Mario Kart Wii / YMMV

Awesome Video Game Levels: Nearly every new course in this game has grown a solid following, with standouts including Mushroom Gorge, Toad's Factory, Coconut Mall, DK Summit, the entire Star Cup (Daisy Circuit, Koopa Cape, Maple Treeway, and Grumble Volcano), Moonview Highway, Bowser's Castle, and Rainbow Road. The fan-favorite courses are part of the reason the game remains beloved, and due to their popularity, some have returned in Mario Kart 7, Mario Kart 8, and Mario Kart Tour. The biggest testament to their enduring popularity is that thanks to the Booster Course Pass, 8 Deluxe features eleven out of the sixteen original courses introduced in Wii^Note, the most out of any non-mobile Mario Kart title.
Base-Breaking Character: Either you love Funky Kong for being an entertaining Large Ham or hate him for being annoying, or you just love or hate him because he's one of two viable characters. The same applies for Daisy.
Broken Base: Motion controls. Either they improve the game by making the steering feel more realistic and controlled, or they make the game far more difficult to play^note. Thankfully, for those in the latter camp, motion controls are optional, but only if you have an alternative to a mere Wii Remote, namely a Nunchuk, Classic controller, or GameCube controller. If you lack all of those, or lack the former two and are playing on one of the later Wii models without GameCube controller ports, you're out of luck.
Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: Compared to the other installments, Wii has a surprisingly sizable modding community, with online races being restored after the official servers shut down (this is also the case with DS, but to put things in perspective, the entire replacement server for all of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection was incentivized and initially developed for this game), several quality of life improvements, the return of the feather item, and an extensive number of tracks with enough polish to compete with the main game. CTGP, a distribution which adds a boatload of tracks and features (over 200 additional tracks including some from later Mario Kart games and other racing games entirely), is relatively easy to install and still gets serviced regularly. The fact that it's one of the most modded games on the Wii, is often cited as proof of the game's staying power and vibrant community, which fans of the other entries have attempted to mimic but cannot fully attest to. Wiimmfi, an easy to use replacement server for the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection is used by both original unaltered game and CTGP players who like to play online after the official servers' shutdown and is by far the most popular game played there.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
- Owing to the speed bonuses exclusive to them, you'd be hard-pressed to find an online race without either Daisy on the Mach Bike or Funky Kong on the Flame Runner.
- In terms of vehicles in general, inside drifting bikes like the aforementioned Flame Runner and Mach Bike are the most commonly seen online, due to their sharp drifting and ability to pop wheelies.
- Grumble Volcano was the most popular track during the time the game was online. This was for a number of reasons: people being aware of the Ultra Shortcut, cheaters being aware of the US, anti-cheaters being aware of it and choosing it because it's the only track non-cheaters can realistically win against the rampant number of cheaters, people who see it's popular and go along with it, and people who like it as a track.
- On replacement server Wiimmfi races, one of the most commonly requested tracks is N64 Mario Raceway. This seems to be because of its huge amount of grass shortcuts ensuring that races are hectic scrambles for Mushrooms, Mega Mushrooms, and Stars to blast across the track.
Contested Sequel: This game has had this reputation since it came out, due to lacking certain elements from its prequels —the two driver system from Double Dash!!, the Mission Mode from DS (although Tournaments are its equivalent), and the additional Battle Modes from either of them with this game's iteration of the mode seen as lackluster in comparison— and how some of its additions were handled. This debate has only intensified over the years thanks to the divisive nature of its sequels. Players who believe Wii is an Even Better Sequel to its prequels praise for its sportlike gameplay with improvements and additions to it (such as adding new mechanics like tricks providing boosts and half pipe ramps, which did not return to the series until Tour / 8 Deluxe, and loose handling), introducing various control schemes including a realistic motion controlled wheel, unique new and great retro tracks, large and varied roster and vehicle selection with many newcomers, introducing 12 player races, and massively improved online with extra features such as the Mario Kart Channel. Its detractors, on the other hand, criticize the game for some of the same reasons; each character and kart having unique stats only allows for a much smaller list of viable combinations compared to other entries, and the huge advantages bikes have over karts completely defies the name; Mario Kart Wii, and despite the gameplay improvements it isn't without flaws in the unbalance between karts and bikes and unintentional "Ultra Shortcuts" (something it's second-to Mario Kart 64 and its similar issues). There's not a lot of middle-ground for a conversation.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Dry Bowser was made playable and his own character from Bowser for the first time in this game. Generally speaking, people were pleased.
- While he's a Base-Breaking Character for others, Funky Kong is this for fans of Donkey Kong Country, as it was the first time he appeared in a Mario game.
- This was the first game where Rosalina was playable and it wouldn't be a stretch to say her inclusion helped to boost her popularity.
Fan Nickname:
- "Mario Bike Wii", "Funky Bike Wii", and "Daisy Bike Wii". The former because the bikes in this game exceed over the karts in every way, and the latter two because they are the two most viable characters when combined with certain bikes, causing them to pop up online a lot.
- The wobbly net bridge at the end of Maple Treeway, thanks to Nathaniel Bandy's "Top 10 Hardest Mario Kart Wii Tracks", has earned itself the nickname of the "Jack-Off Bridge". Whilst Bandy regrets making the joke, the nickname still ended up being widely used among the Mario Kart Wii fandom.
Fanon: It's widely agreed amongst fans that Daisy Circuit takes place somewhere in Daisy's kingdom, Sarasaland, even though its exact location is never confirmed.
Franchise Original Sin: The meme and mechanic of "Getting Mario Kart'd" (getting pelted by every item at once) for which this game is considered to be Nintendo Hard by some fans actually has its origins in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, due to it introducing a much more intelligent/harder AI, winged Blue Shells, and being very close in difficulty and chaoticness with only 8 racers as each pilot and co-pilot is able to use a different item and Double Item Boxes, making it virtually the same in terms of number of items one is able to be hit with.
Game-Breaker:
- Bikes, no matter which weight class, especially inward drifting ones, are faster and flat-out superior to karts in every single way. Their ability to pop wheelies continuously negates the karts' intended advantage of being able to generate a Super mini-turbo and their ability to make sharp turns means that handling is a Dump Stat for them. When the game was in its heyday, seeing a kart online in high VR lobbies was the Mario Kart equivalent of saying you saw bigfoot.
- Every character has invisible bonuses and some of them became favorites due to objectively better advantages:
  - For heavyweights, Funky Kong on the Flame Runner has the best speed to acceleration ratio, and good Funky Kong players are able to lap the rest of the group if they know what they're doing. Going online and seeing a lobby full of Funky Kongs on the Flame Runner is far from being uncommon.
  - Rosalina is a downplayed example: she has better handling and mini-turbo than Funky Kong, at the cost of slightly lower (but still good) speed. Chances are, you will sometimes see Rosalina online.
  - For medium characters, Daisy is most commonly used due to her high speed stat and a small mini-turbo bonus, and is most used with the Mach Bike which combines both. This combo is the second most used online in the entire game.
  - Luigi and Peach are other downplayed examples: both have a small speed bonus which is not as good as Daisy's, but they still have their fans due to the former's weight bonus and the latter's acceleration and drift bonuses.
  - Concerning lightweights, Baby Daisy is the most used in this category due to having high speed, weight, and mini-turbo bonuses, and is often used with the Bullet Bike. Baby Luigi is also liked because of similar bonuses, minus the mini-turbo one for a better weight.
  - Dry Bones is yet another downplayed example, his main advantages being mini-turbo and drift, but this makes him a monster on Bullet Bike and Mini-Beast. If you change drift for handling, Koopa is also liked.
  - For off-road, Toadette is unstoppable on the Magikruiser, or any other lightweight bike for that matter.
Good Bad Bugs:
- Ultra Shortcuts, which let you skip tracks in ways that are comparable to those found in Mario Kart 64. There are a number of these, with the Grumble Volcano one being the most well-known (as well as easiest), but there are a lot of them.
- It was possible (and still is, thanks to unofficial servers) to have the heavy male Mii T-pose by wearing outfit A and riding either the Wario Bike, Shooting Star, or Phantom.
- By choosing a team race or battle mode first, choosing the blue team, then exiting and playing Grand Prix or solo Vs. mode, the Fake Item Boxes will turn blue instead of red. This is because the game forgets to disable the flag that turns FIBs to normal.
High-Tier Scrappy: Funky Kong on the Flame Runner and Daisy on the Mach Bike are the only two combos used in competitive play, to the ire of many who are sick of them.
Hilarious in Hindsight: The game's notoriety for being "Funky Bike Wii" makes it a very appropriate choice for the "New Funky Mode" sticker meme that came with the Switch rerelease of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.
Low-Tier Letdown:
- Karts, as their advantages over bikes (faster natural speed, second tier of drift boost) are completely insignificant. The faster natural speed doesn't mean a thing because bikes can just do wheelies at any time to outspeed them, and the second tier boost, rather than make karts better at U curves to contrast the bikes' (intended) superiority on only straightaways, is far too situational to even use at all (to the point where you may even only see it once per lap without outright going for it), let alone compete with what bikes offer.^note To make it worse, bikes having a Dump Stat in handling as seen above because their handling is just that good, whereas karts offer no similar substitute. A common complaint about this imbalance is "It's Mario Kart, not Mario Bike."
- The Jetsetter is a heavy kart with perfect top speed, but has literally useless stats for everything else, including handling, drift, off-road, acceleration and mini-turbo. In simpler terms, it can't take corners at all, barely sticks to road, can't get back up to speed quickly and as it's a kart, can't do wheelies. Its bike counterpart, the Spear, at least has the benefit of being a bike (which lets it do the wheelie, making it faster than its kart counterpart in practice) and having inward drifting (they have similar stats, though Spear's are less extreme), but since the Jetsetter drifts outwards, trying to use it will literally end in hitting every single wall in the track. Oh, and it's likely going to be the final kart unlocked for most people, for getting one star on all Mirror Mode cups.
- The heavyweight bike Phantom, while it has the best off-road for its size, is an outside drift vehicle with the worst drift stat in the game. Like the Jetsetter, it's likely going to be the final vehicle unlocked, for winning Mirror Special Cup.
Memetic Mutation: Get Mario Kart'd ^Explanation
Most Wonderful Sound:
- Rosalina's voice. It not only has a beautiful echo to it, but Rosalina sounds so happy.
- All of the Baby-counterparts have voice lines that are gleeful and happy, rather than annoying and grating — Baby Mario's "Wee!" when doing a wheelie stands out.
- Toadette's voice is also very cheerful and pleasant to listen to.
Nintendo Hard: The game is especially infamous for this as the increase of Racers from eight to twelve on Tracks results in a crazy spike in difficulty compared to previous games besides Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, there are horror stories from people who get in dead last because of a Blue Shell, Pow Block etc.; and there's the utterly insane means of unlocking characters and karts, like getting first in every track on 150cc or completing 4.950 races.
Older Than They Think: The earliest known instance that Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Peach, Toad, Wario, and Koopa Troopa rode motorbikes in some fashion was in Excitebike: Bun Bun Mario Battle Stadium which predates Mario Kart Wii by 11 years.
Once Original, Now Common: Back when it was released, Mario Kart Wii was generally lauded for its many additions to the series in well implemented motion controls for steering coupled with the accompanying Wii Wheel accessory to make it feel even more immersive, a new bike vehicle class with a characteristic wheelie mechanic, expanding the number of racers from 8 to 12, tricks and half-pipes, a significantly improved and expanded online play compared to Mario Kart DS with the Online Tournaments being seen as a nice, if smaller, online equivalent to the Mission Mode from said game. Its large, further expanded, character roster with various Unexpected Characters and almost its entire track selection was also seen as excellent. Nowadays though, outside its dedicated fanbase that remembers and acknowledges all that, when speaking of the game the only thing that will be most often be talked about is the criticism directed at the games' bikes and characters being unbalanced — which has always been acknowledged as a flaw of the game alongside restricting its Battle Mode to teams only, with its own Broken Base between those who mind the Complacent Gaming Syndrome it caused and those who don't, but not the only thing worth talking about it — while ignoring or forgetting all the objetive additions and online improvements the game brought. It's also fairly common to see people think that the bikes were the only thing the game added, while the game actually introduced much more than that.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- Battle Mode is limited to teams only exclusively in this game after not being such since 64. 7 onwards would return to having free-for-all options for this mode.
- The caged green Thwomp in Mario Kart 64's Bowser's Castle (often given the Fan Nickname of Marty) was quite the Ensemble Dark Horse, and the castle's lighting makes him look just creepy. But in this game's version of the track, he was replaced by a normal Thwomp, due to lighting changes^note.
- In Mario Kart games prior to Wii, the drifting mechanic was input-based, allowing players to quickly generate a mini-turbo by quickly alternating left and right while drifting. This led to a technique called snaking, which is generating mini-turbos in rapid succession. Starting with Wii, the drifting mechanic became time-based, effectively eliminating the snaking tactic. While this completely fixed the Game-Breaker that was Snaking in prior games (most notably DS), some fans did not enjoy this change, mainly due to how long it takes to charge a mini-turbo with the new drifting mechanic making it not possible to repeatedly spam it. This is also partly a contributing factor to bikes being superior to karts, as one of the karts' intended advantages was that they could generate a Super mini-turbo with enough time while bikes can't, but turns big enough for Super mini-turbos are somewhat rare, while wheelies can be used anywhere. Mario Kart 8 changes this so both karts and bikes can execute all mini-turbo levels but makes wheelies purely aesthetic.

YMMV / Mario Kart Wii

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