Figure-8 Circuit
What it says on the tin lmao

Yoshi Falls
An oval with waterfall shortcuts to keep on the inner course. Tis alright

Cheep Cheep Beach
Pretty interesting beach course, driving along piers and a wooded area. Good shortcuts through the water too if you have the mushrooms for it

Luigi's Mansion
IT'S LUIGI'S MANSION!!!!!! Driving through the mansion and then into the garden with muddy roads and moving trees is so cool

Desert Hills
Pretty cool desert course featuring the SMB3 sun sending down fireballs on the second lap and of course the standard pokeys to deal with

Delfino Square
Awesome town based circuit with plenty of diverging routes and a cool drawbridge at the end. Incredible course

Waluigi Pinball
IT'S WALUIGI PINBALL!!!! GOAT!!!! Racing through a pinball table, avoiding the balls, bumpers and flippers. it's incredible

Shroom Ridge
The king of drifting courses. Legit just so much fun thanks to it's layout and having to weave between traffic

DK Pass
Snow course that features an item box with a guaranteed mushroom/star on top of a hill for some reason. Very cool layout too along with snowmen to avoid

Tick Tock Clock
TICK TOCK CLOCK FROM MARIO 64!!!! Clock hands to avoid and swinging pendulums to knock you off course, this is a fantastic course

Mario Circuit
Standard circuit course with piranha plants that spit fire. There's been better and worse Mario Circuits

Airship Fortress
IT'S THE SMB3 AIRSHIP!!!! Monty moles popping out the ground, bullet bills fired towards you, and firing out of the cannon for the final portion..... holy shit this is so good

Wario Stadium
Solid stadium course with lots of jumps and firebars to to dodge

Peach Gardens
Really lovely garden course with chain chomps on the lose. Some cool shortcuts to take through the flowers too!

Bowser Castle
Solid BC course with a cool cylinder part to stay on and moving platforms at the end

Rainbow Road
Has loop de loops and everything. It's kind of an MK8 course before anti grav was a thing

Mario Kart DS was the second Mario Kart game I played. This one I've decided to rank higher than Mario Kart Wii, despite it being older.

Mario Kart DS has an incredibly good set of new tracks, with many fan favorites such as Waluigi Pinball, Airship Fortress, Wario Stadium, Tick-Tock Clock, and Delfino Square, to name a few. The retro tracks, while ordered oddly compared to future entries, aren't too bad either. The addition of a Mission mode is fantastic, with this game on a handheld, and it's honestly baffling how this mode never really returned until Mario Kart Tour, which isn't even a mainline entry in the series. This was also the first game with online play, though apparently you could only play a fraction of the tracks in the game, which is a bit odd.

One of the biggest things about this game was the meta, which involved chaining consecutive drifts along straightaways. This mechanic, called "snaking", had been in Mario Kart 64 and Double Dash, but was probably the easiest to pull off in Mario Kart DS, and makes for some pretty incredible world record viewing.

While being less accessible, and harder to play multiplayer, I think I prefer Mario Kart DS to Wii, due to the sheer amount of content you get from DS compared to Wii. Overall a great entry into the series, and definitely worth going back to even after playing newer entries in the series.

Not a bad game by any means, and a decent Mario Kart game at that. I really only played the Nitro Cup courses on 150cc because 1) the AI can be exceptionally brutal on that particular cc, and 2) i found the Retro Cup courses to be a bit uninspired compared to the ones designed for the DS. I was also pretty disappointed with the 3-star ranking criteria for the Grand Prix, as it's not as simple as placing first in each race. I would try Mission mode, but if I'm being real, this game, 16 years old now, definitely showed its age on me.