#NITENDO WII MARIO KART SERIES#

There’s also drift boosting, which has two levels of boost depending how long you drift, and this Wii incarnation also introduces, for the first time in the series, motorbikes.Īs with the karts, bikes come in three varieties – light, medium and heavy, with light being easiest to handle but also the slowest, heavy being the fastest but more difficult to handle and medium being, well… medium, and a mix of the two. And, by slipstreaming behind another racer, you can build up a quick boost.

For example, when jumping off a ramp, a quick flick of the controller makes your character perform a random trick, SSX-style, which grants a boost in speed. There are more new additions to the game than the basic motion controls too. Although, it should be noted that you can also use normal analogue stick controls with either the nunchuck, Wii Classic Controller or a Gamecube controller, and we suspect many diehard Kart fans will do just that, eschewing the new motion controls in favour of the more traditional option. The button controls are laid out well, and pulling off drifts and firing power-ups is easy while driving, maybe even moreso than standard controls. Whilst I was more than a little sceptical about this at first, I was relieved to find the motion controls work perfectly, and you really do feel in complete control at all times, so much so that you even forget you’re using a motion controller, so natural is the system. With either setup in hand, you control your chosen character and vehicle as you’d expect, by turning the controller left and right, with the 2 button on the Wiimote used for Accelerate, 1 for brake/reverse, A to look behind, B for jump/drift and the d-pad for powerups. The mix of simple, but challenging, courses, funky power-ups and the usual Nintendo charm was straddled by a control and gameplay system that was nigh on perfect, and a multiplayer mode that was universally recognised as one of the best ever devised.ĭitching the two characters on a kart and going back to basics, Mario Kart Wii retains the essential drifting, power-up-throwing action of the previous games, but adds the twist of motion control, either via the Wiimote and packaged Wii Wheel, or Wiimote on its own. First arriving on the SNES in 1992, this deceptively simple racer became an instant hit and not only spawned several sequels, but also an army of would be contenders. Unless you’ve been living in the dark, under a rock, at the bottom of the sea, on an as yet to be discovered planet, you’ll have heard of Mario Kart.

#NITENDO WII MARIO KART SERIES#

So, the arrival of one of Nintendo’s most critically acclaimed series – Mario Kart, is, in this humble reviewer’s opinion, a very good thing indeed.

But for every one good game, there seems to be 30 terrible ones, and only a handful great titles isn’t exactly good going for a console that’s now almost a year and a half old. Yes, we’ve had the excellent Zelda: Twilight Princess, the superb Metroid Prime: Corruption and, more recently, the flawless Super Mario Galaxy to name a few of the major releases. Why then, is the platform so barren when it comes to decent games? Not being one for cooking simulators or motion controlled horse riding, or the endless stream of cookie cutter party games, I find myself a little dismayed at the lack of usual grade A titles I know Nintendo can produce. Nintendo’s Wii has quickly become one of the biggest selling consoles of all time, with some still having problems getting hold of one, so heavy is demand.

Nitendo wii mario kart