Ahhhh! I love this game! It's so great. My friend gave it to me and I fell in love with it fast! I played Mario Kart for the SNES and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. When I found out Mario Kart was for N64, I went bezerk. This was the first game to my N64 collection. You choose between 8 characters. You can get over 10 different powerups, including the legendary star which makes you invincible, banana peels which make opponents skid out of control, lightning bolts which makes characters small so you can smush them, mushrooms that boost your engine, and 3 kinds of shells. A green shell will go and bounce off anything, A red shell will do its best to find a character and smash them, and a spike shell with automatically find the player in 1st place and destroy them without fault. The reason it is 4 stars is because they didn't go the extra mile. If you play 1 or 2 player(s) you can do a Grand Prix, but not with 3 or 4. In player 1 mode you cant do a battle or do a vs. with the CPU. Battle only contains 4 tracks. I guess what i'm trying to say is that i wish it was more open. Taking shortcuts won't work because Lukita drags you back when your at the top of the mountain. This game would be the best if you were allowed to do more.