Mario Kart 64

Mario Kart 64
Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Nintendo 64 Released in JP: December 14, 1996 Released in US: February 10, 1997 Released in EU: June 24, 1997 This game has unused music. This game has debugging material. This game has regional differences. This game has a notes page This game has a prototype article This game has a bugs page This game has a prerelease article

Mario Kart 64 basically takes all the wishes and feature requests from Super Mario Kart and makes them come true. Four players! Tunnels! No Koopa Troopa! All good stuff. Except that last one, clearly.

Hidden Music Loop In Winning Results Track

The "Winning Results" track was likely intended to alternate between two ~100 second sections of music, each composed of a 50 second segment repeated twice. Due to a binary counter bug, the first segment repeats 64 times (for 53 minutes!) before the second segment ever has a chance to play -- at which point it repeats twice and correctly returns to the first segment.

(Source: WhiteKhakis)

Debug Menu

This game contains a debug menu; to enable it, use the GameShark code 8818EDEF 0002 and press the GS button at the title screen.

• DEBUG_MODE activates key combinations during play:
  • L+R+A+B: Reset game
  • R+B: Toggle CPU meter
  • Left: Advance player 1 and everyone behind them to final lap
  • Down: Advance everyone to final lap
  • Up: Advance player 1 and one other to final lap
  • Z or C-Down can be pressed during the race start sequence to start early. This will glitch the game if done too soon.
• MAP_NUMBER selects the track. Available are the 16 single-player tracks plus the four tracks from battle mode.
• SCREEN_MODE selects the screen mode, and thus the players that participate. Available values are 1 player, 2 player up/down, 2 player left/right, 3 players and 4 players. The two player left-right view is never used in the final game, and is somewhat glitchy.
• PLAYER selects the first player. If you have more than one player, the game assumes Luigi for player 2, Yoshi for player 3 and Toad for player 4.
• SOUND MODE simply selects the sound mode (mono, headphones, stereo).
• PUSH B TO GET ALL GOLDCUP is fairly self-descriptive. This option only appears when the cursor is moved all the way to the bottom.

Note that if you try to start a one-player game on a battle map, the game will automatically add a second player.

XXX Sound Mode

GameShark code 8018EDF2 0002 switches the sound mode to "XXX" on the debug menu and blank in the Options menu. Its purpose is not known.

Debug Menu	Options Menu
	Ahh, shaddap.

CPU and Graphic Display

When Debug Mode is enabled, the following GameShark codes can be used:

• 810DC515 0001 Shows which master display list is currently in use.
• 800DC663 0001 Shows bars at the bottom measuring CPU usage and other resources.

Frame-by-Frame advance

The following code activates a frame-by-frame advance mode if Debug Mode is enabled:

81001760 3C03
81001762 800E
81001794 3C0B
81001796 800E
810017C4 240C
810017C6 0000

When the game is paused, player 1 can hold A and B and press L to advance a frame. This unfortunately conflicts with using A to unpause the game; you must hold A before pausing. Alternatively, adding the code 81001784 2400 makes it require only holding B and pressing L while paused.

Vertical Splitscreen

This unused vertical-split display for 2-player mode is only accessible via the Debug Menu. It's pretty clear why this isn't accessible normally: it's unfinished and buggy.

Crash Debug Screen

Exception Information. Gaze upon what you have wrought!

If the game crashes, it will draw a small white square with red border near the upper left corner of the screen. At that point, entering the code L, Up, Left, Down, Right, R, L, B, A will display some information about the cause of the crash.

The first line displays three numbers - first seems to always be 5 (probably thread ID), second is the address of the faulty instruction, third is the exception code (as defined in the R4300i manual). The second line displays the $RA register. The third line is unknown (usually zero).

The GameShark code 810DC6FE FFFF will shorten this code to simply "press L".

This display cannot be seen on emulators, as they don't seem to continue redrawing the screen after the game crashes.

Unused Code

Track Scaling Function

Next to the mirror mode flag in memory (address 800DC608 in USA version) is a floating-point value that appears to always be set to 1.0. When a track is loaded, its height is scaled by this amount. (All polygon vertices are multiplied by this value.)

This value only affects track polygons, and hit detection is not altered to compensate for the steeper hills and/or shorter vertical walls, so changing it often produces unplayable tracks and strange effects such as floating trees, low areas being considered underwater/out of bounds, and walls that are no longer solid.

No similar scaling functions exist for the X and Z axes. This may have been intended as a debugging function to test slopes, or a bonus mode that would scale tracks to various sizes.

Lightning in Battle Mode

When used in Battle Mode, the Lightning Bolt makes all other players lose one balloon; however, it isn't normally possible to obtain this item, likely because it would have made battles horribly unbalanced. Code that specifically handles the Lightning Bolt's effects in Battle Mode can be found around 8008E0FC in RAM.

Version Differences

• The title screen voice says "Welcome to Mario Kart" in both versions. In the Japanese version, it's a bunch of Japanese kids shouting that phrase, while in the American version you get to hear the titular person of this game, Mario.
• The voice actor used in the menu is just some announcer in the Japanese version. Like above, he has been replaced by Mario for the American release.
• Wario, Toad, Luigi and Peach's voice in the Japanese version are the ones used in Mario Party. They didn't fit quite well here, so they were changed to new ones in the American version.
• The billboards in the Japanese version are all clever parodies of real-life companies. They were changed in the American version because this would have gotten NoA in hot water.

Japan	International

Marioro (a pun on Marlboro) was changed to Mario Star.

Japan	International

Luigip (a pun on Agip) was changed to Luigi's.

Japan	International

Yoshi1 (a pun on Mobil1) was changed to Yoshi.

Japan	International

The Koopa Air sign is colored yellow and blue in the Japanese version (a pun on Goodyear). It's white and violet in the American version.

Japan	International

The orange 64 ball in Luigi's Raceway (a parody of the 76 gas station) was changed to blue.

The orange ball can however still be seen on the track preview even in the American version.

Japan	International
A pleasant blue	Angry red

The Nintendo logo is blue in the Japanese version and red in the American version.

Credits Differences

In the Japanese version, completing the Special Cup on 150cc will display a Japanese-language version of the credits. This was removed from the English version for obvious reasons.

To do: Confirmation, screenshots

Inaccessible Item Boxes

Hidden underneath the Big Donut arena are two inaccessible item boxes. These item boxes can be seen by getting the camera behind the green bars and waiting, eventually the two item boxes will float up into view.