Mario Kart Double Dash (Gamecube, 2003)

Wait, what? Yes, you’re reading this right. Double Dash, baby. The first fully-3D Mario Kart game. It’s up here for two reasons.

Firstly, the two-player thing was great, and it’s a shame it hasn’t returned (outside of an arcade cameo) since, even as a secondary mode. Having one player concentrate on driving while the other handled the timing and direction of weapons might not have been ideal in every multiplayer circumstance, but when it did—whether your partner was less skilled than you or just wasted—it was glorious.

And secondly, as you’d expect from a game coming out on the GameCube, Double Dash’s course design is some of the wackiest—and thus best—of the series. From Baby Park through to DK Mountain, it’s not until you cycle through some of these tracks again in later Mario Karts that you realise so many of the absolute classics are from this one release.

But its GameCube-ness extends beyond just the course design (and its killer soundtrack!). This is just so much fun, one of the shining examples of the weirdness prevalent in Nintendo games throughout the GameCube’s lifespan, where it was able to build on its cutesy past and polish it into a mirror-like sheen, but wasn’t yet having to run commercial tie-ins for Mercedes DLC.