The Nintendo Wii: Mario Kart's Newest Chapter

As soon as I was home for the weekend, and took one look at the accessories with the newest version of the Mario Kart series, I knew it was a good buy.

The reason? Steering wheels!

It's a concept that falls right in line with everything else Nintendo has done with the Wii- take something very simplistic, insert a Wii-mote, and voila! The Playstation 2 has had wheel-and-pedal sets out- I have one sitting around for the Gran Turismo series. But Nintendo doesn't need pedals- instead, you get a wheel with a place for your Wii-mote in the middle, and thus your new controller is set. (See the picture) The brake and acceleration are side-by-side (1 is stop/reverse, 2 is go), and firing weapons is within thumb's reach as well (hit an arrow). Need to slide around a corner? The B button on the back is what you'll need.

But it's not just the controller that makes the game fun; I mean, sure, having a wheel that has your acceleration, brake, drift, and turn controls all in one (without the need of a pedal) makes things great, but it's useless if the game itself is no fun, right? Well, Nintendo has that covered as well. Sporting 16 new tracks and then 16 old favorites selected from all previous games, the racer can still compete in Grand Prix mode (each a series of 4 races) on three different levels: 50, 100 an 150 cc, just as the older games. But the level of difficulty is also different: As Mario Kart Wii allows the player to race on both bikes and karts, 50 cc is for karts only, 100 cc is for bikes only, and 150 cc is a combination of both (you select which one you'll race with).

The player can also participate in Time Trials and Battles. Time Trials can be run on any track, and if chosen, a player's time can be made into a ghost for he/she to race against. Times can also be sent online, so you can see just how fast you are compared to the rest of your country/region and the world.

New to the series is the ability to play battle with only 1 player. With 5 new tracks and 5 old ones to select from, the player is put in the middle of a 6-on-6 war in one of two modes: Balloon Battle, in which points are scored by hitting your opponent with weapons but a point is lost every time you lose all 3 balloons, and Coin Collection, where the team that collects the most coins wins, but being hit with a weapon causes your coins to be scattered around you. Even with 11 CPUs throwing down, it's still easy to get lost in the fracas, even if there are no foreseeable unlockables to be gained. It's a nice change from the racing.

The selection for the player has been improved- each character begins with 3 different karts and bikes to choose from with more earned later, and Mario and the usual gang are still available, but there are many unlockable racers as well, including Dry Bones, Baby Bowser, and Rosalina (from Super Mario Galaxy).

The in-game play is, in a word...fun! If the player gets too far behind, the weapons, which also sports a new lineup (now including Bullet Bill and a Giant Mushroom), begin to shift towards getting the player back into the thick of things. Are you stomping the competition? That'll change- because other characters will begin hurling Bloopers, Red Shells, and the so-irritating Blue Shell at you to reel you back in. It keeps the player just ahead or just behind, which ratchets the adrenaline factor to the maximum at almost all times.

Multiplayer has two dimensions: Local or online. Locally, two to four people can throw down in a battle or go wheel-to-wheel in a field of 12 to win a Grand Prix. It's online where Nintendo has proven themselves yet again, however. One or two people can jump to the net on a single Wii, and participate in a Single Race ("Vs.") or Battle against people from their region or around the world. As there is no microphone attachment to the Wii, language and profanity is not a problem, keeping the experience enjoyable for everyone. But the competitiveness is still there- after each race or battle, players gain/lose VR points, which tells other players just how good you are. It's a fair ranking system that keeps the feeling something's at stake the whole time.

Finally, there is a Mario Kart Wii channel, where one can check rankings, compare them to friends, race ghosts in more Time Trials, and enter Tournaments, where the player races through one course and completes a specific objective in the fastest time possible. For example, the current Tournament until May 24th is to go through every gate in order on GBA Battle Course 3. All times can be sent to the Leaderboard, where once again you can see how you stack up to the rest of the world.

In all, Mario Kart Wii takes full advantage of the Wii system and Nintendo's creativity to bring any family a boatload of fun! The graphics are wonderful, the new tracks playable time and again, and the online capabilities make this the best game in the Mario Kart series so far.

Rating: 9 out of 10