Mario Kart Wii

The lights are green on Mario Kart Wii, the latest iteration of the plumbers racing series and with the addition of bikes to the action, things don’t look to be slowing down.

Mario Kart Wii comes bundled with the new Nintendo Wii wheel. This is a shell for the wii remote that makes the driving experience more comfortable than holding the rectangular controller. Apart from extending the B button, the wheel does not actually change the way that the remote works, it is simply housing, as was the zapper controller. As you hold the wheel, you will instantly see how well designed it is because it feels very natural and the addition of an area so that the pointer on the wii remote can still work is a key addition- as anyone who played Guitar Hero 3 on the wii will tell you, it is very annoying having to take the wii remote out to select options. However, for those who don’t want to use the wheel, you can opt to use the classic controller, the Gamecube controller or the remote and nunchuck. Many people online choose to use the Gamecube controller as it seems to make a difference to their lap times. But you are rewarded for using the wheel, as when you have been using it for a while, you are given an image of a gold steering wheel above your character. This lets you know who is using what controller.

Speaking of the online play, the player and up to one friend on the same system in split-screen mode can race in 12 player brawls for position. This is amazingly fun but can be frustrating, when you lead the whole race but get bombarded by lucky items from players at the back of the course, only to finish 12! But this is just the spirit of Mario Kart I guess, items play an important role as usual. The higher the player finishes in the race, the more points they earn. Players start with 5000 race points and a win gives approximately 100 points, depending on the amount of racers and a loss is minus 100 points. This system allows users to compare themselves and how good they are. However, losing these points in the circumstances described above is extremely annoying. But this just shows how amazingly addictive the online mode is as you’ll want to not stop until you earn your points back. This same structure applies to the online battle mode, with 12 players either trying to get the most hits for their team in the traditional balloon battle or collecting the most coins in a level.

There are a total of 32 tracks – 16 new and 16 retro tracks, compiled from older Mario Kart games and there are 26 characters to unlock, including the normal Mario gang, some new additions and the ability to use your Mii in two different costume variants, the second of which is the ultimate test of skill to unlock, but I won’t spoil how it’s done for you. Every character is split into a weight category; light, medium and heavy. Lighter characters tend to be fast accelerators and heavy people have high top speeds, but the main difference is the vehicles they can use. In addition to the traditional karts, there are now motorbikes in the game and each group of characters can use the bikes and karts designed for their weight, but in their own colours. A nice touch is that if your Mii is really thin and small, they will be a light character and if they are tall and fat, they will be heavy. If they are normal they will be medium.

The Mario Kart channel is a feature that allows you to view your friend roster, send friend invites to your friends through the wii message board, send time trial data to friends and enter competitions set by Nintendo. This can be accessed from a menu option in the game, or can be added to the Wii menu, so that you can check on your friends without the game disc.

Overall, Mario Kart Wii is a great Wii game, offering fun and addictive multiplayer mayhem on split-screen 4 players or online and the single player is fun too, as you try to unlock everything. This is a must-buy game for all Wii owners, especially if you have the ability to connect your Wii to the internet. The only slight thing lacking with the game is that the more players that are racing on the same screen, the less the visual quality becomes due to a frame rate drop, but this is not really visible as you’re trying to hard to win.