A Classic Is Reborn

Long have we been waiting for it, finally it's here: the latest installment of Mario Kart has just arrived for the Wii. And to just make it clear in the beginning: those who've liked the previous versions of Nintendo's top fun racer will also like the Wii version.

As it's been the case since the SNES version, characters from all around the Mario universe come together and make out the top driver among them. After creating your driver profile, choose your game mode, your favorite driver and vehicle and finally the race type. Now the fun starts - you'll steer your driver through different courses, collect items such as mushrooms, shells and bananas granting you the ability of quick turbos or to hit your enemies, beat your own track times or fight a big battle royale for balloons or coins alone or with friends.

The first thing you'll probably tackle in one-player mode are the Grand Prix races. One of these consists of four tracks with three laps each. Difficulty increases with increasing motor power, from 50 ccm to 150 ccm. While the 50 ccm cups are rather easily won, the 150 ccm one will also require a lot of luck (or hours of training). By winning the available race cups you'll unlock new ones, just as one would expect. By fulfilling certain requirements - mostly being fast enough and winning cups - you'll not only unlock new courses but also new drivers and vehicles. Overall there are sixteen new tracks and an additional 16 remade older tracks from previous Mario Kart games. Pure nostalgia! Add to this some new and old multiplayer stages, twelve initially available and twelve unlockable characters with three car options each, you get yourself a big heap of options and fun.

The controls and basic gameplay pretty much work like they always did with two buttons for acceleration and braking/going backwards/initiating drifting and the the direction pad for item usage. For the actual steering you can either use an analog stick or the motion sensing of the Wiimote. Nintendo did an excellent job implementing all possible control pad devices, from the classic controller to the Gamecube one and the Wii remote in two configurations. The most fun, of course, is the steering wheel that's sold with the game. You plug in your Wiimote and get started. Even though it did take me a bit of time to get used to (it's been my first experience with that peripheral add-on), this is probably as close as you can get to simulating a fun racer with no claim of real-life physics. If you want to go for the best times, however, either the Gamecube pad or the classic controller offer the slightly better reaction time of the analog stick compared to the motion sensing of the Wiimote.

Now what's new in Mario Kart Wii compared to the previous versions? Drifting is still in the game and an important technique, but it takes longer until you get a small speed boost, so the infamous 'snaking' technique is less easily doable. To make up for that, you can perform stunts (just flick your Wiimote) whenever you leave the ground, e.g. make jumps over track obstacles, which nets you a small boost. The same goes for driving in an opponent's slip stream. And there's a new class of vehicles besides karts: namely bikes. They allow you to perform wheelies to gain a speed boost. But take care, while you drive on your back wheel only, steering is almost impossible and you're more vulnerable to hits from enemies. Unfortunately, in my opinion, jumping was not brought back.

More fun with Wii, the best Mario game in Year 2008

If you are a Wii fan, then you must own this game for sure. We have played Wii since early 2007 and been kind of bored and upset for some games already. Now, Mario Kart Wii for the Nintendo Wii, brings in all that fast-paced excitement racers have wanted and even more. Both my 5-year old boy and wife really love it and rate it as one of the best Wii games.

Graphics: A+

Sound: A-

Control: B+ for the Wii Wheel, but A+ for my boy

Fun & Enjoyment: A for solo gamers; A+ for multiplayer action

Especially, Mario and his friends are back and ready to race once again in Mario Kart Wii! Experience new tracks, enhanced Wii graphics, extraordinary gameplay and the addition of motorcycles surprisingly working well. Also, place first in Grand Prix circuits or clear skill-based missions to open up increasingly difficult and thrilling circuits. Besides, the game as a whole is easy to get into, the online play is well done, the items are imaginative, and of course, the multiplayer is spectacular fun. Now you can feel like your Mario and steering to avoid obstacles and doing incredible stunts - in the safety of your home of course.

All in all, Mario Kart Wii is a must buy for the Wii collection.

Great family-friendly fun

In an age where games are becoming more and more graphic with their realistic violence and mature with their subject-matter, it's great to know that there are some video game standbys that you can fall back on. Although Mario had his humble beginnings battling the wicked Donkey Kong in the early 80s, he really became the face of family-friendly video games when Nintendo started issuing Super Mario Bros. with its 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) back in the mid/late 80s, and the franchise has grown with each Nintendo console release. First, there were the simple platform games, which eventually evolved into 3-D exploration when 3-D gaming hardware took the mainstream. Then, there were the Mario Kart racing games.

Mario Kart Wii is the latest installment in the Mario Kart racing games, and it delivers all the expected joys of racing familiar characters and skewering them with turtle shells and bombs...ooh, nice animated violence! I have to admit that I skipped a generation or 2 of the Mario Kart games simply because I never owned a Game Cube or any of the portable handheld game systems (i.e., Gameboy, DS, etc.). If you are going to play Mario Kart, I strongly suggest that you play this with the Wii Wheel. I recall that back in the N64 days, learning to drive on a Nintendo controller had a bit of a learning curve. The Wii Wheel really smooths and eases that learning curve. You'll still have to deal with the occasional steering sensitivity problem, but I got the hang of driving with a Wii Wheel much faster than driving with a controller (which is still an option, by the way). Although gameplay is fairly straight-forward, there are a few nuances here and there (particularly maneuvering tips) that reading the manual beforehand helps out with. All in all, there's really nothing to complain about here. I absolutely love this game. Mario Kart Wii is a great game that both adults and children will enjoy thoroughly.

Now, let's just hope I don't envision turtle shells as I'm driving to work in my Civic.

Not bad, fun.

Mario Kart Wii is the latest addition to the Mario Kart franchise. It is released as a combination pack of the game and an additional wheel that your controller fits in to help you drive.

The game has a combination of 32 different courses in the championship mode. The courses are a combination of new courses designed for the Wii and classic courses from other Mario Kart games from Nintendo's past game systems.

The highlights about this game are:

Inclusion of 2 wheel bike type karts.
An in game stunt system! If you fly off a half-pipe or a jump you can do a stunt! When you land you get a speed boost.
The online play is nice. It is good to play against people online.

The bad:
Some of the power-up's are way to powerful and unbalanced. I was in last spot with 1/2 a track to go and picked up the super star. I finished first and beat my wife. :( She was not impressed that I could do that.
Entering "friend" codes to play online is tiresome.

4/5
Latsyrhc
Tamarack Collectibles

mario Kart WII w/ 1 racing wheel

this is a really fun multiplayern racing game...saved about 20 dollars on ebay which was great...you can use the wii remote or the racing wheel (up to three only) unless its online game...amazing graphics...takes some time to get used to the wheel...all the classic characters from nintendo are present and you can choose between carts and bikes or both before race...during single player game you work thru a series of races to win different cups then it unlocks further levels which takes some time so it seems likje this will keep me and my daughters attention for a good minute...also u need the wii remote to use each wheel...so i had to end up buying 2 extra wheels and another wii remote so all of us can play at same time...the cheaper pro wheels on ebay work fine jus dont have wii logo on them and are alittle lighter and took a few seconds longer to attach to wii remote.