Nintendo's Mario Kart 64 contained plenty of solid material to encourage us to keep coming back for more, but one of the most intriguing mysterious involved the Royal Raceway.  Off the beaten track of the standard course stood Princess Peach's majestic castle as seen in Super Mario 64.  It was just there; it didn't do anything, couldn't be entered, and served no direct purpose outside of providing a setting for the closing ceremonies of each cup series.  Nevertheless, those of us who spent lots of time racing through the Mushroom Kingdom back in the day were convinced there was more to it than just set dressing.  Joey Davidson muses on what the castle is doing there over at The Big Pixels.

Word on the street was that drivers packing a ghost power-up could blast through the doors of the castle and, I don’t know, be inside.  Look, it may sound really stupid and boring now, but the possibility of this special moment existing managed to rock my world for days on end. I remember the week of non-stop karting like it was yesterday. I played the game forwards and backwards, thanks to that special CC. I considered myself blessed when the title screen changed after I’d beaten the package completely.

But largely the castle still did loom...

I took a crack at it. I cruised Peach’s Castle in every CC, time trial mode and in straight-up versus. It was hard enough rolling prize boxes until I snatched a Boo power-up. So I tried to do the damn thing. I grabbed my ghost, took the massive jump over the lake and blasted towards the castle doors, thinking I was about to crash head first into the marvelous world of Mario 64...

I can't tell you how many races I intentionally threw because I wanted to check out the castle again. I think part of the mystery is that the castle represented a strange crossover moment in Mario games that we didn't usually get to see.  While the Super Mario games of the era shared the same basic internal logic (Bob-ombs explode, don't jump on Piranha Plants, green mushrooms earn an extra life, etc.) we rarely saw instances of past Mario material reappearing so directly in new titles.  Exploring Princess Peach's castle in Super Mario 64 was a revelation for a generation of gamers, so to see it again so soon at the time was equally mindblowing.  Obviously there had to be more to it than a simple cameo.  Maybe we'll finally be able to race through the castle in the upcoming Mario Kart for the Nintendo 3DS.  After all, the non-playable demo on display back at E3 teased such a notion...