So . . . Mario Kart

[Zeta]

I've been having a lot of fun with it. My only complaints is that some of the unlock requirements for these vehicles are outrageous (beat the staff extra special ghosts) and that you can't control bikes with a Wii Wheel if you want to have any shot at actually winning.

One nice thing (sort of) is that, as far as I can tell, the GC/Classic pad has no handicaps on it at all, everything you can do with the wheel you can do with it, and you can ready an item behind you without dropping it, to easily block red shells. With the wheel, you automatically throw items when you trigger them, so trying to block an incoming shell requires incredible timing. What the hell?

Weird. I've been able to drag items with the wheel, but not in Battle Mode, just in Grand Prix. Curious.

[G.Silver]

It turns out I was doing it wrong, pressing left or right on the pad will allow a drag (but holding the D-pad while using the wheel is amazingly counter-intuitive). I haven't done Battle mode.

[Tsuyoshi-kun]

The reception to the game seems to be universally lukewarm.

I just want to know when the SNES Super Mario Kart will be available from Virtual Console.

Beats me, and I don't care because I already own Super Mario Kart.

Incidentally, I find every Mario Kart game, aside from 64 and Super Circuit, better than the original.

[Shadow Hog]

I always kind of preferred MK64 to the first SMK, actually. See, MK64 I can play... SMK, not so much.

[Tsuyoshi-kun]

Because the CPU are cheating bastards on any difficulty above 50cc in Super Mario Kart? And people complain how the item whoring of the CPU in the DS and Wii versions. You just have to deal with it. I've managed to get A and even double-star ratings on 150cc and Mirror in Mario Kart DS: it's not THAT hard (save Yoshi Falls. I could never get in first in that damn track).

[Zeta]

OK, the AI in Mario Kart Wii 150cc has the cheapest item distribution powers of any game in the series. Ever. That's saying something. It used to be that even for the CPU, Blue Shells and Lightning were rare - you'd only see them once a race each at most. Now in Wii, 150cc circuit means that you're going to see each at least 3-6 times a race. And you won't be getting them. The AI will be. Constantly. 11 savage opponents all with a hoarde of weaponry out to seek you, specifically. And the worst part is, that you actually need to finish the fucking thing because there's a ton of unlockable karts and racers. Which you will probably never see.

And don't even get me started on the unlock conditions for staff ghosts. Did they actually expect humans to be able to play this game?

[G.Silver]

So it turns out you can totally snake it up! I don't know how many vehicle+character combinations (probably plenty) can do it, but I used Yoshi on the medium bike with the lowest drift rating and his drift is so wide that he can easily charge mini boosts on most straightaways. Of course, like Snaking in any other game, it's dangerous and easy to get pounded if you do it at the wrong time, and with bikes as an option, I wonder if just popping wheelies on the straights accomplishes the same thing.

[Zeta]

I'm going to have to practice snaking just to beat the fucking one-player campaign.

[K2J]

I got it, and while Grand Prix does, of course, reek with cheap AI, the online is an absolute blast. I have noticed lag like once, and it was only for the animation of the Red Shell warning sprite. Battle Mode's a lot cooler online, as well. If there were one game that needed voice chat, this would be it, but sadly, you only get PSO-style phrases and only when with Friends. Regardless, this is a step in the right direction. I'm actually thinking that Nintendo has some servers this time around (unlike the previous ones, where the server was for matchmaking only and you connected to each other directly). In fact, there's even an option (though somewhat hidden) to just send invites to people who are already your Wii friends, preventing you from worrying about Friend Codes at all. Speaking of which...

MKWii Friend Code is 4382-2671-2723.

[Arcade]

I Arcade of the Master system thinks that the Wii Mario kart sucks, and is not because of the Wii mote. Is because they fixed something that wasnt broken. The Wii Mario Kart game makes Double Dash look awesome, and I used to hate it...

I think that when Nintendo is going good( And this is the first time Nintendo is going good since the Nes Era) They get lazy and dont do they best in making cool games. Super Mario Galazy is neat, but way back in the Gamecube times Nintendo had more than one cool game to make people go and buy their videogame console.

[Majestic Joey]

I finally got to play it at a friend's house. The game was really easy and pretty fun until the Wii mote got passed to me. That's when that game started to suck. I tried it with just the wii mote, then the wheel, and then the nunchucks. It felt like a handicap because before that I was owning everybody with the classic controller.

[DackAttac]

I felt like this was an exercise in futility. I knew it'd be worth the purchase since the majority of multiplayer video games at my social events has been equal parts Wii Sports and Mario Kart GCN, but aside from some really desperate attempts at novelty (driving through a mall? Isn't there some shitty Tom Arnold movie about that?) the courses are just more complex versions of what we've already had.

And Christ, the items. That whole fray's been exacerbated by the addition of four more racers, so these cheap bastards are being handed out to even more people more frequently. If you're in the lead, be prepared to deflect red shells (the radar is the only good thing they've added here) with a blooper-painted windshield just to get robbed of the lead by a blue shell. Well, you can recover, right? Mmm, probably not if the swarm comes through. A slew of racers bump into you, resetting your recovery each time. Then a bullet-ized racer rips through and causes you to spin out again. Then a heavy-class racer just bumps you off the road, into nothingness/lava/water/death of choice. All with no way to dodge any of this. By the time Lakitu gets you back on the track, it's no exaggeration to expect to be dead last. This happened to me at the end of the race, and I swear to God I've never been so close to killing someone.

Back on an earlier version, a friend of mine once commented that I was losing because I was wasting my items, namely the mushrooms. I'd just get the boost of speed on a straightaway and be good, but he showed me that I should save them for curves with no fence where I can blast over the terrain without slowing down and just make a colossal shortcut for myself. Some the courses were even designed to hold some really bitchin' shortcuts if you know what to save your mushroom for. And so I peeled a layer back to find a whole new level of strategy. Now on the Wii version I peeled that layer back to find I will get blindsided by lightning bolts, POW blocks, and other cheap item thieves. I'm all for mixing it up with the items to keep things from getting too monotonous, but can't you come up with anything better than "makes player X spin out and lose their items, the end"?

It's still a decent multiplayer game, but to paraphrase It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "Phh, there's no strategy here. Just a bunch of guys beating the Christ out of each other."

[G.Silver]

Going through 150cc now, I'm beginning to get the feeling that the AI is playing some sick kind of psychological game with me. It's like it decides, based on my performance, if I've EARNED that first or not, and then it seems like it gives it to me. I'd chalk this up to just random chance ultimately balancing out, dropping back to 12th and getting lucky with a Bullet or something, but when I've been decidedly passed by two CPU opponents on the last lap and then get handed a Red Shell--I take out the first one, and then the other runs into a wall on a straightaway right before the finish. He just runs into it! I've seen this happen more than once, at critical moments the CPU just swerves off the road and gives me victory, as if after raping me over and over, this is the only way to keep me from selling the game back to EB or something.

I think the rankings are in on it to, because if I take a dive, usually my closest rivals take them too. Not enough to give it to me, but enough to come in 3rd. It's like it's hard for me NOT to come in 3rd. Do they think that shitty bronze trophy makes me happy? Because it fucking doesn't!

[Locit]

Welcome to socialism, Silv! It kind of fucking sucks!