Pipe Plaza

This article is about the battle course from the Mario Kart series. For the place with a similar name featured in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, see Pipe Yard.

Pipe Plaza
Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Mario Kart DS
Information
Appears in	Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (2003) Mario Kart DS (2005)
Cup(s)	Battle Mode
Online play	Was never available (DS)
Music sample Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Shinobu Tanaka/Kenta Nagata Mario Kart DS Shinobu Tanaka
Course map Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Mario Kart DS

Pipe Plaza is a battle course in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! that takes place in a simple square-shaped plaza surrounded by a tall brick wall. It was later added as a retro battle course in Mario Kart DS.

Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

The course consists of a plaza in a field of grass with pipes coming out of the ground. On one of the sides of the plaza, the wall is much taller and there is a total of four large pipes, which allow drivers to warp between the lower ground and an upper wire mesh area. Entering a pipe on the lower level will warp the player to the pipe on the upper level on the same side, but entering a pipe on the upper level will warp the player to the pipe on the lower level on the opposite side. There are also two ramps which connect the wire mesh area and the plaza, with some posts on both sides of each ramp. Some walls that are mostly made of wire mesh prevent players from driving underneath the ramps. Item Boxes can be found both on the upper level and lower level, though a few of them float in midair and require the player to fall off of the upper area to reach them.

In this version, there is an animation glitch: if Daisy is in the back of the kart and she is hit by a fireball that knocks her into one of the pipes, her "getting burnt" animation will continue until she is hit again or until the battle finishes.

Mario Kart DS

The stage returns in Mario Kart DS as one of the smaller courses comparable to Nintendo DS or Tart Top, providing additional havoc. The course largely functions the same as it did in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, though the midair Item Boxes and the posts on the sides of each ramp are now gone. There are also some visual changes, most notably the brick wall using a completely different color palette and having a much simpler shape. The course uses the same music as every other battle course, and also does not assign it the "GCN" prefix. The same also applies to Block Fort, a battle course from Mario Kart 64. Despite both Pipe Plaza and Block Fort being retro courses, they are the only retro courses in Mario Kart DS to not have a prefix in its name.

In Shine Runners, there are nine possible spawning locations for the Shine Sprites, with six located on ground level and three more on the wire mesh area.

There are two glitches in this version that impact gameplay: If two players enter a pipe at the same time as each other, one player will be warped as normal, but the other will end up falling out of bounds and will be brought back by Lakitu. Also, it is possible to fall off the track when getting hit by an item such as a shell or a Bob-omb at the right moment while driving through one of the pipes.

Missions

There is one mission that takes place on Pipe Plaza:

• Mission 3-5: The player controls Yoshi, who must pass through 8 gates within 45 seconds.

Gallery

• 

  The course logo in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

• 

  A Bob-omb Blast battle at Pipe Plaza in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

• 

  The course icon in Mario Kart DS

Additional names

Internal names

Game	File	Name	Meaning
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!		Mini8.arc	Mini course 8
Mario Kart DS		mini_dokan_gc	Mini Pipe GameCube

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning	Notes
Japanese	どかんひろば[?] Dokan Hiroba	Pipe Plaza
French	Square Tuyau[?]	Pipe Square
German	Röhren-Platz[?]	Tubes Square
Italian	Tubitunnel[?]	Pipes Tunnel
Korean	토관 광장[?] Togwan Gwangjang	Pipe Square
Spanish	Plaza Tuberías[?]	Pipes Plaza

Trivia

Pipe Plaza in the kiosk demo for Mario Kart DS

• In a pre-release version of Mario Kart DS, there was a sunset background instead of a daytime sky as in its original appearance. This was changed in the final version.