Mario Kart 64
From Japanese to English

Audible changes | Player Select screen | Course names | Signs of the times

Audible changes

When you boot up Mario Kart 64, Mario greets you with: "Welcome to Mario Kart-a." The Japanese version originally had a bunch of Japanese kids saying "Mario Kart-a!". Listen below.

• Intro: "Mario Kart-a!" from Japanese version (.WAV; 48KB)

As you wade through the pre-game setup screens, both versions have an announcer; The difference is that the Japanese version has a very American-sounding announcer with a voice that echoes, while Mario lends his voice to the English version. It sounds to me like Charles Martinet—the voice of Mario—does the announcing for the Japanese version.

• Announcer: "Mario Grand Prix!" from Japanese version (.WAV; 73KB)

As for the drivers' voices, half of them are different in the English version. Compare these .WAV file recordings from the Player Select screen:

• Luigi: Japanese version | English version
• Peach: Japanese version | English version
• Toad: Japanese version | English version
• Wario: Japanese version | English version

Note that there are six people credited for "Sampling Voice" in the Japanese version, but the English version had only three people. Charles Martinet was the only person that did voice acting for both versions.

Player Select screen

No surprises here. As always, Kinopio and Koopa change to Toad and Bowser for the English version. Donkey Kong's name also changed, from "D.Kong" to "D.K." The lettering for the names is slightly bigger in the English version.

Course names

Below is a chart showing all the differences. I'm assuming Nintendo of America's MK64 staff liked alliteration, because the more-noticable name changes resulted in course names like "Royal Raceway" and "Banshee Boardwalk."

Japanese	English
Luigi Circuit	Luigi Raceway
Moh Moh Farm	Moo Moo Farm
Noko Noko Beach	Koopa Troopa Beach
Kara Kara Desert	Kalimari Desert
Kinopio Highway	Toad's Turnpike
Mario Circuit	Mario Raceway
Peach Circuit	Royal Raceway
Koopa Castle	Bowser's Castle
Donkey Jungle Park	DK's Jungle Parkway
Hyuudoro Lake	Banshee Boardwalk

Signs of the times

As far as I know, four "sponsor signs" in the Japanese version are clever parodies of real companies in the USA. They changed the signs in the English version probably to avoid potential lawsuits.

The "Luigip" sign is an imitation of the Agip logo. It was changed to "Luigi's" for the English version.

The "Marioro" sign (a nice parody of the Marlboro logo) was changed to "Mario Star."

And an even more clever parody is "Yoshi 1," which is an obvious rip-off of the Mobil 1 logo, red "O" and all. The English version gets a "YOSHI" sign with a nice paw-print logo after it.

The Nintendo logo changed from blue to red.

The "Koopa Air" sign remained, but the colors were changed slightly. The blue and yellow sign is a parody of Goodyear's logo.

The orange "64" ball (a parody of the "76" gas station ball sign) changed to blue...

...but also in the English version, the orange ball is still visible in the "select course" views of Luigi Raceway.

Special thanks to LGerhardX for the Japanese sound clips.

Thanks: adriatico@graffiti.net and Sammybeany (Goodyear info).

Audible changes | Player Select screen | Course names | Signs of the times