Prerelease:Mario Kart DS

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Mario Kart DS.

To do: Some of the screenshots are falsely categorised Advert featuring early cart and box art: https://archive.org/details/Nintendo_Accion_156/page/n17/mode/2up Appears here too https://archive.org/details/Nintendo_Accion_157/page/n11/mode/2up E3 2005 demo screenshot: https://www.gamekyo.com/images0_4_10226.html

Early Builds

Mario Kart DS started development early on in the life span of the Nintendo DS, all while borrowing various assets from its predecessor; Mario Kart Double Dash to be used as placeholders. A lot of models, textures, sounds, ect from Double Dash were put into the data of the game, including some that would never be used such as various sounds, implying that they were imported in a rather quick fashion with little thought as to which ones. A practice commonly done with assets from previous games in a series for later games early on in development.

E3 2004

Mario Kart DS was first shown to the public at E3 2004, and had a 30 second trailer and some screenshots showing 8 players racing on GCN Yoshi Circuit. The characters appear to be racing in an early version of the Standard Kart, modeled off of the Toad Kart from Double Dash. GCN Yoshi Circuit uses the course ID 01, implying that it was the first course made for the game, as well as other evidence that points to this.

This build featured an early version of GCN Yoshi Circuit, somewhat different textures, and a unique skybox different from the default skybox from Double Dash, along with Palm Trees placed along the side of the track in various spots. The character models were a bit different (they were modeled off their low-poly models from Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, and their internal names in MKDD were /root/MRAM.arc/driver/XXXXX/driver_200.bmd, replace XXXXX with the character name), along with a very early HUD. The lap counter was on the bottom screen, the item storage was positioned at the top-middle of the screen and was also smaller, plus the Green Shell icon was a bit different compared to the E3 2005/kiosk demo's icons, and there was a speedometer resembling the one seen in Double Dash. Donkey Kong was also called "Donkey" instead of "DK" on the bottom screen. The racers list on the bottom screen had also a different style, with the character names written in MKDD style graphics with an orange color, the blue color was a bit brighter and the current player character was indicated with a yellow color instead of green. The mugshots on that list also had 18x18 squares, as opposed to 16x16 in later builds.

GCN Yoshi Circuit

E3	Final

• The skybox and the hills were a part of the 2D scrolling background. Later builds use 3D skyboxes.
• The billboards were different and there were less of them.
• The item boxes were placed differently.
• The two giant item boxes seen in the screenshot are removed.
• Some of the fences were missing, one example can be seen in the screenshot above.
• All of the trees along the course have been removed. They were put there as placeholders for some of the billboards, and the piranha plants. And some of them might be decorations to replicate the leaves on the top of the hills seen in the original iteration of this track (from Double Dash).
• The bottom part of the star wall texture in the tunnel has a dull pink color (like MKDD) as opposed to orange in the final.
• The blue wall at the beginning was instead a stone wall.
• The camera view is facing up in the demo.

The bottom screen map that shows most of the differences can be found within the course files of kiosk demo and final versions, in the data of those tracks that don't have a proper bottom screen map.

The tree texture exists in the kiosk demo's GCN Yoshi Circuit data: /Course/old_yoshi_gc.carc > /MapObj/yoshi_tree.nsbmd

Screenshots

More screenshots were shown on October 7 and November 20 of 2004. The kart's and driver's models were much closer to the final in this build. The HUD's position is now like the final and still had graphical differences. The speedometer is still present, now with a graphical update. Its graphics can be found in the kiosk version.

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  Mario's early B Dasher. Different barriers.

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  Luigi's Mansion without the Mario Kart banner.

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  The early basement of Luigi's Mansion.

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  An early SNES Mario Circuit 1. Brighter barriers, and different background.

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  Karts with early character emblems.

Mario's B Dasher had the small tires from the standard kart and the karts use early character emblems, that still exist in the final (except for the Luigi's number 2 emblem seen in those screenshots). Also note, that Yoshi is using the pink Egg 1, which also still exists in the final.

Luigi's Mansion was missing the Mario Kart banner over the starting line and also had slightly different textures. The basement was missing the table and featured item boxes.

SNES Mario Circuit's colored blocks had a completely different design with small composite blocks that were changed in the final to big blocks with a design closer to the SNES original. The sand texture and the pipes were slightly darker than in the final and the background was also less detailed; the mountains have a simpler texture.

A footage of this build can be seen here (skip to 0:15 for Mario Kart DS):

The item machine at the top left corner showed the unused Bowser Shell and a MKDD style Fake Item Box icons in there, while Blue Shell and Boo did not appear. The Fake Item Box was removed in the next build (GDC 2005), and then restored in the final (but with a new icon). The Mushroom boost also lacked the screen effect (diagonal lines) and the camera zoom-out. It only gave the kart a boost.

Early	Final

Early	Final

GDC 2005

At GDC 2005, Mario Kart DS was shown again with a demonstration of the game's multiplayer mode. This build used the Mario Kart 64 title screen music as a placeholder for the game's title music and a very early titlescreen. Lakitu uses a countdown light, which isn't used in any official version, but its graphics still exist in the Kiosk Demo. The characters' voices are mostly from Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. Drifting also worked differently; You get red sparkles as soon as you start drifting and the color doesn't change color when steering left and right to perform a turbo boost. The minimap was zoomed in and there was no fixed close up view of the driver when driving to the goal.

Here is some rare footage of the demonstration:

Another footage, that was recorded at the same moment, that includes the full race.

GDC/Earliest	Proto	Final

E3 2005

Mario Kart DS was shown again at E3 2005 with more details and a longer trailer. This version is very close to the kiosk demo that was in stores before it released; only visible differences are a smaller item storage in the HUD and Donkey Kong being named Donkey instead of DK (like he is named in the european Kiosk Demo). After all, the kiosk demo was compiled less than 2 weeks after E3 that year. The E3 demo only had multiplayer. This is also much closer to the final than the build from 2004, but it still had many differences.

Here is the E3 2005 trailer:

Gamescom 2005

At 7:15 footage of another early build can be seen at the german Gamescom 2005 event. It appears to be the same build as the European kiosk demo.