What did people think of Double Dash when it came out? I thought it was kind of forgettable, but was conceptually a neat idea.
Double dash has been a staple part of me and my friends 4 player splitscreen gaming since it launched.
Reviewers at the time had lost their hardcore gamer edge and reviewed it badly, Edge magazine even reviewed it twice badly to restate they'd become a casual review outlet IIRC. It and the n64, and DS version should all be called mario kart sim, for no arcade karters.
Double Dash as a co-op team game didn't really work, because all skilled players wanted to do both things themselves, and any miscommunication just resulted in frustration for both people, so the amazing option for 4 cubes and 4 tVs (LAN linked) with 8 co-op teams has probably never been used outside of a Nintendo building, but the introduction of a pairing in the car along with different special pickups that gave rise to the two pickup strategy of storing a weapon for later gave the game such a lift for splitscreen play, along with the graphical refinement improvement from the muddy Mario Kart 64 first outing in 3D.
The maps are still probably the greatest selection for the series, and the time-trialling sound of the bell rapidly dinging and flashing orange when you smashing your ghost time and are at full speed is probably one of my happiest gaming sounds I would love to bottle.
For anyone without friends to play 100hrs a month local play - along with time trialling rivalry and reaching a collective play standard to exploiting the track glitches in game to steal victories or knowing perfect corners and techniques for drift boosting to evade the blue spiney shell - it was probably easy to forget. But for the rest of us it was MK perfection.
TLDR
I hope the twist is that it becomes two games: Sim and Arcade. Sim as a remade enhancement of double dash for local multiplayer - no coins, no bikes, no player assist features, no flying, or surreal zero G , no customising colours or parts crap, the return of big time loss wipeouts with frustration, and the ability to glitch the blue shell to dodge it. And then a version called Arcade as a normal continuation of MK8 Deluxe and everything I've disliked since they made the Wii version.