Mario Kart Wii

Mario Kart for Nintendo Wii

Welcome to the party Wii friends, you’ve arrived just in time for things to really get started.

Mario Kart, then; it’s been around for so long you’d expect Martin Scorsese to have made a movie about it by now. What we’re trying to say is that Mario Kart could be the Rolling Stones of videogames (in which case Donkey Kong would be Bo Diddley). Its retro history dates as far back as the Super NES, and there have been iterations for Nintendo consoles ever since. It is a legend.

Folks can get very personal about which era of Mario Kart is their fave. Personally I’ve always held the original above all others though the DS version comes close. The only reason I cannot say for sure whether the N64 or GameCube versions trump one or both of the above is because I never had enough friends around to play them with me. It’s called getting old.

One of the first reasons I want to tell you that Mario Kart Wii is superb, then, is because of the silky smooth online mode. Five out of five races and battles held this morning worked perfectly, no lag issues, not even a hint that this was being played across a network. All I knew is that Tomoko from Japan knew all the shortcuts and I’d accidentally chosen Automatic drift for my off-road vehicle on a circuit that demanded lots of manually activated drift turbos and not a lot of off-roading at all.

Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked here. Online Mario Kart is the original Dream Come True. I’m almost tempted to stop the review right here because what else do you need to know? Okay, in truth, there’s plenty.

Where to start…? Okay, the bikes! Traditionally in Mario Kart you get your beginners’ 50cc, moving on through 100cc, until you’re skilled enough to brave the 150cc tournament. We’ve been able to choose other characters’ ridiculous mobiles before now, but never has an entire race class been the reserve of two-wheel motors. Well this is a tough one to call so early in the life (cough) cycle, to be honest. I neither loved nor hated watching Donkey Kong leaning into the bends, speedway style. But I guarantee this weekend I’ll be losing races to kids that got the hang of these things because I can already sense the potential of zipping across rather than sliding through corners. Riding the razor’s edge, born to be wild, could be awesome.

Now that we’ve got the two (potentially) major bugbears out of the way we can relax into the overall package here. In simple terms, this is the original character-theme go-kart racer custom built for Wii. Only Nintendo has this power to wield. So how doth it wield? Very well, indeed, much to the relief of yours truly.

The basic premise is to either ‘Race’ or ‘Battle’ as one of the famous Super Mario entourage. You can Race or Battle solo, online (see above), or against up to three other people using four-player split screen in the same living room on the same TV. Among the ‘Over 30 Courses’ as stated on the box you’ll encounter familiar Mario locations old and new, indeed you’ll be Racing / Battling on some retro circuits / arenas too including SNES Ghost House and N64 Koopa Beach. Yippee.

In the races you’ve items to collect that will help you to gain the advantage by fair means or foul. We’d class using Turbo Mushrooms as fair. Transforming into a guided missile is decidedly unfair, but very funny. We suppose that the races are where you’ll grow to love or hate the motion-sensing control styles available, especially the one that incorporates the Wii Wheel. It works fine, and is fun, but when things start to get serious we suspect we’ll be reaching for the GameCube or Classic controllers for precision manoeuvres. But we’ll see in the long run how this pans out. Credit to Nintendo for at least giving us several configurations to choose from.

Hand on heart I’ve never been much of a fan for the Battle mode in Mario Kart. It’s the same jive here, collecting coins or popping balloons faster than anyone else does while staying out of harm’s way. Got to say, though, that the new roulette stage looks very impressive and is a clever idea, so must investigate further this time. Honestly it means a lot for me to say that there’s potential for a lot of fun here; I’ve been ignoring Battle mode since 1992.

And so that would seem to be that, pretty much. The game looks awesome at all times, big and bold, bright and colourful, never a technical glitch, and especially impressive online. I’d rather race my friends on Mario Kart Wii than Forza on Xbox, but that’s just personal preference. You might hate silly cartoon stuff, and daft weapons that will knock you back into 12th after leading for two laps. This is all up to you.

I need a good closing comment here, otherwise this historic Mario Kart review will really suck. So here goes: Despite many, many imitations and tributes to the basic Mario Kart formula down the years (and I include Wipeout in all this) there has never, ever been one to trump the real deal. It’s just too early to proclaim Mario Kart Wii as the best MK of all time, because even the SNES game took months to appreciate. However Nintendo has gone all out to make this the Wii-most Mario Kart that is humanly possible, and it really shows. It’ll never get boring, it’ll never get old, it’s a game that every household with a Wii should consider owning after Wii Sports and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. For some people this could be the game that convinces them to buy a Wii in the first place. So that’s why we’re giving it…

6 out of 5