Sonic Kart Wii

Mario Kart Wii is a racing game for the Wii serving as a spin-off game for the Mario series. It was developed and published by Nintendo in 2008 worldwide, then in South Korea in 2009. It is the sixth main installment in the Mario Kart series.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) As of today, it is the sixth worst-selling game of all time, and the second worst-selling game on the Wii, behind Wii Sports.
 * 2) It has the worst character roster in the Mario Kart series with 25 playable characters in total, including the Mii, which marks the first appearance of Miis in the series.
 * 3) It's the second Mario Kart game with offline play, but unlike Mario Kart DS which had limited features when online play is involved, as only four players can be in an online race and some tracks are even able to be played online, Mario Kart Wii has full functionality with online, as twenty players can play and all tracks are available to be played. Sadly, Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection was shut down in 2014, but it's still possible through hacking.
 * 4) Loathsaome and uncreative racing tracks, such as Coconut Mall and Maple Treeway.
 * 5) The Mega Mushroom and POW Block, while more effective versions of the Star and Lightning respectively, are uninteresting old items. Below are the reasons why they are uninteresting.
 * 6) Horrendeous visuals and graphics, even by early 2008 standards.
 * 7) You can no longer stunt while in the air to get a mini-boost while in mid-air.
 * 8) Variety of items to harm you during the race, such as the Fake Item Box.
 * 9) It introduced motorcycles that can be controlled by the players.
 * 10) Throwback stages from the previous Mario Kart games.
 * 11) Made use of the Wii driving wheel peripheral like you are driving a car. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of not being able to use the directional button to steer when using just the Wii Remote (which by the way is still considered as using the Wii Wheel even if one is not attached).
 * 12) The Bullet Bill lasts shorter in this game than any other Mario Kart game it appears in.
 * 13) The POW Block is a really interesting mechanic, even for a Mario Kart game. It pounds every racer ahead of the user, making them lose their items in the process. This item is a good way for the player to show off the trick button and can be avoided if the player is in mid-air. It's a shame the item hasn't returned in future installments.
 * 14) The Mega Mushroom is also an interesting gimmick, as it lets the player grow big and flatten other opponents.
 * 15) While bikes may not have the ability to do a Super Mini-Turbo like karts do, they make up for it by having the ability to do wheelies. This is why the difference between karts and bikes is much bigger in this game than it is in Mario Kart 8.
 * 16) The game introduces races with 20 people, which also worked online like mentioned above.
 * 17) You can now drive the Blue Falcon as a light character! Yes, you read that right! A vehicle from the F-Zero series.
 * 18) Rosalina and Funky Kong make their last appearances in the series.
 * 19) Battle Mode is even worse than before.
 * 20) The game has been kept alive by a homebrew online service called Wiimmfi, created as a response to the shutdown of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service in May 2014, and the modding community to this day, even 20 years after the game's release! They also created new modes, such as Countdown Mode. And it's easy for you to use these mods.
 * 21) Can be alternatively controlled by the Wii Remote and Nunchuck, the Classic Controller, or even the GameCube Controller.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Some of the characters and vehicles are balanced. For example, the motorcycles, mainly the ones that drift inward, are mostly superior to karts as you can abuse the wheelie mechanic to drive even faster than the karts with a motorcycle. Not only that, but even if the wheelie ends automatically, you can perform it again (Meaning you can chain the wheelies together and keep speeding up). And most notably, Funky Kong is extremely overpowered, and overused on online play. This is due to the fact that Funky Kong is the fastest character in the entire game, and is most commonly used with the Flame Runner (Bowser Bike in the PAL copy of the game), which combines good speed and weight with good drift and mini-turbo.
 * 2) *Speaking of characters and vehicles, you have to unlock Expert Staff Ghosts in order to even get some of them, but unlocking Expert Staff Ghosts is one of the most painstaking ways of unlocking characters or vehicles. Fortunately, most characters allow you to bypass this by just playing a certain amount of races, and Rosalina can be unlocked rather quickly by having a Super Mario Galaxy save file and then playing 15 races.
 * 3) *However, the racing criteria to unlock some characters and/or vehicles is ridiculous. While Diddy Kong and King Boo are pretty easy to unlock because they only require you to play 450 and 750 races respectively, other characters like Baby Daisy require you to play 1,950 races. Another infamous example is Dry Bowser, who costs at least 4,350 races to unlock, and if you don't have a copy of Super Mario Galaxy, Rosalina costs 4,950 races to unlock, which is just shameful. Similarly, the Jetsetter, which is the fastest vehicle in the game, but has the worst handling in the game, requires you to play 4,500 races unless you earn at least a one star rank on all 150cc Retro Cups.
 * 4) The Wii Wheel is gimmicky and a bit hard to control. However, using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk or the GameCube controller is much better.
 * 5) You can only play Battle Mode in teams.
 * 6) Some of the tracks in this game aren't really that bad.
 * 7) Due to the Nintendo online servers for the Wii, along with the DS, being shutdown permanently on May 20, 2014, it is impossible to do an online match without the help of homebrew unless you have to set the DNS server and wait for like 2 or less minutes to do so as stated above.
 * 8) Drifting kind of sucks as of this game, as it takes a while for the boost to build up, since you no longer control when the boost from the drift happens unlike in Mario Kart DS.
 * 9) The Fake Item Box is once again colored red, much like in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! On top of that, its size has increased, making it even easier to distinguish from real Item Boxes. However, experienced players have found a way to disguise it by dragging it and dropping it as soon as they pick up another item.
 * 10) It removed the Thunder Cloud item, which is easily the worst in the Mario Kart series. It is a double-edged sword, and it actively harms the user more than it helps. What's worse is that it's nearly impossible to pass the cloud off to another racer once you get it. Fortunately, this awful item has never returned in a future Mario Kart installment.
 * 11) The CPU rubberbands heavily in 150cc Grand Prix races, probably due to the increased amount of racers on the track. Youtuber Darkykitty reported a CPU speed glitch on one of the custom cups of Mario Kart Wii: CTGP Revolution.
 * 12) The item distribution is rather questionable. A good example of why this is the case is the fact that you can get a single Red Shell if you are anywhere from 1st to 8th place. Another example is how CPUs can get a POW Block as low as 10th place. What makes it even more dreadful is that the item distribution DEPENDS on the place you are in and not the distance from the racer that precedes you, which can cause you to easily lose a race if you are too far from the other racers especially on races with 6 players or less. However, this item balance isn't as severe as Mario Kart 8, which had the item balance based on distance rather than placement.
 * 13) The character models look out of place and look like they did in Double Dash, but with upscaled textures. In fact, on the character select screen, the characters who appeared in Double Dash had their models and animations outright reused. This is a bit odd considering that Super Mario Galaxy, another Wii game that came out a year before this one, had better graphics and models.

Trivia

 * This is the first game where there is no Friendly-Fire in team races and battles due to the fact that there is colored bubbles in this, unlike DS, 8, and Tour.
 * The game is bundled with the Wii Mini.

Videos
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