Mario Kart DS RetroAchievements

I loved and grinded this game a shitton as a kid. I remember seeing some fake speedrun on Delfino Square. They claimed having world record, while they just used some 200+cc cheat code. I was able to beat that time and back then I was really proud of it. Anyway I thought this will be pretty fun, since the set looked quite decent as well, but the 3 star grinding was absolute misery. You have to get 3 stars on every single cup and the problem is getting 3 stars feels completely random. For one you have to win every race and then you have to meet some hidden driving score and that driving score makes no sense. You are not allowed to hit too many walls or get hit by other items and shouldn't drive off road. We also thought it might be influenced by how much you drift or how much time you spent in first place. However it was just a gamble and you can't convince me it's not complete rng. For example I had multiple really good attempts for the banana cup, which ended with only 2 stars and then my attempt that got 3 stars wasn't even super great and I hit a car on the final track. And even worse example was the lightning cup. I got hit by a few blue shells and we don't even know if those lower the score as well, but overall that attempt was really clean and I ended up getting 2 stars and then I had an attempt where I got lightning shocked and fell down on RR, which ended up getting the 3 star rank. Falling down is the by far worst thing that can happen and almost always kill getting 3 stars. How is an attempt that is overall not any worse, besides getting hit by s few blues, only giving 2 stars then??? After that misery grind was done, the set became a lot more fun. The getting golds with certain characters and karts achievements were a bit random, but not too bad. The time trials weren't really punishing, just the handling on certain karts were a bit of a pain. Anyway remaining achievements and the mission mode was pretty fun.