A new fan project is revitalizing the classic Mario Kart 64 as Mario Kart 64 HD. Mario Kart 64 is a favorite game of older kart racing fans around the world, but it has begun to look a bit long in the tooth, making this fan project a great solution for those wanting to play the game again.
Mario Kart 64 was originally released in North America on February 10, 1997, nearly two full months after its debut in Japan, and around five months after the Nintendo 64 hardware arrived. It sold just shy of 10 million copies, enough to make it the second best-selling video game after Super Mario 64. Arguably, Mario Kart 64 was the game to truly cement the kart racer as another one of the numerous genres Nintendo defined with its games.
Developer Andrat has now produced a mod for Mario Kart 64, available now on GitHub, which runs alongside the standard version of the ROM through a standard emulator, or through the popular Dolphin emulator (note that while Dolphin now runs all original GameCube games, it does not run N64 games natively). Compared to some fan projects, the new Mario Kart 64 HD mod has a low chance of being removed from the internet over copyright infringement concerns because it does not offer free duplicates of the game, but instead works with copies players may already possess legally.
Mario Kart 64 was developed during an era when 3D games were still finding their footing. Developers sometimes used special tricks to replicate a 3D effect in ways that would do less to tax the hardware. One popular technique was to create 3D models for characters and environmental elements, then to convert them to sprites that retained the three-dimensional look, an approach that helped ensure Donkey Kong Country was one of the best video game trilogies of all time. Andrat went through the same process to create superior new models and sprites which can now be modded into Mario Kart 64 to create the fresh look seen today.
Nintendo continues to reap the benefits of its long line of classic games. Continuing to support cherished titles can sometimes pay huge dividends years after their initial release, and the company's executives seem to realize it more than ever; Nintendo recently even updated its website for Mario Party 2, after largely ignoring it for 20 years. There's no telling what the future may hold for other classic games and for Mario Kart 64, beyond the inclusion of favorite tracks in the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. In the meantime, players who wish to experience the classic Mario Kart 64 design without straining their eyes have Andrat and other mod developers to thank. There has never been a better time to take another spin around the Mushroom Kingdom.
Source: GamesRadar