Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Release Date: April 27, 2008
Genre: Kart Racing
ESRB Rating: Everyone

The original Mario Kart on the SNES all but invented the mascot kart racing genre, with numerous imitators springing up in its wake, including Crash Team Racing, Chocobo Racing, Digimon Racing, and many more. Few have been able to come close to Mario Kart’s quality or success though, with each subsequent Mario Kart release reaffirming that it is still firmly on top of the kart racing heap.

Mario Kart Wii is no different. Though by no means revolutionary, it gives gamers more of what they want from the series, with more characters, more tracks and more multiplayer battle options.

Game-play consists of manoeuvring your way through a multitude of obstacles, driving over power-up boxes that give you items that can be used to help you or hinder your opponents, drifting through tight corners, and always keeping an ever watchful eye out for the scattered zip pads and stunt ramps which offer speed boosts.

Yes, stunt ramps are a new addition to the Mario Kart formula, as are motorbikes. All vehicles have multiple ratings categories, and are further broken down into classes. Characters are restricted to using the vehicles in one class, and tinkering with different character and vehicle combinations is a good deal of fun. Vehicles handle differently, and motorbikes add the option of performing speed-boosting wheelies into the mix, giving you many hard decisions on which to choose.

While the game can be a blast to play alone, multiplayer is truly where it shines. Whether duking it out in full field races with your friends, or competing in battle tournaments online, the tight controls, excellent course design, including numerous classic courses from Mario Kart’s of yore, and great balance all combine to make Mario Kart Wii a thrill to play against others.

The multiplayer aspect has been greatly expanded with a full set of online features, including leaderboards, and team battles. The classic balloon battles are back, but in a somewhat disappointing twist, they require you to be part of a randomly determined team, eliminating the great free-for-alls of battle modes past. Another mode is coin runner, which has you charging around the courses picking up coins, with the team with the most coins as time runs out being declared the victor.

Course design is without a doubt the one area that sets Mario Kart above all the others, making all game modes better as a result. The courses feature a nice ramping of difficulty as you progress through the tracks, and have the perfect blend of risk/reward elements and unique obstacles and features to make each track uniquely enjoyable. The risky shortcuts and possibility of disaster lurking around every corner means that no race is ever won until the bitter end.

The graphics are sharp and colourful, with classic tracks brought to stunning new life, and a smooth frame rate. The frame rate takes a slight hit in split screen, but remains more than solid. Music is bouncy and jazzy, but speeds up and turns sinister and eerie as the races hit the final stretch, a technique that’s been used since the first game to great effect. The sound effects and voice work are solid.

The Wii Wheel is for all intents and purposes just a glorified version of the Wii remote, but is still a blast to play around with, and feels great in your hands. It has the perfect weight and feel, and the B button on the backside of it is large and should be easily reached by gamers of any hand size.

There’s always the issue of responsiveness with the wheel or remote though, and for a game requiring such precise actions and timing, you may be better served using a traditional control pad, at least for matches or races you desperately want to win.

Mario Kart Wii continues to build upon the solid foundation of its predecessors with some new innovations and the same classic game-play. Gamers of all ages should have a blast playing this game, online or off.

News: The Wii Wheel which comes packed with every copy of Mario Kart Wii can also be configured to play with other games which utilize similar steering configuration. It’s expected that more games in the future will be designed more specifically for the Wii Wheel as well.