Mario Kart Wii
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 Mario Kart Wii! Wa-hoo!
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Mario Kart Wii (MKW for short) is a racing game for the Wii serving as a spin-off game for the Mario series. It was developed and published by Nintendo in 2008 worldwide, then in South Korea in 2009. It is the sixth main installment in the Mario Kart series.
Why It's A BAM! SHOCK DODGE!
- It has one of the best character rosters in the Mario Kart series with 25 playable characters in total, including the Mii, which marks the first appearance of Miis in the series. Miis can have 2 outfits, one that is a racing driver costume, and the other one that is Mario's outfit or Peach's outfit, depending on their gender. They also have different weights, depending on their size.
- It's the second Mario Kart game with online play, but unlike Mario Kart DS which had limited features when online play is involved, Mario Kart Wii has full functionality with online, as twelve players can play and all tracks are available to be played. Sadly, Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection was shut down in 2014, but it's still possible through many WFC replacement servers, such as Wiimmfi. Retro Rewind, a mod for the game, has its own private server called Retro WFC. Plus, if you're on Dolphin, you don't need to dump a NAND from a real Wii while using Retro WFC!
- Great and creative racing tracks, such as Coconut Mall and Maple Treeway.
- The POW Block and Mega Mushroom, while less effective versions of the Lightning and Star respectively, are pretty interesting items: the former pounds every racer ahead of the user, making them lose their items in the process, unless they are in mid-air and the latter lets the player grow big and flatten other opponents.
- Excellent visuals and graphics, even by early 2008 standards.
- One of the game's coolest features are stunts. These are poses that you can perform after jumping from a ramp or a trampoline by shaking the Wii remote or pressing a directional button on a normal controller a mini-boost while in mid-air, whose duration depends on what you're jumping from. And although it's easy to perform and repetitive, it's still a nice transition from the previous game.
- Variety of items to help you during the race, such as the Mega Mushroom, the Red Shell and the Green Shell.
- It introduced motorcycles that can be controlled by the players. While unfairly superior to karts, these motorcycles also have advantages, such as performing wheelies and driving inwards for some of them. These also come with a downside of being lightweight, meaning they can easily be pushed away by a heavier vehicle, and also lacking the capability of performing super mini-turbos.
- Speaking of which, the difference between karts and bikes is much bigger in this game than it is in Mario Kart 8.
- Like Mario Kart: Super Circuit and DS, it has retro tracks from the previous Mario Kart games, except there are many more.
- Made use of the Wii driving wheel peripheral like you are driving a car. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of not being able to use the directional button to steer when using just the Wii Remote (which by the way is still considered as using the Wii Wheel even if one is not attached).
- The Bullet Bill lasts longer in this game than any other Mario Kart game it appears in.
- The game introduces races with 12 people instead of 8, which also worked online like mentioned above. This concept has been reproduced in Mario Kart 8, the next entry for a home console, as Mario Kart 7 had races with only 8 racers again.
- This is the first game in the series to contain a cameo from another Nintendo franchise. You can now drive the Blue Falcon as a light character! Yes, Captain Falcon's trusty racing ship from F-Zero.
- Rosalina and Funky Kong make their first appearances in the series.
- Battle Mode is even better than before, although only being in teams.
- It has plenty of controller options, as it can be alternatively controlled by the Wii Remote, with or without a Nunchuck or the Classic Controller, or even the GameCube Controller.
- Much better selection of retro tracks compared to Mario Kart DS, most which keep their original themes from their games instead. Unlike the former, more interesting courses were added such as N64 Bowser's Castle, GCN Waluigi Stadium, GCN DK Mountain, and DS Peach Gardens.
- The game has been kept alive by a custom WFC service called Wiimmfi, released as a result of the upcoming shutdown of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service in May 2014, and even by a modding community, 16 years after the game's release!
- The attention to detail in the game is great, from the dancing trees to the bob-omb dangling its feet when holding it behind you, the developers and modelers have thought of it all to make the game as lively as possible.
Bad Qualities
- Some of the characters and vehicles are unbalanced. For example, the motorcycles, mainly the ones that drift inward, are mostly superior to karts as you can abuse the wheelie mechanic to drive even faster than the karts with a motorcycle. Not only that, but even if the wheelie ends automatically, you can perform it again (Meaning you can chain the wheelies together and keep speeding up). And most notably, Funky Kong and Daisy are extremely overpowered, and overused on online play. This is due to the fact that Funky Kong and Daisy are the fastest characters in the entire game, and are most commonly used with the Flame Runner (Bowser Bike in the PAL copy of the game) and Mach Bike respectively, which combines good speed and weight with good drift and mini-turbo.
- Speaking of characters and vehicles, you have to unlock Expert Staff Ghosts in order to even get some of them, but unlocking Expert Staff Ghosts is one of the most painstaking ways of unlocking characters or vehicles. Fortunately, most characters allow you to bypass this by just playing a certain amount of races, and Rosalina can be unlocked rather quickly by having a Super Mario Galaxy save file and then playing 50 races.
- However, the racing criteria to unlock some characters and/or vehicles is ridiculous. While Diddy Kong and King Boo are pretty easy to unlock because they only require you to play 450 and 750 races respectively, other characters like Baby Daisy require you to play 1,950 races. Another infamous example is Dry Bowser, who costs at least 4,350 races to unlock, and if you don't have a copy of Super Mario Galaxy, Rosalina costs 4,950 races to unlock, which is just shameful. Similarly, the Jetsetter, which is the fastest vehicle in the game, but has the worst handling in the game, requires you to play 4,500 races unless you earn at least a one star rank on all 150cc Retro Cups.
- The lightweight characters can easily be knocked all over the place by the heavyweights and can fly further when the jump off ramps, which is a huge problem to any players using a lightweight character. (Especially since you travel faster on the ground than in the air in this game.)
- The Wii Wheel, while innovative, is gimmicky and a bit hard to control. Most of the time, the turning rate does not register properly to the Wii remote's gyroscope, as you can easily end up drifting without intending to. However, using the Wii Remote and Nunchuck or the GameCube controller controls much better, with the included analog sticks.
- For some reason, you can only play Battle Mode in teams, which is a questionable idea, because most entries of the franchise had Battle Mode in FFA along with teams.
- On the PAL version, playing the game at 50hz can improve the display quality from 480i to 576i, but it has a downside of reducing the framerate to half due to technical limitations. Although this is optional, as this option can be changed in the settings of the Wii's system software.
- The game is strict when it comes to switching controllers. If you want to perform this action, you have to go to the menu to do so; in the gameplay, however, this is not possible.
- Some items are flawed:
- The Fake Item Box is once again colored red, much like in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! On top of that, its size has increased, making it even easier to distinguish from real Item Boxes. However, experienced players have found a way to disguise it by dragging it and dropping it as soon as they pick up another item.
- It introduced the Thunder Cloud item, which is easily the worst in the Mario Kart series. It is a double-edged sword, while it actively harms the user more than it helps, it also grants the racer a speed boost and the ability to drive on off-road terrain, giving a riskier gameplay for those who want to cut off time, and. The item has never returned in a future Mario Kart installment.
- The POW block, while not technically bad as it can make others lose their items, is pretty easy to dodge as it requires performing a stunt at the moment the POW block shakes the floor, and not to mention that most of the players' time in the racing is them being in the air, making them immune to this item.
- The CPU rubberbands heavily in 150cc Grand Prix races, probably due to the increased amount of racers on the track. Youtuber Darkykitty reported a CPU speed glitch on one of the custom cups of Mario Kart Wii: CTGP Revolution.
- The item distribution is rather questionable. A good example of why this is the case is the fact that you can get a single Red Shell if you are anywhere from 1st to 8th place. Another example is how CPUs can get a POW Block as low as 10th place. What makes it even more dreadful is that the item distribution depends on the place you are in and not the distance from the racer that precedes you, although not a big issue in general, but it can cause you to easily lose a race if you are too far from the other racers especially on races with 6 players or less. However, this item balance isn't as severe as Mario Kart 8, which had the item balance based on distance rather than placement.
- The character models look out of place and look like they did in Double Dash, but with upscaled textures. In fact, on the character select screen, the characters who appeared in Double Dash had their models and animations outright reused. This is a bit odd considering that Super Mario Galaxy was better-looking, and came out a year before this one.
- The game has way too many ultra shortcuts, which are considered candidates for being the most broken in the entire franchise. These shortcuts can allow players to cheat during races by finishing laps faster than intended, by jumping into decorations or performing super jumps as an example. There are ways to patch shortcuts using cheat codes, and is utilized on Wiimmfi servers and multiple custom track distributions. Despite this, they are incredibly useful in speedrunning (such as in locations Wario's Gold Mine, Mushroom Gorge, Rainbow Road and Grumble Volcano for example)
Trivia
- This is the first game where there is no Friendly-Fire in team races and battles due to the fact that there is colored bubbles in this, unlike DS, 8, and Tour.
- This game has spawned many content creators like PKSPARKXX, MrBean35000VR, & the most known, TWD98.
- Speaking of TWD98, he invented & popularized "BAM! SHOCK DODGE!", after playing as Dry Bones in the Magikruser in Maple Treeway. This later became an internet meme & a common phrase that people say after dodging a shock.
- The game was bundled with Wii Mini model during its lifespan.
- Mario Kart Wii was the first game since Super Mario Kart to implement the charge rate system for mini-turbos where a user must hold a drift for a set period of time to get a mini-turbo, or longer to get a super mini-turbo.
Hints
- To avoid being slowed down by the POW Block, do a well-timed hop before the third strike, do a wheelie (by pressing up on the D-pad, shaking the Wii Remote or lifting the Wii Remote [with the Nunchuk] on a bike) or shake the Wii Remote (on any vehicle).
- In the beginning of a race, you can get the best headstart by pressing the acceleration button shortly after the "2" starts to vanish.
- Airtime is a double-edged sword, while tricking grants a temporary speed boost upon hitting the ground, airtime slows you down tremendously
- If you have mushrooms that you are willing to use, don't trick mid-air, drive without tricking and use the mushroom when you hit the ground.
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