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Overview
Mario Kart 64 is a 1997 N64 racing video game developed by Nintendo EAD and released by Nintendo of America in the USA on February 10, 1997. Three… Two… One… GO! The signal light changes and you drop the pedal to the metal. Take on up to three friends in the split-screen VS games, or race solo in the Mario GP. Tell your friends to bring it on in the highly competitive Battle mode. Advanced features allow you to race with your “Ghost”. The driving data from your best run appears as a transparent character on the screen. No longer must you simply race against the clock -- you can actually race against yourself! -Save your hottest Ghost data to a portable N64 Controller Pak™ (Sold Separately) -Collect multiple power-up items! -Twenty different courses -- 4 Cups with 4 courses each and 4 special Battle mode courses! -Everyone’s favorite characters are back and gorgeously rendered, including two new additions, Donkey Kong™ and Wario™!
Trivia & Facts
Mario Kart 64 was developed concurrently with Super Mario 64 (1996) and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) by Nintendo's Entertainment Analysis & Development division.
Mario Kart 64 was intended to be released alongside the N64 itself in mid-1996 but was delayed after development resources were directed towards Super Mario 64, itself a launch title for the system.
Hideki Konno, the director of Mario Kart 64, stated that developers wanted a racing environment in the game where all players were "in it until the end".
Producer Shigeru Miyamoto credited the game's technical performance to the N64's use of ROM cartridges over disc-based CD-ROMs for game media, due to the way they handle pre-loading data to the game system.
During development, a hard disk failure resulted in designers remaking "about 80%" of the game's character models.
An early alpha version of the game appeared in the Nintendo Gigaleak, a 2020 data leak of internal material at Nintendo.