep the whole time before that moment.
I'm glad you were able to put to rest or at least forget some of your animosity towards Double Dash. I love that game, and not just because of nostalgia. It's just genuinely a fun experience for me, every single time I'm in the driver's seat. Never stop critiquing man. Bring on the SMK reappraisal.
I'm so confused because I've never heard the narrative that double dash was a disappointment. And SNES was my first Mario Kart.
Excellent video. You talking about the All-cup tour really got me feeling nostalgic for my experiences with it growing up. I remember watching your original video when i found your channel 7 years ago and was sad to see your feelings on one of my first ever games was so negative. Made this video all the more special for me and I appreciate that you took another look at Double Dash. Keep up the good work with videos!
Double dash was kinda sacrificed on the alter of the lan adapter. It sad to say, because despite everything, including being raised on 64, double dash is still my favorite.
The games really ride or die by its items. Your drifting being near instant instead of doing a hop, inability to hold a item behind you, even one heavy weight kart option being acceleration focused. And peeling half of your effectiveness and putting it in a second character.
The game comes to life when you co op it, and thats cuz they withhold the punch in single player. They worked damn hard to make the shot gun character keep their eye on the game.
The punch does alot for this game. Its a semi permanent offensive option, but also a corrective option for avoiding items, stealing items, tightening turns, or just fuckin with the driver. Its exclusive to co op too.
Sadly, to get the full double dash experience, you need the lan adapter and 16 players and controllers, 8 cubes, and 8 TVs. And all of those players would uave to be fine with either just driving or just items. You could do it with less, granted, but it just couldnt beat out mario kart DS only needing 1 ds and a wifi connection, or 1 game card and 1 DS per player.
I love this game, and I love its differences with its older brothers, but I will never play that perfect round at a party
A big part of the appeal In my opinion is the coop mechanic. We all know the joke of having a younger sibling wanting go play with us only to get an unplugged controller. But the reality is very real that a lot of the time, it is no fun to play with them. The coop mechanic really did allow you to play with a sibling or parent that is bad at the game and have it actually be fun.
Another aspect that has become possible is the recent addition of the Rally mode AR code on CG-forever. it disables the z button and forces a character change on a lap completion. Its great fun doing the racing by passing the torch. And is also a great equalizer. even if say 1 player is really, REALLY good, They only race for half of it. With the other half being them supporting their driver
I do see why folks dislike the mechanic. But there was a lot of strategy to it if you are able to get 16 players in LAN mode. No other MK has come close to the excitement to me.
As somebody who grew up with Double Dash, and never ‘got’ 64, despite everybody thinking it was a masterpiece, this video really speaks to me. Such a fascinating perspective.
The part you brought up, about playing Mario Kart with your brothers, and them moving away...
That hit me pretty hard.
I grew up, and I was late to the gamecube. I was early teens and the gamecube had been out long enough that I started with Metroid Prime, Prime 2, Double Dash, and a Splinter Cell game.
The eldest of my 4 younger sisters and myself would play Double Dash constantly. She would always be the one on the back of the cart, passing items back and forth as needed. She was a killer at working with me to line up the shots on forward bananas. We golded that game. First place in every single race on every single track in every single difficulty mode, including the onslaught 16 race bonanza.
Now, years later, for reasons I don't care to delve into, I am seperated from my family. Having lost that. I still boot up the game, now and again, in Dolphin. I don't know what happened to my old GC memory card. I don't know what happened to my original disc anymore either. But sometimes, I'll just boot it up, not to play it, not to really race; just to sit there and listen to the menu music and pretend everything is okay again. Pretend I haven't aged nearly twice over since then. Pretend that everything is okay. Pretend that I'm *happy* for a while.
Double Dash was, and always is, my favorite Mario kart game, because the co-op aspect and the handling and the items being crazy always felt really good once you got a solid understanding of how everything played out. I always keep silently hoping they'll do something else like this, but couch-co-op isn't as popular and was on the decline well before 2020 happened to make it even less popular.
Thank you, for your videos, TGC. I started here, following this channel off and on, with the Metroid stuff. I was excited to see someone go through all of the games and learn and experience a series that I found myself in the middle of; to go back and play through and enjoy all of these titles that I couldn't even play, but respected nonetheless. I hope life is going, has been going, and continues to go well for you. You truly make time capsules.
Not much to say other than this was a fantastic one, and the ending was really heart felt and insightful.
There is a real inverse to this that I do not think is talked about as much, but I find, now at the age of 42, that I often do not have the patience to play some of the games from when I was younger. Even newer entries in genres that I love, games that when I get into them I love playing them, I think about strapping into some skill based 2d difficult game and I just know it is going to be exhausting. I definitely feel the loss of being all about plugging into one title for months at a time and until I master it. There were definitely some benefits to having your options limited.
Honestly feel like a lot of these reviewers in the 2000’s have trash taste. I enjoyed Double Dash when I played it when visiting the doctor and later emulating it.
I would legit love to see it get another go. Especially on the Switch 2 since it could differentiate itself from Mario Kart 8.
A lot of people had trash taste in the 2000's, because gaming now needed to be more grown up and gritty, though it just made games look more dull and washed out.
In other words, I HATE the piss-filter.
The early internet was dedicated to hating things, either calling it “inferior to the originals” or “needing more realism”. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would’ve been a lot better received if not for the internet, and people wouldn’t have slandered George Lucas as much.
And we all thought your favorites were trash too. Have some self awareness
preach 🙏 for whatever reason old internet critics hated fun
12:27 : "His turn is too shallow he's gonna fall off."
12:29 : "Huh, is that what he means by 'natural'."
I have never heard someone hate Double Dash this much. I've never heard anyone before have a more negative take on this game than "it's fine!"
Cool, you're finally covering the best Mario Kart.
Edit: Sweet! I made it in the video!
You had a reply in that thread about how you thought Mario Kart Wii was the worst one. Ten years later, how you feeling about it? :D
@@GeekCritiqueThe same. Which is not to say it's a bad game.
Great video. For me, the funniest is how Ocarina of Time used to be the universally accepted "best game ever", then it was "overrated", then it was "actually still a masterpiece", then "a clunky aged mess that DESTROYED the Zelda franchise", and.... not so sure what's the majority opinion now, but I feel like I need to defend it quite a lot.
This is really interesting. Mario Kart 64 is (weirdly) the only Mario Kart game I never owned. I rented it a lot, but I never had as deep a connection to it simply due to the fact that I didn't play it as much. But you know what I did own? Diddy Kong Racing. It would be very difficult for someone to convince me that MK64 was the best kart racer on its own system, let alone the best in the series. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.
I always feel like I have odd perspectives on old games. I didn't grow up with Double Dash, I /had/ a GameCube, but by the time I got it the Wii was already out. So my collection only went as far as Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess. I never heard anyone talking about Double Dash during my earliest adventures into the internet, all I knew of it was an old tournament series I watched once or twice. So when I started having my own funds, and being able to buy retro games, the GameCube was the library I was most interested in. I first played Double Dash in 2020, and the fact it was so different, so unlike what I grew up with (Wii & DS) and what I was most used to (8 Deluxe) made me instantly fall in love with it. I struggled, make no mistake. But the snappy, kinetic, HEAVY weight of everything made it feel so RIGHT to me. Like it was a game I had always been missing. I settled on DK and Toadette as my team, and while the unlocking process was hellish. (I only completed the game this year.) I truly, wholeheartidly loved it. It's a similar experience to what I had with Sonic Unleashed. I didn't grow up with it, but I had heard either nothing, or very negative things about it. And now it's my favourite! It's funny how these things work out, huh?
I think the most important thing with games is to always have an open mind, if you go in just expecting something to be exactly like what you already like, you're just setting yourself up to be hurt, and setting yourself up to hurt others who connect with the game you're tearing down. And I'm guilty of this myself, I'm a Paper Mario fan after all. But I think introspection on games is so, so important, and this video was a very interesting look into how opinions can change over time. Great to see another video in this style, Josh.
3:04 Tangent: Why was your mattress on the wall? Do you sleep in zero gravity? Do you strap in like an astronaut? 🤔
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not making fun of you. I'm honestly curious.
My perspective is as someone who’s grown up on MarioKart Wii. I picked Mario on Mach Bike the first time I ever played the game, and I’ve almost never touched any other option since. I know those exact controls and physics better than any other vehicle in video games or in real life, I can effortlessly make any turn or adjustment that I need to at any speed. I adore that game, and while I don’t dislike 8 at all, I’ve always preferred Wii over it when it comes to the little things (the physics, the menus, the voice lines, the items, and ESPECIALLY the music. I get that live recorded big band sound is more technically impressive and higher budget, but nothing beats Wii’s synthy beats to me. The character/kart/track selection menu music is one of my favorite video game songs period, and DK Summit’s music is my happy place).
I never checked out the previous Mario Kart games until I was in late high school/early college. I love retro games, grew up on the classic Sonic games thanks to Mega Collection Plus, and Super Mario World thanks to the GBA port. So playing older Mario Kart games is a neat novelty to me. What I found when I checked out Double Dash was something special. Having never played it as a kid, I went into it for the first time from the perspective of someone who grew up on modern Mario Kart games and I could NOT control it. But as I got better, as I looked up tips and tricks from people online (I didn’t have a manual), learned about pre-Wii mini turbo mechanics, learned about the kart and character combos and the special items each have, I found a Mario Kart that feels like it has perhaps the highest skill ceiling of any of the others. It has a hell of a learning curve, but mastery feels so far away yet so tantalizing that it becomes so satisfying to get better over time. Trouble is, my friends and I are used to playing Mario Karts that are easy to get into and have a ton of tracks. Only 3 cups unlocked from the start and only 4 cups total? It’s hard to convince people to play the game with me, especially since the difference between a skilled player and a newbie is staggering in DD. But the rare times I get to, it’s a total blast.
16:46 Still one of my favorite videos you've made! Makes me feel special to recognize it after all this time! (One might even say...nostalgic! :O)
I found your entire ending speech to be pretty relatable by the way. Not just with games but with internet discourse in general. There was this feeling for me back then when I was younger and more formative, even after familiarizing myself with internet culture to such a strong degree, that it felt like a second home, that even the people who thought differently than me, weren't too far off that I couldn't at least contextualize myself as being in the same place as them. It was all very validating needless to say.
But now I've grown up more, and the internet algorithm's couldn't keep up with that development, most people my age aren't into the same stuff anymore, thus all the people talking about video games online now are either younger and are repeating the same discussions I've heard a decade ago but with less nuance/maturity...or a very specific subgroup of people who are very very knee deep into this stuff, and even then a lot of my old favorite youtubers have slowly drifted away anyways. (Thankfully you are not one of them! :D)
As for the pendulum shifting drastically, I feel that as well, though granted in my case I see it a lot with the Sonic series, which I share your sentiment that I've felt more sane after not engaging with online discussion about it as much as I used to. (Though in my case I think it was mainly just me not vibing with Twitter in general, haven't gone there in forever and I think I'll keep it that way...)
But I'm starting to notice it even outside of that series. For the longest time I felt this strong urge to defend SMB1 and Mario 64 a lot when it was really just my online circle not appreciating those games much for whatever reason, its like historical appreciation is just a lost technique for certain people. It just feels like a lot of younger people these days engage with games as more of a social statement or their stories/characters as opposed to their gameplay...which is completely fine, but it runs so drastically to the more gameplay oriented culture I grew up in (at least comparatively)
For what its worth I relate to your actual opinion of MK64 vs DD as well...granted on a more vicarious level. As I did grew up with 64, I never played DD until much later, in which case my impression of the game was basically the same as yours...just chaos and confusion. It wasn't helped that some of the friends I made later on in life grew up with the gamecube (I grew up with PS2) and held the game in strong adoration, so I felt like the odd one out in some cases.
Though due to online influence, I started to see its merit more, as there's a twitch streamer I've been following for several years now that plays the game every now and again to the point that I question "Huh...maybe this game is actually as good as people say it is?"
But I imagine if I were to try the game again, my experience would probably be the same as yours. That is if I tried it by myself...if I were to play Mario Kart with my friends again...I'd probably just stick with 8 since its accessible and I own it...but if I were to pick another one...I'd definitely just stick with 64...even if its purely for nostalgic reasons! :D
Great short video by the way! Not that I don't like the longer ones, but its a lot harder for me to make a meaningful comment when you say SO much in those videos! Haha! Hope your doing well by the way! :D (I'm doing ok/good I think right now! lol :P)
Great video once again! It’s always nice to see someone come around on a game they weren’t huge on in the past, and double dash deserves to be remembered fondly if for no other reason than its uniqueness among both its contemporaries and in its own series
As some one who loved the original Mario Kart and Mario Kart Super Circuit on the GBA, which was effectively a sequel in terms of mechanics and presentation. I have to admit it's hard to go back to, it's pretty rough trying to steer with a d-pad and having to pulse the accelerator to even get around corners, and the AI simply spamming special items that they clearly did not pick up off the ground, it's not nearly as pick up and play friendly as any of the future games.
Which ironically, I did not play those games first, I played 64 the most and played that game to death as a kid first. It wasn't until late n64 or maybe early Gamecbue era I first played the SNES/GBA games. I've gone back to try to replay them in recent years, and I'm confused how younger me was able to play, enjoy and consistently win on 150cc. Clearly there's something there to love, but it really hasn't aged so well.
Best combo is mario bros/princesses. Fireballs make other racers fall into pits and the hearts pick up specials. My favorite kart was green tube kart.
MK64: Supported 2-player Grand Prix.
MKDD: Allowed up to 4-player Grand Prix on a single system.
MK Wii: 1-player Grand Prix only, plus horrible motion controls. (The newer ones may be better, but this is as far as I got in the franchise).
Also, anyone who's a fan of Double Dash should check out MKDD Extended. It has lots of additional tracks from other games, including MK64. The one downside is that I think it's a bit easier, a little too easy.
Thanks for recommending MKDD Extended. I downloaded it, and I can't wait to show it to friends later. That is such a cool mod.
7 and 8 do have multiplayer GP if you wanted to know, and the motion is completely optional in MKWii, _every_ other supported control scheme plays way better.
your ending remarks always choke me up i rrlly love ur channel
Before I even start the video, I'd like to say this was my absolute favorite mario kart and I have no idea why.
I'm honestly surprised to find out the common sentiment for years was that Double Dash wasn't good. Wild. I wanted a sequel.
I have purchased every Mario Kart on launch day. I was 6 when SMK came out on the SNES.
Double Dash has always been, and will probably always be, my absolute favorite. It is the best in the series. Period.
Double Dash sits in a funny spot for me. I missed Kart 64, but I LOVED Super to death, it was the first game I rented and when I finally got to own it it means a lot to me as a kid. Beating 150cc Special Cup was a monumental foundational memory for me as a gamer. So when I got Double Dash, I of course wasn't expecting it play like the original game, because the original game was a SNES racer. In the interim I had cut my racing teeth on Star Wars Racer, LEGO Racers, and most importantly of all, F-Zero GX, so I already had a feel for what different racing games would feel like... so, Double Dash didn't bother me at all as "Mario Kart". But then the other hand comes, and I found myself far more interested in other racing experiences over Mario Kart period, namely the aforementioned F-Zero GX. So my memories of DD are fond and enjoyable, but nothing... monumental. When I had the Mario Kart itch, it was there, but it wasn't a titan of my Gamecube library like other games were for me then. Fortunately I still own my copy (goes for like 150 bucks now, fuck OFF Gamecube Secondhand Market), and can give it the more thorough appreciation it deserves, but I feel bad that such a great game that I had no problems with failed to leave impactful memories on me. But, growing up is weird as they say, lol.
i cant really relate to how hard you think the game is! the mini boosts feel so good and fast once you get a feel for them, but im so glad you gave it another go and had a nice time playing it! i surely know the pain of having to restart that last cup from the beginning after half an hour in, your review abt how punishing it can be is spot on tho skjsjks but i think its because it lets you pick up the pace so easily afterwards, its very fast and snappy thats what I like!
when it comes to mario karts i believe instead of comparing it to what u are used to, you gotta make grind a bit to understand each one, muscle memory is for sure a b*tch, but its really abt the nuances of each game's physics that let us compare each one of them in an more specific level, and from there comparing the different things each game lets u do with your characters is where I can measure the weaknesses and strengths of each mario kart, i can for sure say which one my favorite one but i can never say theres a "bad" mario kart, each one is so fine tuned, theres so much to enjoy and suffer about in each one of them. i hope you give it a few more tries and make it so that u can zip thru the tracks comfortably~ hehe excellent video!
You weren't inputting your initials as "POO" or "ASS"? That must have taken some restraint!
Something to add in the Steering part, you can Drift Brake. It’ll save from tight spots but also helps in a track like DK Mountain if you want to adjust to do the shortcut.
I wish all star cup came back for the Mario kart 8 dlc. Could you imagine going through every track in that game in one go? It would have been insane.
It was the best in the series til 8 Deluxe, and I'll die on that hill.
Having the unique specials was also fucking awesome
Can’t wait for the 3rd retrospective 10 years from now called “Yup. It was always trash.” Jokes aside. Great vid Josh!
Double Dash means to me what 64 means to you. I also grew up with 64 as a child, but DD is the one that I really sat down and played forever and ever. Especially with my sister. My sis and I used to have this ritual where we would put on two hats of Mario and Luigi and play Double Dash and Smash Bros. Melee back to back. It was the best.
But even looking back on it, I think that DD objectively has a claim to be the best in the series. In changed the formula in a way no game ever did again. The items, some of the tracks, the modes...I felt like a king whenever I won a cup.
Double Dash is still in my top 5 favorite games ever. I will play it till the day I die. And I still pop it in whenever my now adult sister stops by and we remember the times from 15 years ago. :)
I've noticed as someone who grew up with the gamecube era and started with things like Double Dash or DKC Returns- I have a MUCH easier time with games that have heavy momentum to them. I have somewhat of an opposite problem going back to older games where I have too much blockage in my brain getting me killed because I do things like expect to be carried by momentum a bit further or get killed by momentum. It also meant that I had a really easy time going back to Super Mario Bros 3.
I love this video! It also helped me rethink my strong distaste of Mario Kart 64. For me it was the same "I want teenage me to enjoy this game as much as a game from my childhood. It doesn't live up to that impossible standard therefore it's a garbage disappointment no matter what people online say decades later" type of thing.
Less directly, the clips from Sonic Heroes juxtaposed with this idea have me rethinking my position on that game; I might have to dig out my old Gamecube and give the game another shot all of this time later. It will still be my "oh I guess they aren't going to refine the SA1/SA2 engine into a masterpiece" game that left me disillusioned me as a teenager, but perhaps I've been too harsh on it all of these years.
Also we may have drifted apart over the years but I suppose this means we can talk about Mario Kart and still be friends now =P
Double Dash co-op was an amazing experience in my youth. I always took the driver seat while my brother took the back seat as a straight up hitman! No enemy racer was safe from his accuracy with items or his ability to punch at adjacent karts.
This was unironically my favourite Mario Kart before 8 Deluxe. I haven't gone back to it in years, but I think it was still the last time Nintendo really tried to shake things up, it felt amazing (from what I remember) and the ability to play all the cups at once felt like a final boss
This was my first Mario Kart for my first home console, and it's my favorite one. The biggest reason for it though isn't out of nostalgia because I don't see myself as a very nostalgic person. No, honestly the number one reason this one is my favorite, and I realized this upon replaying it in recent years, is just because of how FAST it is. No other Mario Kart has the sense of speed this one does. Wii comes close but Double Dash has the most white knuckle driving in the series. It's like the F-Zero GX of kart racing, which is funny because that game came out in the same year and is my favorite racer of all time.
This is a game I bared played back in the day. In fact the only thing I remember was riding up and down the edges of the bridge Radical Highway style. And then I remember being excited for that level to return in MKDS, only to be saddened by the bridge being changed so you can't do that.
Yeah, I just replayed DS after making this, and I wonder why they did that? Maybe it was just a limitation imposed by the DS?
Heh. It's funny coming at this from the opposite angle. For me, DD *was* that sacred untouchable game. I genuinely liked most of the MKs that came afterward but in the back of my head it was always: "Where's the double items? The crazy items? The faces on everything?"
I didn't even know that DD was so disliked. I just assumed that everyone was *shrug* about it and moved on.
Relating to that online bit - I'm kinda glad that I grew up in an era where a lot of the stuff I liked was derided. It kept my mind open to alternate possibilities but it also taught me to be able to shrug and say "Well, that's what *they* think!".
When I was 18, and it felt like I really had disposable income and lacking school responsibilities, I ended up with a bunch of GCN games that I played with my best friend, who was living with me at the time. Double Dash is nostalgic for me, but for a different era of my life from Super Mario Kart, a game I played in 1994.
As for the Geek Critique, I've always loved you as a critic because you never made the audience feel bad for not sharing your opinion. Even when I disagreed, I felt like I could understand your perspective, and that's what kept me coming back.
I look forward to seeing if you ever come around on Sonic Heroes. Not holding my breath, I watched your original video, but it'd be neat.
you need to learn the bowsers castle short cut, it’ll make the course way more interesting.
The self introspection on video games and your opinions on them are why I love TGC so much, not many channels (that i know) go there, really makes for a great watching and rewatching experience.
Shoutout to bird dad
Really insightful video not just about Double Dash but how time and nostalgia can severely warp your perspective on the media you consume and had consumed in the past. As it marches ever forward not only do *you* change but so too does the cultural zeitgeist ever so slightly until one day you wake up and you're in a totally different world. You put so much effort into your scripting and the love you have for the art form just oozes off the page and into your delivery. Happy to see you back and here's to many more.
The game that takes longer to select Wario.
Believe it or not, my dad and brother used to play Double Dash so much back in the day that they were eventually able to beat the All Cup Tour together with a perfect score. 1st place in all 16 tracks.
Man, double dash was MY game back in the days, I remember getting the silver GameCube bundled with it and basically having the same experience you had but between double dash and Wii.
I love this channel. I love the willingness to revisit and rethink the past with new eyes. It makes me happy to be growing older, which isn't always a common feeling.
I remember watching those old Mario Kart videos over five years ago at this point, and I remember being so invested even though Double Dash is definitely my nostalgic Mario Kart. I remember being like "how can this guy have such different opinions than me, wow he's so wrong. I can't wait to watch the next video" hahah
It’s so nuts how perception can be so different, I grew up hearing the Double Dash was the best one, most likely because the internet discourse at the time was headed by people who grew up with the GameCube lol
you’re such a great creator dude, I never realized people used to genuinely think Sonic and the Secret rings was a breath of fresh air and now this? No other channel has shattered my perception of things like you have. I hope to make some cool RUclips videos one day and I hope they can be anywhere as cool as yours :)
Yep, I remember when it seemed like "everyone" agreed MK64 was the best one. And now we're up to Wii, it seems like? We're not TOO far from MK8 being both the newest AND most nostalgic at the same time!
@@GeekCritique MK DS was my first, but MK8 (wii u) was the first one i grew up with so I wonder how im going to feel about MK9, I don’t think i’ll call it trash or anything but I do wonder if i’ll flat out reject it or if I’ll be able to see it for how cool it hopefully will be
Nice video! Gamecube was most of my childhood, but even then, i always felt a little dissapointed with this "reboot feel" many of these sequels had, taking nintendo's IPs in these wacky and new directions. Double dash had one of the craziest physics in the series, fast and chaotic, but in terms of features and modes, it still didn't have 4player GP or 1p versus modes, with still 16 tracks, shorter than MK64.
I was actually surprised when i discovered youtube back in the late 2000s and saw many of the older nintendo fans prefering super mario kart, and even disliking mk64 for its longer tracks and greater focus on item luck
Good to see you back Josh!!! I grew up with Double Dash and it was my FIrst Mario kart so that was my standard and boy was it great, Glad to see you've come around to it.
Also on a Plumber related note. Please finally FINALLY do that Mario & Luigi Episode because as a longtime series fan it would warm my heart.