SantaKart

SantaKart is a homebrew game by the Overkart 64 team, released on 25 December 2021. It’s a hack of Mario Kart 64 where you play as Santa driving his sleigh through a winter town delivering presents.

You can download the ROM patch from its download page by using the password bingoOhohoho. You can then apply the patch to a Mario Kart 64 ROM called Mario Kart 64 (U) [!].z64 using Flips.

About SantaKart

The premise of SantaKart follows that of modern Christmas tradition – you play as Santa Claus and have to deliver presents to the children of this remote winter village. There are 100 houses and you have to throw presents at their chimneys until they fall inside the house, after which they will be marked with a floating present box above them.

The objective of the game is to get them delivered as quickly as possible which requires memorising the route to take and an accurate aim when throwing the packages around. There are a few sections in the level where the houses are off the beaten path and others where they are very concentrated around winding roads, so it’s easy to miss a few of them if you’re not careful.

There’s a few things to consider when playing SantaKart. First of all, it’s quite impossible to reliably get the presents in the chimney unless you’re holding the joystick forwards for a harder toss. If you press the Start button, the game crashes so please don’t do that. The game also doesn’t end when you complete it so keep that in mind.

There isn’t any cooldown for throwing presents so be sure to toss as many as you want, ho ho ho!

Review and conclusion

SantaKart is a great reinterpretation of what Mario Kart 64 should be – a crazy vision of what it means to play a racing game. The concept in and of itself is so ridiculous that it’s undeniably lovable, and the use of Luigi’s “Bingo Ohohoho” really makes it feel like Santa himself is spreading Christmas cheer to your N64.

After a few attempts, I managed to cut down the time to complete the game to 10 minutes so it’s not exactly as short as a typical 3-lap Mario Kart 64 level. Give it a go and let me know of your time!