Kart Duel

Kart Duel is a racing arcade game which was released by Namco in 2000; it runs on Namco System 12 hardware, and allows two players to play simultaneously when a pair of single-player cabinets are linked together. The game has three modes of play - and in Race mode (which is single-player only), the player may choose from four different karts (each of which has a different feature) as well as four tracks (the fictional High-Speed Park, along with the real-world Ōimatsuda Kart Land, Takarazuka Kart Field and SUGO Kokusai Kart Course). If the player should attain a qualifying position after a set number of laps they will get to compete in the next race (there are four races in all); furthermore, if they should win all four races without continuing, they shall also have the chance to compete in an exhibition race against the best racer from Namco's R&D Staff. However, in Time Trial mode (which is also single-player only, but does not feature any CPU-controlled karts), the player is racing for the quickest lap time from the set number they completed - and in Versus mode (which is automatically invoked if a second player should insert their coin into the inactive linked cabinet during the delay at the beginning of the game), both players may only choose from two of the karts (they may also both select different courses, but the easier of the two will be chosen). This mode's results screen shows both players' amounts of wins and losses; furthermore, only the losing player pays when continuing in it by default, and after the players continue in it four times, a free play is also awarded by default.