Comments (21) Latest comment 7 years ago

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  • mad_caddy #1 8 years ago

    hang on......why is the racing screen cluttered, surely they could put all that on the 2nd screen......! bah!

  • Pirotic #2 8 years ago

    looks very 'work in progress' to me, and isnt the track in the 5th screenshot the first track from the original SNES mario kart?

  • Pirotic #3 8 years ago

    i can't really put my finger on it, but most of these DS games just look 'wrong', all the textures seem triangulated like the first gen PSone stuff.

    the tracks look ok, but the racers are very low-poly - i'd rather they put the extra few polygons in the scenery and kept the racers as pre-rendered sprites.

    im sure they know what they are doing, hopefully it'll look spiffy in motion.

  • Pirotic #4 8 years ago

    i suppose, i remember Mario Kart on the gamecube look terrible in some of the early screenies - and that turned out to be a gem of a game.

  • mal #5 8 years ago

    i can't really put my finger on it, but most of these DS games just look 'wrong', all the textures seem triangulated like the first gen PSone stuff.

    Some of the textures are just fairly low res, and I don't think there's any bilinear (or trilinear) filtering, so you can see the pixels in those cases, and if they're heavily squewed it's obvious. More significantly there's no anti-aliasing on the screen, so in the more common case where the textures are sufficient, most of the detail is unused, at least in still shots. The PSone had no bilinear filtering, nor any anti-aliasing, as far as I remember. The N64 had both, but then it had Fuzz-o-vision to make up for it ;)

    In motion I hope these problems will be less obvious, as the detail on textures will effectively get interpolated in by the movement of the texture against the screen pixels. The problem the PSone had was that some low accuracy maths was used, leading to polygons bobbling about if not used carefully.

  • silentbob #6 8 years ago

    The N64 had both, but then it had Fuzz-o-vision to make up for it ;)
    LOL, used exactly that phrase in a thread today.

    The graphics do look eerily similar to PSOne graphics, right down to the tringular texture warping.

    And I'm sorry, but there isn't one game on the DS that has me excited at all so far.

    It seems to me that fears about the second screen being little more than a gimmick are becoming horribly apparent by the day.

    /hopes otherwise

  • GitSomE_UK #7 8 years ago

    Oh Dear... GBA looks much better... that second screen still doesn't look as it adds any real value.

  • Sko #8 7 years ago

    Yeah, nothing more useless than knowing the layout of the course, what position you're in, who is closest behind you... etc. etc.

    Fool.

  • Destria #9 7 years ago

    It's more likely that the second screen, in this instance, will be utilised primarily in the Mario 64 DS fashion, namely as a control mechanism. Having the map on there is better than having it blank :)

  • Kami #10 7 years ago

    I think it looks O.K. actually... running, you're probably not going to notice those pixellated bits. Then, if you start looking for them you're going to lose the race thereby defying the point of the game.

    It's not great, not what I expected, and as said here - early MK64 shots looked a bit dog-eared and it turned out gleaming like a little gem. Still not as good as the SNES version, but close enough and with instant 4-player action.


    Multiplayer Mario Kart has always been the high point. And as long as we get battle maps, I'm happy.

  • Pirotic #11 7 years ago

    A bit strange how the screenshots bit has been bumped but no new shots have actaully been added :P

    Anyway, the second screen - sure, its not vital that you get all that information, and its not vital that its moved from the primary display but if it cleans up the main game screen and leaves it uncluttered i'm sorted.

    lets not forget the original Mario Kart was a two screen game, it has the little map on the bottom half of the screen (could be toggled to a rear view mirror) - so it's a welcome return to the classic forumla.

    after Double Dash, im more worried that it may be to short/easy rather than how good it looks or what the second screen is used for.

  • mal #12 7 years ago

    New shots should be along any minute now....

    ...allegedly

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #13 7 years ago

    S'my fault, I got trigger happy with screenshots; I didn't realise that the new shots they'd released were the same as these *blush*. So, when I saw that they were the same raggle-taggle of shots, I quickly set about mending my ways.

    It got bumped because of that, but I left it at the front because I didn't want it to feel left out - most of the other up-and-coming DS games had new shots.

    It's Mario Kart, so have a little heart.

    Sorry! :)

    (Edit: I was hoping no one would ruddy notice!)
    Edited by Bertie at 27/01/05 @ 22:05

  • L0cky #14 7 years ago

    Nobody got any footage then? :(

  • Pirotic #15 7 years ago

    Hiya knowitall, i already have both *smug grin*.

    As for the polygon count comment, you have to remember that was back when the DS was first announced - now that i've seen and played a fair few DS games i've learnt what the machine can do and while its not very pretty they are still perfectly playable.

    Nintendo owned the handheld market so long i think they got a bit complacent when designing the DS and ended up with an under-powered machine in comparison to the PSP, but i suppose the Gameboy has normally always been the most under-powered handheld on the market and has always come out winner, so Nintendo probably know what they are doing.

    Like most DS games, it'll probably look much better in motion.

    The saturn comment is pretty much spot on, the saturn didnt have any special 3D hardware but rather just grunt - so much like the powerfull ARM processor used in the DS, it can throw polygons about without to much hassle but can't do any fancy effects unless its done in software which would slow things to a crawl.
    Edited by Pirotic at 28/01/05 @ 12:45

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #16 7 years ago

    I found some more shots of the game, although they are older shots.

    Still, it's better than nout!

    Cheers

  • mal #17 7 years ago

    The players and karts are ploys, notice. First MK game to do that was on the cube. Mind you, the backgrounds are perhaps lower poly than on the N64, but they can get away with that with flat SNES-style tracks. It's an interesting amalgam - lets hope they take the gameplay from the SNES/GBA versions.

  • #18 7 years ago

    Except Mario Kart: Super Circuit on GBA had all of those things on display just fine on the single screen?

    Not for me it didn't, those graphics were just too small for my poor eyes - especially for the speed they moved at.

    The screen is surely useless in this game, unless you don't know the characters by portrait and need their names spelled out for you?

    If you cast your mind back to 1992 you'll know that the original SNES Super Mario Kart also featured split-screen racing. In one player, a map was constantly displayed on the lower-half of the screen.

  • Nikanoru #19 7 years ago

    Actually, I think when the screen isn't so blown up in your face (as in, when actually playing the game) it doesn't look bad at all. If you save some of the screens to your HD and view them on their own (not resized) you'll see what I mean.

    Maybe there should be an exception for DS screenshots, to have the script not stretch them horizontally, since they're vertically oriented? It would also decrease the amount of scrolling you have to do to view the entire shot. How about it Bertie? :)


    As for the debate about the graphical prowess of the DS....remember when Nintendo said that it was an experiment and that they'd be happy if anybody bought it at all? I get the feeling that if they had known the DS would become this popular, they'd put in a nicer graphics chip...

  • #20 7 years ago

    Why does a discussion about every new h/held game have to degenerate into a pissing contest about graphics? The graphics look just fine to me.

    /on topic

    Having seen the new s/shots I want this game more than ever. That bottom screen this time works even better than in Super Mario Kart. ie you can see where the hazards are/coming from.

    And, unlike MK:DD, those ridiculously personalised karts that someone on these boards once described as "sindy toys" are gone! Thankfully!
    Edited by at 19/08/05 @ 10:38

  • Fixxxer #21 7 years ago

    Please Nintendo remember that this is a racing game and not a who-can get-the-best-item-on-the-last-lap-game. I think if they took out all of the weapons completely you'd have a game closer to the original than what it has become.

    BUt I wouldn't want them to do that. Shooting someone with a shell before they went over the jump on Mario Circuit 3 was the most fun thing in the world.

    "First to last! Eat my arse, Princess!"