Dear Vinny,

I'm ThePsynergist and I was contacted by AlizarinRed and DryBoney one day on a project, never done before.  A comprehensive, texture/model/music replacement hack for Mario Kart 64.  A game so notorius for it's ability to be difficult to hack, that only one of the above could be hacked at a time.

With the help of the creator of the Mario Kart 64 mod tool, Pitstop, mib_f8sm9c, we were able to edit a few textures, where we came into a problem.  A lot of the textures weren't able to be added.  Then, we recalled how Project 64 has the option for external hi-res textures.  We were saved!

We each assigned ourselves different areas to do textures for.  Alizarin did Luigi Raceway, Moo Moo Farm, Toads Turnpike, DK Jungle Parkway, Yoshi Valley, and Rainbow Road.  DryBoney did Kalimari Desert, Mario Raceway, Sherbet Land, Royal Raceway, and Bowser's Castle.  I did Koopa Troopa Beach, Choco Mountain, Wario Stadiun, and Banshee Boardwalk, as well as all the music that you will hear in this hack.  AlizarinRed and DryBoney did an incredible job on this, and I'm really happy to have been included in this.  Pocketomi did an excellent job on the title/main menu screen as well.  

Making the music was a very challenging task.  I never knew that you could mod Mario Kart 64's music.  I learned how to do this for this project.  Allow me to go through the arduious process that it took:

-Take a MIDI (or make one).
-Seperate each drum to it's own track using a DAW (FL Studio, etc.)
-Set the drums to MIDI Channel 9.
-Make sure very track has legato notes only (no chords) 
-Convert to mXML using Noteflight (a website)
-Import into Super Mario 64 Editor (it has support for Mario Kart 64.)
-Choose the instrument each MIDI channel will use, and set the tempo, vibrato, pitch, etc.
-Export as .m64.
-Select which song you want to replace.
-Inject .m64 into Mario Kart 64.
-Play game.  It's at this point you can hear the song, and check if everything worked.  If not, go back to step 1 and repeat.

Thanks to some extra effort on mib's part, we were also able to get custom voices and sound effects working in the mod as well.  We owe him a great 'thank-you' for working this hard in furthering the Mario Kart 64 community.

Surprisingly, it didn't take as long as we initially thought.  We were able to complete this project in less than a month, thanks to quick and resourceful thinking.  I think we made a really good team, and I hope that you enjoy the collection we made for you and the Vinesauce community.

I also want thank you and the entire Vinesauce community for supporting the PCRF and donating money to a worthy cause.  It might not be pediatric, but I've dealt with a few family members that fought cancer.  I can't imagine what it must be like for a parent to learn that their child has cancer...  To DryBoney, even friends that he grew up with, has had That Dragon, Cancer, touch them...  AlizarinRed is no stranger to cancer either, as his Grandpa on his mother's side died of Pancreatic Cancer...

I'm glad that we could make a difference for these kids.  Even just a little bit helped.  All we had to do was take money that we were going to use to get a coffee at Starbucks, and chose to a child in need instead.  We could give them a future and do what we could to help.  Thank you Vinesauce community for raising over $100k for charity.  You're awesome.

Thank you again,

~thepsynergist

The Team:
DryBoney
AlizarinRed
ThePsynergist
Mib_f8xm9c

P.S.  The game crashes after the title screen if you wait too long.  A quick reset will fix everything.  As always, seizure warning.  =p
P.S.S.If the Music is having a issue you can change the Audio plugin in the settings to see which sounds better, Also ingame options can help by switching to Mono, Stereo, or Headphones.