Mario Kart 64 multiplayer?

[justin8571]

Hello everyone,

I'm in need of help here please from technically gifted people!

Basically, me and three friends meet up once a week to play Mario Kart on my US N64 (I'm sure you're all aware that the NTSC version was 17.5% quicker due to running at 60 rather than 50Hz with the added bonus of no borders). We started back in '93 with Mario Kart on a US SNES and jumped ship to the N64 at the beginning of '97 when it first came out. We tried the Gamecube version but feel Nintendo lost its way and forgot what made the game so great, and needless to say we steered a mile away from the Wii.

Anyway, we're now all 40 and the game just gets better and better. We only play Koopa Beach due to the jump into the rock which makes it the best track ever to grace a consol. We don't play to win, it's all about not coming last as we have various rounds of first to lose five with various forfeits, which culminates in the ultimate loser round at the end of the night where the loser has to take home the two foot high trophy and wear the ultimate t-shirt that hums as you're not allowed to wash it. The competition between us just gets worse as we're all sore losers and love to relish in a friend's misfortune. I dread the day that I won't want to play it any more.

The best video connection I could find for the N64 was s-video which I've been running through my 42" nine year old plasma on 4:3 format as going 16:9 stretches it too much and doesn't look too good.

I recently bought a larger TV and MK64 looks dreadful on it so I started looking around for new ideas. I found it on the Wii's Virtual Consol that I'd never heard about. Got a second hand US Wii off Ebay, downloaded MK64 and couldn't believe my eyes with the quality. For years my group of friends and I have been desperate for the exact same game just with a higher resolution and there it was on the Wii, and has been since 2007.

Everything appeared to be perfect and I couldn't believe my luck, that is until we tried playing it on four player. One, two and three player modes are so fluid and perfect to play but four player is awful. I can't really explain what's wrong, you really need to play it for yourself to see the difference. It's just not fluid and makes the karts impossible to control to a decent degree. I've since read that Mario Kart was programmed to run at 30fps but it couldn't handle that on four player so some frames were dropped, and that the Wii plays at full speed which makes the dropped frames noticeable, or something along those lines. Anyway, due to the four player option the Wii has been dropped out of the equation. I've also tried it on a UK Wii and get exactly the same issues.

I then started looking on my PC for an emulator and found Project64 which is amazing. I now have MK64 and it looks great but I do have a couple of questions. The first one is that I get the impression the emulation is taken from the Virtual Consol version (text says"poomp" or similar on the kart during some contact unlike the original N64 version), so if this is the case will the four player mode have the same issues as the VC version?

My second question is, how do you select four players, or is that even possible? I see you can select a four player game from the menu but I can't seem to find a way of selecting a second, third or fourth player, only player one. I'm hoping to select four players just so I can see how it runs before getting N64 to USB controller adapters.

Basically, where I bought my new TV from said I can have 28 days to change my mind and return it, as my main priority is MK64. I think Project64 is my last hope, so if this doesn't work the TV's going back and MK64 will live on with my old plasma.

Thanks in advance for any help, I'd really appreciate any advice you can offer.

Justin