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Mario Kart Wii with Wii Wheel
From Nintendo
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Product Description
Start your engines and race with Mario and his friends with their finely tuned racing machines in Mario Kart Wii. Use 3 different control styles with the Wii Wheel included in the box. The worldwide race is on with a whole new set of tricks, tracks, and ways to play. Mario Kart Wii draws on courses and battle arenas from every game in the series - not to mention tons of new ones. The true king of the Mushroom Kingdom racing circuits will finally be crowned. Experience new tracks, enhanced Wii graphics, extraordinary gameplay and much more. Place first in Grand Prix circuits or clear skill-based missions to open up increasingly difficult and thrilling circuits. You can have multiplayer races on any open courses or battle in arenas. Now you can feel like you are Mario and steering to avoid obstacles and doing incredible stunts.
Special Powers/Weapons/Moves/Features - Shake the Wii Remote to pull off a trick that will temporarily boost your speed. When riding a bike, gain additional speed by flicking the Wii Remote up and popping a wheelie Up to 12 people via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection or up to 10 people via Wi-Fi Connection with 2 people playing locally
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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #1 in Computer & Video Games
Brand: Nintendo
Model: rvlrrmce
Released on: 2008-04-27
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Dimensions: 4.00 pounds
Features
Wii Wheel must be used with a Wii Remote (Remote not included)
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Drivers, start your engines!
Nintendo is bringing Mario and his friends with their finely tuned racing machines back and this time to the Nintendo Wii. With 3 different control styles and a Wii Wheel included in the box, Mario Kart Wii is bound to be the best in the series. The worldwide race is on with a whole new set of tricks, tracks, and ways to play! Place first in Grand Prix circuits or clear skill-based missions. Mario Kart Wii draws on courses and battle arenas from every game in the series - not to mention tons of new ones - the true king of the Mushroom Kingdom racing circuits will finally be crowned.
Wii Wheel Included!
New Intense Tracks and Tricks View larger.
Cool new car designs View larger.
Mario and his friends are back and ready to race once again in Mario Kart Wii! Experience new tracks, enhanced Wii graphics, extraordinary gameplay and much more! Place first in Grand Prix circuits or clear skill-based missions to open up increasingly difficult and thrilling circuits. Players can have multiplayer races on any open courses or battle in arenas. Also included with Mario Kart Wii is the Wii Wheel! Now you can feel like your Mario and steering to avoid obstacles and doing incredible stunts - in the safety of your home of course.
Game Features:
The Wii Wheel transforms the Wii Remote™ controller into a steering wheel that feels natural in anyone's hands, while the Wii Remote and Nunchuk™ controller offer a classic control style for the Mario Kart veteran. In either configuration, players can perform speed-boosting tricks with a shake of the Wii Remote.
Players can race as their favorite Nintendo character, or even as themselves! Mario Kart Wii lets players race with their personalized Mii™ characters. And racers will see other Mii characters they have created cheering from the sidelines on some race courses.
Players can compete with up to three friends in their living room. Or challenge up to 11 opponents via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection in the biggest Mario Kart race yet. All tracks and modes of play are available via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, and players can visit the Mario Kart Channel to compete in tournaments, check rankings, see when their friends are playing and download ghost data.
Cruise new tracks and arenas or tour classic courses from Super Mario Kart™, Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and Mario Kart DS. Tired of riding on four wheels? Bust out one of the new motorbikes for special tricks and techniques.
Characters
Nintendo favorites Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Wario, Bowser and Toad, plus a host of new faces-including your own! Get into the game and put your Mii character behind the wheel.
Special Powers/Weapons/Moves/Features
Whether racing around an obstacle-filled track or battling in an arena, drifting and tossing items are the keys to Mario Kart success. Players can shake the Wii Remote while launching off a ramp to pull off a trick that will temporarily boost their speed. When riding a bike, players can gain additional speed by flicking the Wii Remote up and popping a wheelie
Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection:
Keeping in the tradition of Mario Kart, Nintendo has pushed multiplayer racingeven further utilizing the Wii's built in Wi-Fi Connection. There are two options for races and battles over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection: up to 12 people via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection or up to 10 people via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection with two people playing locally.
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Customer Reviews
A ruined classic
I have owned every Mario Kart game, and consider myself to be a bit of an addict, spending embarrassing amounts of time practicing things such as power sliding on straight aways and downing suckaz with simple items such as banana peels. So needless to say, I was very excited for a mario kart game that would allow me to showcase my skills online, and relive memories with old multiplayer comrades who have since moved to other parts of the country.
Imagine my surprise when I put the disc in and discovered that there was no multiplayer grand prix mode! Working in tandem to unlock new classes, tracks, carts, and racers had always been one of my favorite parts of Mario Kart, and it was something that Double Dash did to perfection, allowing up to four people to get in on the challenge.
I had invited the friend whom I played through all of the double dash grand prixs with over to do it again on the Wii, so after we found this out it sort of killed the buzz... but whatever, we had always spent a lot more time on battles than grand prixs anyway.
We found surprise again when we couldn't do a free for all battle! After messing around with some vs. races on motorcycles we decided to ditch this game, and spent the night on the SNES, and playing bob-omb blast on double dash.
The bulk of my issues with this game can be condensed to three items:
-Lack of options
-Lack of skill
-Lack of creativity
Double Dash was filled with options, you could combine characters in various ways to get certain unique items or racer attributes. You could choose the number of laps in vs. races, and take your choice of three unique battle styles. In Mario Kart Wii the lack of options is mind numbing quite honestly. It makes the game feel as though it was rushed to production. Why can't I choose how many computer characters participate in a battle or vs. race? Why isn't multi-player GP available? Why are there only two battle modes, one of which is hell of lame? Perhaps most annoying of all... WHY CAN'T I CHOOSE TO TURN THE STUPID RACER NAME TAGS THAT SUBMERGE HALF THE SCREEN OFF WHEN I PLAY ONLINE!?!?!
The lack of skill required in this game was evident from my first GP race. Every other Mario Kart game did a good job of making item boxes scarce, and the occurence of items such as blue shells and lightning very infrequent (although there was an OPTION in double dash to change this). There are several tracks on the Wii version that are nearly unplayable because of the volume of items. With 12 players, and the stupid items like the thwomp and lightning cloud that don't really help anyone... it just isn't racing anymore when there is absolutely no value to your place in the first 90% of the race. Coming back with items is one of the great joys of mario kart, I understand that (I still have fond memories of hitting the super ramp on Mario Circuit 2 with a mushroom to cut a corner and jump up two places to secure first over ten years ago), but there is something else going on entirely in tracks like the Luigi Circuit on the Wii (which might be one of the worst mario kart tracks ever), where every racer gets ripped to shreds on every lap because of the overwhelming volume of items.
This gripe could easily branch into things like how the power slide boost, for the first time ever, is not controlled by the player (and I'm not talking about the manual vs. auto drift), but simply by the length of time you hold the slide, and how they reverted to the "hold and wait" technique of blocking items that existed in Mario Kart 64, as opposed to timing a reverse release to block such as in Double Dash, and how the "get a boost when you are right behind someone for awhile" time has been cut down to almost nothing... but I think I have said enough on this.
The tracks and items in general though... where is the creativity? I'm not expecting the wildly refreshing array of tracks we were greeted with in Mario Kart for the GBA, or the slew of new items that required poise and tact to make decent use of that showed up in Double Dash, but there is nothing new on the Wii version. Let me re-phrase that; there are a couple of new things, but they are quickly beaten to death via recycling (soooooooooooo many figure 8's), or in cases such as the mega mushroom, little more than repeats of other items (in this case, the star). The half pipe thing is new... but I don't really see the purpose when it is faster to not go up the ramp? And the motorcycles... who cares/if the drift controls were the same as in double dash no one would choose them for the cheap wheelie boost?
Then there are the lazy re-hashes of the classic tracks. Changing the placement of item boxes, and other key features of the tracks (such as making the walls solid in the ghost valley track, and removing the rock throwing natives on the N64 DK track)... I just don't see the point. I mean, I know that most people probably don't have every Nintendo console (sans Virtual Boy) within 5 feet of eachother in their entertainment room so playing Ghost Valley 2 on SNES isn't really an option... but seriously. Some of these re-hashed classic tracks aren't even worth playing in the form they are presented here.
There are a few nice features. Toad's Factory, Grumble Volcano, and Koopa Cape are amazing tracks. There are a lot of karts to choose from (although the differences, as I can tell so far, seem to be negligible... unlike the kart selection in Double Dash where the differences were quite obvious). And it's not like the game is unplayable, quite the contrary, it can even be enjoyable for short periods of time. As part of the Mario Kart franchise though, I just expect more.
I honestly don't know why though, as every big franchise title aside from Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess has been like this. No options, dumbed down game play, terrible online game options and matching features, basically just leaving a ton of potential on the table and all of my expectations largely unfulfilled.
This is easily the worst Mario Kart game, and definitely the last Wii game I pre-order.
Oh, and the Wii Wheel... don't buy extras of these. They aren't worth the hassle. After struggling with getting my kart to power slide correctly through two grand prixs I dug out the cube controllers (ps - why is there no option to configure buttons how I want? Or... better question, why does the GCN controller layout not match that of GCN Mario Kart when the only new feature is wheelies, which could easily be added onto the unused c-stick or d-pad or... even better, onto the L trigger that items are incorrectly assigned to!?)
Great Party!
How many of us have enjoyed the past Mario Karts? This game has had its mixed reviews with the pros. But what about us 'normal people'? I think this game is great--especially with the new steering wheel--it's very creative, refreshing and fun. While some people didn't like the gamecube DoubleDash version, and instead liked this version, I like both. I do miss the fact that we can't play as two people in one kart, but this game is still fun. The items are more unstable, more routes to take, and new karts/bikes! A big PLUS to this game is that there is the online racing. We can always challenge ourselves against people rather the computers now! This game is entertaining--replay value is there. Great for parties. 5 stars for fun. 4 stars for the overall because the lack of the partnership.
How do they keep doing this?
Recently, there has been a story going around how the Wii has so many bad games for it. It was a blog that was picked up by many news sites. What it did not address is the fact that when a game is good for the Wii, it is simply amazing. Mario Galaxy and now Mario Kart fall into this category.
I have now had time to play the game for a week and am totally hooked. I have been playing Kart since it was out for the N64. This game has many, many things going for it including new courses but even better, some of the best courses from the past reappear.
The game play itself is fun. I had read some previews slighting the game because the wheel created control problems. I assumed that the problem would be that it is too sensitive causing the driving to constantly overcompensate and go off course. WRONG! I have found the wheel to have just enough `play' in it to allow for a great experience. It is also really quite fun to be sitting on the couch holding this wheel and steering. The best part is when you catch yourself leaning into turns as if it will help.
For the Wii, I would list this as a must have. One of my keys being that you can sit and play for hours or if you just need a quick fix, you can play a couple of courses in 10 minutes.
The main reason I give it 4/5 overall is the multiplayer but the issue is not one with this game but rather a Wii issue and that being the lack of a headset. I am still surprised that they provide no way to communicate with your other players. I am scheduled to play against my nephew this weekend but I have not figured out how we will chat during play to decide on courses or what have you. This seems to be a huge weakness in the online options of the Wii and unfortunately, I am reflecting it on my rating. In the future, if the headset does come out, I will try to remember to reflect that here.
If you have a Wii and want the full range of experiences the must have games now include:
* Mario Kart
* Mario Galaxy
* Link's Crossbow Training
* Wii Play
With just these 4 games plus the included Wii sports you will have many, many hours of great Wii fun.
The article above was brought to you by gameplay | discountedgame from gameplay | discountedgame astore.
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