Mario Kart Wii Review

No Mario Kart reached more homes than this one until Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and the reasons are easy to see. Nintendo pushed the field to twelve racers, added motorbikes alongside karts, gave every jump a midair trick worth a burst of speed, and boxed the game with the Wii Wheel, a plastic shell for the remote that let anyone steer by turning it. Its thirty two tracks, half of them new, include some of the series' best loved courses, Coconut Mall, Maple Treeway and Moonview Highway among them.

Online play is the other half of the legacy. Races and battles for up to twelve players ran smoothly over Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection, and the community kept going through fan made mods long after the official servers closed in 2014.

What critics fault is fairness. Twelve racers plus aggressive items, the blue shell above all, mean no lead is ever safe, and computer rivals rubber band in a way that rewards luck over skill, especially at higher speeds. The visuals are bright and clean without pushing the Wii, and there is no story to speak of, as usual for the series, which is why that mark sits well below the rest. As a party game it is close to perfect; as a competitive racer it is a lottery with steering.