Nintendo Switch 2 should launch with a Mario Kart Double Dash sequel

There are as many arguments about which is the best Mario Kart entry as there are laps of Baby Park in your average grand prix. Which is to say: too many. The same goes for other popular series. Pokémon. Smash Bros. And the answer is almost always the same: the first one you played.

My first Pokemon game was Silver. My favorite? SoulSilver. My first Smash? Melee. My favorite? You guessed it – SoulMelee. But Mario Kart bucks the trend, at least for me. The first time I ever put my tires down on the Mario Circuit track was Mario Kart DS. I had a lot of fun with it, and spent countless hours playing with friends, mastering every track forward, backward and any way I wanted.

Mario about to go through a loop in Rainbow Road in Mario Kart DS.

This was followed by Mario Kart Wii, which had the great gimmick of using the Wii Remote as a steering wheel but otherwise did little to excite me further. I love Coconut Mall as much as the next person, but Mario Kart Wii always felt like riding up the escalator.

And then I played Mario Kart 8. It was a strong entry at launch, offering a great selection of tracks both new and old as well as the smoothest karting game yet. The absence of Funky Kong is almost inexcusable, but Nintendo soon corrected it. Nintendo continued to update Mario Kart 8 with more tracks, more characters, more stop until it was arguably the best Mario Kart game ever produced. The final product is staggering in size and scope, and we could play it for decades without needing another entry or any more DLC.

The same goes for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is clearly the best Mario Kart game, and anyone who tells you otherwise needs to take off their nostalgia glasses before they utter another word. But it's not mine favorite Mario Kart game.

Mario Kart: Double Dash hits different

Wario and Waluigi celebrate their victory in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

Somewhere in the post-Wii but pre-Switch (was there a Nintendo console then? Who's to say?) I went to university. Here I picked up a GameCube with my housemates and we made our way through a host of classics. Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker and Majora's Mask were first out. We played some Metroid and helped rid Luigi's Mansion of its pesky ghost problem. But mostly we played Smash Bros. Melee and Mario Kart: Double Dash.

I could recite a thesis of fond memories of this all-too-short playing year in our shared basement. Yes, the landlord had converted the living room into another bedroom, the kitchen into a bathroom and the bathroom into, you guessed it, another bedroom so our living room and cooking room were underground. Not ideal if you were dying to see the sunshine, but perfect for long gaming days and after-night Smash seshes. Wait…

Double Dash was our bread and butter. Mario Kart is a game that anyone can pick up and have fun with, no matter how weird the controller. But Double Dash adds so much to the plot. The second character, the second item, the animations of having your tag team of drivers and throwers. It's like racing a warthog in Halo, only the machine gun fires green grenades and is manned by a sapient mushroom.

A Mario Kart: Double Dash sequel would be perfect for the Nintendo Switch 2

Nintendo Switch 2 model
Credit: SwitchUp YouTube

Double Dash is the game with that nostalgia factor for me, even more than my first Mario Kart. That's why I love it dearly. But it's also perfect for the Switch 2.

First, you have the naming convention. We don't know if the Switch successor will actually be called Switch 2 yet (in all likelihood, it won't), but there are thematic parallels between the game and the console. A sequel and a sequel. Double Dash on Nintendo Switch Double, maybe? Switching between your two characters can form some sort of console name pun en lá 1-2 Switch. Mario Kart: Double Dash 2: Switch 'Em Up, anyone?

Okay, I'm stretching myself there. But how to follow up on Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Mario Kart 9 wouldn't work, how do you improve perfection? So you have to make the follow up unique. Adding a gimmick, such as a second driver, is perfect for that. You get an exciting progression to call players over from Mario Kart 8, and you get that wave of nostalgia for anyone who had a GameCube. Double Dash is the perfect answer.

The same goes for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

I also think that the dual rider idea offers so much room for creative iteration that Nintendo can avoid all of our expectations with a sequel. Multiplayer will definitely be a strong component of the game, so let's look there first. Players controlling each character on a map is a simple take from the original; one runs, one fires grenades. But can Nintendo change that for a modern audience? Could the dual-driver gimmick offer more opportunities for a Zelda-style reinvention of the series?

Mario and Luigi lead the race followed by Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong, Yoshi and Birdo and Peach and Daisy

We could have a bunch of new power-ups for new character combinations. We finished Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with 42 characters, so achieving the same roster in 2 Double 2 Dash would offer 861 unique combinations of characters. Maybe it's too much work to come up with almost 1,000 individual power-ups for a game, but I really want to see what happens if Isabelle and Dry Bowser team up.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe didn't reinvent the wheel, it perfected it. But when you have a perfect circle with exemplary traction and pristine hubcaps, don't you feel like ruining it all? Make it a hexagon, give it a rainbow sheen. Or add another driver. Let chaos ensue.

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