Historical accuracy in a game which revolves around fantasy characters coming out of a sphere and fighthing? Why is it needed? What are you talking about?
So, you basically want to make Diddy Kong Racing/Banjo Pilot?
Mario Kart 64 characters are in fact animated 2d textures (two for each pose, head and body/kart), so my guess that's going to take a reaaally long time to pull off correctly, since there are dozens and dozens of animations :P
Also...
i like the idea of a monochrome one for heavy light conditions, maybe i could make it automatically switch to that with a setting that enables monitoring of the light condition through the camera