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Arcade Version of Mario Kart Coming to Japan
Gamespot has the story about a heads up arcade version of Gamecube favorite Mario Kart. The arcade version will apparently have several tweaks from its console brother to allow for the changes in setting. From the article: "The Mario Kart series features an item system so that players can catch up by using them when they're trailing behind, but with the new rubber-band system that Namco implemented [in Mario Kart Arcade GP], the races become a really close-pitched match..."
From what I've heard online, the machine is somewhat rare. I've never seen one, and most of the people who have have seen it in one location only.
Arcades seem to be almost completely dead in America. If the market wasn't so small now, it would be easier to find. As it is, though, how many arcades exist where the investment that would be needed for a giant and relatively complex machine that may or may not result in a profit?
Short version: it's out there, but good luck finding it.
Goo goo g'joob.
Well, if you don't live in Japan, don't bother giving this game a second thought.... arcades are dead in just about every other country, especially the US :(
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
That makes no sense at all. In one sense of thinking balancing is exactly what they _did_ do.
If you want to talk in terms of more traditional balancing, to make sure that one one car/team/whatever is equal in stregnth, or has an equal balance of strengths and weaknesses, to all the others, then it doesn't address the issue we're talking about at all. More balanced play acutally makes things _tougher_ on newbies. With unbalanced play an experienced player might choose to give the newbie the stronger team or the newbie might stumble across some combination of factors that the more experienced players haven't discovered yet that gives them a big edge (unlikely, yes, but not impossible.)
In a perfectly balanced game the newbie is going to get their ass kicked everytime until they learn the tactics and get better.
I agree that the rubber-banding (which is _not_ a new feature) can get very annoying at times, but it is not due to lazy programmers. The programmers could have done a lot of other things to "balance" the game between newbies and experts, like _always_ giving the guy in last place a spiked shell, but the designers decided that rubber-banding was a better solution.
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The item system makes SMK different from realistic driving games, because you're not driving for hours only to never catch up to the leader.
It's very satisfying to shoot a shell at a player in front of you to take the lead and the win. You prepared that shell just for them, they should have prepared a defence (I would run entire races in the SNES original with a banana peel or shell hanging out behind me while in 1st). It's not like you can't just look at the other person's screen and realise they're coming to get you.
It adds another element into the mix.
Yes, shooting a rubber-band into your opponent's eye is a sure-fire way to get back into the race!
-David
The point of Mario Kart is to be fun competition for groups of people. And where are you going to find larger groups of people than in the arcade?
It needs to be fast. It needs to be fun. It needs to work better if everyone is drunk. Ranking the players on skill is kind of irrelevant.
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