Today's game is Mario Kart 64. It's been a while since I played this, and today I had a killer sinus headache from whatever fucked me up the other day. I couldn't sleep, but I didn't want to just sit around doing nothing, so I booted this up and played some time trials.

Why time trials? I like just driving around and taking a look at different aspects of the game, and when you're having shells hurled at you every so often, it's a little harder. Like one thing I noticed here were the lights were flat 2D textures on the ceiling. I'm sure some people are going "Well duh", but I'm always driving so fast I never notice that kind of stuff, so it's kind of a fun detail for me to notice.

There's also this river in Frappe Snowland, which I just stopped to look at. It made me wonder where it went when we don't see it. I know at some point it wraps around and we jump over it at the start, but I feel like there's a whole bunch there we don't see, and it got me wondering. There's a free cam in the decomp I was playing, but I didn't want to ruin the “illusion," so I left it be. At least for now.

I also wanted to talk about this track's music. I feel like "snow" music falls into two categories: cheery and slow, almost sad tracks. Almost always, I feel like it's the latter. This one falls into cheery, though, which is a plus from me.

Then finally, I wanted to talk about Rainbow Road. I ended up sitting idle for a second while helping someone with something, and I ended up realizing that the Chain Chomps move. It's a little detail, and I'm sure others have seen it. But I never noticed they moved along the course. I always assumed they stayed in the same general area. I suppose it makes sense though.

Also wanted to talk about this track's music. In the past, I've talked about the length, but I think the music deserves a mention too. With the length, it feels like a long, winding victory lap. And the music reflects that. You've got your metaphorical "hands" in the air, and you're driving down the road celebrating. Once you get so far ahead of the other bots, I feel like they stop mattering, rubber banding or not. I think that's kind of what makes this my favorite Rainbow Road. All the others feel like they're trying to be hard and a challenge, but this one just kind of decided to be a celebration of all you've done. And I think that's kind of cool in a way that it accomplishes this.