CTGP Nitro
The biggest Mario Kart DS hack around: dozens of community-made tracks and battle stages added on top of the original game, plus speedrunning tools and online options.
What it is
CTGP Nitro keeps all of Mario Kart DS intact and adds a large set of custom courses built by many track makers from the community. The project is led by SGC with NinjaboySC as assistant developer, and it keeps taking submissions, so each release adds and swaps tracks. Version 1.0.0 came out in 2022; 1.1.0 followed in 2024.
What's new
- New cups full of custom tracks and battle stages, with new music and alternate character skins
- A speedometer and other aids for speedrunners
- Online mode adjustments, with every custom track available online, worldwide or continental matchmaking without friend codes, and an occasional mirrored race
- VS mode can run the full track list or random custom tracks
- Faster scrolling through the track list with L and R, and many bug fixes
Playing it
The project's site has patches for the US, European and Japanese versions and a web patcher; apply one to your own copy of Mario Kart DS following its readme. The Japanese patch doesn't translate anything, it only lets you use that version as a base.