Mario Kart 64 is a racing game for the Nintendo 64.

This patch for Mario Kart 64 (USA/NTSC) gives the CPUs in Grand Prix mode some of the same items a human can use. CPUs can finally fire shells, use multibananas, and triple mushrooms. Normally CPUs can only use single bananas, stars, ghosts, fake item boxes, single mushroom boosts, and lightning. They spawn the items all at the same time up to three times per lap and draw from their own item probability tables. With these new items the CPUs can use against you, GP mode is now more challenging! CPUs never used shells, multi-bananas, triple mushrooms, or golden mushrooms. Through an exhaustive look into the game's code, micro500 and I were able to deduce how CPU players spawn items. It turns out that a lot of this code never made it into the final game, and has remained hidden for over 20 years in the inside the game's rom. Some of it it was never fully debugged or finished. This patch takes most of the unused CPU item spawning code that works and adds it back into the game with some custom assembly code. See the readme.txt for more details.

NOTE: For other hacks that have their own implementation of CPUs using human items, check out Hooting Time by HootHoot: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6148/ and Amped Up by Litronom: https://patch.wedarobi.com/mk64_amped_up

Updated July 13, 2023! What's new in version 2.8?
-Fixed the item sticking and item disappearing glitches (I hope!, if you have it happen to you, please let me know).
-Set CPU item usage frequency and timing back to the stock game.

Updated Dec. 28, 2021! What's new in version 2.7?
-The biggest change is to ensure compatibility with other Mario Kart 64 hacks. If you want to patch a specific hack and do not know how to do checksum corrections, let me know, and I can create a patch for a specific hack.
-Increased the CPU item usage frequency a bit, now the game is more challenging!
-There should be less audio glitches.
-Lightning probability tweaked to be more reasonable.

Database match: Mario Kart 64 (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo 64 (v. 20180814-043336)
File/ROM SHA-1: 579C48E211AE952530FFC8738709F078D5DD215E
File/ROM CRC32: 434389C1

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