My recollection was big characters had a higher top speed, but slow acceleration. Small characters were the opposite. Medium characters didn't excel or suck at either.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Yeah, Bowser would hit the highest speeds, but if you hit a wall or a shell, it would take forever to get going again.

[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This isn't correct for N64 Mario Kart. They actually did give the lightweights the best acceleration and top speed. I found a video that did some analysis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6AxbNL2ET0

[–] ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That was not my recollection of how it was supposed to work or how it worked in practice, but I found an archive of the original guidebook, and it says exactly what you said. Interesting. I got passed up by Donkey Kong and Bowser on straightaways all the time, but maybe that's more of a mirror mode challenge thing than a size of the karts things.

[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 months ago

Oh yeah, that's probably just the rubber band effect, which was pretty strong at 150cc.

[–] Ithi@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 months ago

That's roughly what is was for the SNES game. Probably N64 too but I don't recall.