We Go Online with Mario Kart Wii

Apr 15, 2008

To say that we've been playing more than our fair share of Mario Kart Wii over the last month or so would be an understatement. We've medaled in each "cc" more times than we can count, unlocked every level and character in the game, and are now moving from the unfinished English "preview" build to the retail Japanese build, and then soon again to the finished English build. We put it lightly when we say we've been playing a lot of Kart.

Still, the build we were playing on was missing the most crucial element to Nintendo's Kart plans this time around, and that's the 12 player online race and battle modes. We didn't have details on the mode, reviews for the game thus far have neglected online to a large extent, and we couldn't play it for ourselves, so we had no idea whether it would be the triumphant march towards internet gaming that Nintendo (more specifically, Kart) fans have been waiting for, or just a disappointment in the end.

We've had some serious time with online, and are back to report.

The main focus of Nintendo's recent "Media Summit" was to show off the Spring lineup of titles, and Kart was there in full effect, primarily showing off a very stable, very fast, very entertaining online experience. It took a few minutes to get there, we still haven't tried every option and mode that we'd like to have seen, but the simple truth remains: Kart may let some people down with its single player experience, but online will blow you away.

We'll cut right to it. Kart allows for online 12 person racing (Vs. mode) or battle, each with both friend modes and random worldwide or "region" matchmaking. We had a chance to play a bit of friend play, but it was cut short drastically by some technical difficulties on Nintendo of Japan's side, which is a shame. In fact, the first time we sat down with Kart ended up being a very frustrating experience, as we waited for about ten minutes to get the Japan consoles online and ready, took several attempts to link to their consoles (with frequent disconnects), and once we finally did get into a match, we only had a few seconds before disconnecting out. It was obviously not our day for friend code play, and it was obvious Japan's setup (which was on a network full of hundreds of computers, behind countless firewalls, and running during regular business hours) wasn't up for the challenge. We took a short break for lunch, tried to stay optimistic, and stat down for another go.

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Before getting into that one however, we did notice a few things when playing with Japan's friend consoles, even if it was a really fast experience. For starters, friends can be seen online from the main Wi-Fi menu, so while you'll need to connect online to check if your buddies are online, a quick colored icon will instantly give you the info you need the second you connect. A pink friend icon means people are trying to connect, a blue icon means your buddy is waiting for a race to begin, and gold means they're currently in an event "doing battle." It's a pretty simple system, and it lets you know instantly if there's room for you to join, or if you should just hit up some random play for a few rounds. Once in a friend game, however, you've also got some communication options, as there are 96 pre-made chat tabs to select from including everything from "hello" and "good game" to "Let's play…" and every level in the game. You can specify what you want to play, how the last game went, how you want items set, if you're ready or not for the next race, and any mish-mash of greetings you could want. It isn't voice chat, but it's pretty dang thorough.

The majority of our time has been spent in worldwide play though, so we'll go more in-depth with that. We can assure you, by the way, that once we get more time with friend play, we'll have plenty to talk about. As far as worldwide or region play goes, the game takes over all the main details of the experience. Simply click in, decide if you want to play Vs. or battle, which character and car you want, manual or automatic drift, and the rest is determined via matchmaking. The game launches a globe which looks identical to the Weather Channel interface, and as you meet up with up to 11 other players small "?" circles appear. Once you've got a few solid connections, the icons shuffle to the top of the screen, and one-by-one are unveiled via Mii characters, names, and region flags. With each character's reveal, the globe spins and plants the racer where he's connecting from on the globe. It's a pretty cool interface, as you can watch your competition "sign in" from around the world. We can tell you that our first online match in Mario Kart Wii was played with members from Spain, France, Japan, and the UK. We were the only ones representing USA, so the pressure was on.

After pairing with your competition, you're prompted as to whether or not you want to vote on the next map played. If you say yes, you're taken to your own level select screen (with only the tracks you've unlocked available), and once selected are put in a roulette with every other racer's decision. If you chose random, a "?" shows up unless you're selected, in which case it'll reveal itself as any level from the game. Since there's a roulette style decision it doesn't come down to a straight vote, so even if four people chose Rainbow Road, your selection could win out via a roll of the virtual dice. No level-hogging happening here.

Item appearance (Kart allows for what equates to an aggressive, standard, or passive items set, but not an actual "item edit system") and CC speed are done on the fly once the game begins, but for the record we never saw 50cc, only 100cc, 150cc, and mirror mode. As another quick warning to players, anything goes when you're online – which can be seen in our direct-feed videos posted along with this hands-on – so if you play or watch online matches you're going to see unlocked characters, levels you may not have seen, participate in mirror races, or see content you didn't want spoiled. It's just the way it goes.

As far as online performance goes, Mario Kart Wii can boast a flawless 60 frames per second for single player online, and what appears to be a locked (or mostly locked) 30 frames per second for two player online. The single player affair is where the game really shines though, as the experience is extremely smooth, even going as far as to make people passing by ask whether what they were seeing was on or offline at all. We tried it not only at the summit itself, but also at the San Francisco and LA IGN offices, and the experience turned heads. It's worth a mention that Mario Kart Wii uses the same predictive online system as the DS version, so you'll see racers popping around at times or reacting late to what you're seeing, but it's a sacrifice to save the framerate, so as long as you're expecting it (and understand that the game isn't cheating you) it's still very entertaining. You might fire a red shell, for example, see it sail to a racer ahead of you, and then simply blip off the screen. In reality, they dropped an item or were dragging a defensive "?" block, banana, or shell, but you were too late to the party to see the action take place. It isn't the most realistic system, but it keeps the experience smooth, and you usually have to be looking for it to notice it's happening around you at all. If it didn't bug you on DS, it won't bug you on Wii.

Both the vs. and battle modes were pretty entertaining online, and it's due mostly in part to an overall point system that accumulates as you play. Not only will you be able to show off your new characters and cars in online mode, but there's also two scores to keep an eye on. When kicking off online for the first time, you'll begin with 5,000 vs. points, and 5,000 battle points. Every time you win or lose in an online match, you'll either gain or lose points for that specific event. This is also the system used to match like racers, so you aren't constantly going up against the best racers in the world. Instead, you'll often see players with a few thousand points above you, and a few thousand below. The biggest gap we had was our 6,000 points and a 9,000 point racer. Even then we beat them, and sent them a whopping 200 points lower in a single race. It was pretty satisfying. In vs. races, you simply need to place in the top half to keep your points going. In battle, just be on the winning team. You can more points the better you do as well though, so aim for first, and try to be the best racer/battler even in team scenarios.

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As a few quick mentions, you can also see players that are using the wheel online, and even those that used it so much they unlocked the golden wheel icon. It's a pretty neat little bragging right for those that put time into Nintendo's newest control scheme. As far as online battle goes, balloon and coin modes are random (just like the cc levels) if you're playing worldwide or region games, and teams won't auto-balance for battle, so if there are seven players it'll be a four on three. There's no free-for-all online battle mode though, so those looking for a more hardcore battle experience (either online or off) will be disappointed by that. Another interesting occurrence happened when we tried to leave the game mid-race. All home and menu options are disabled during a race, so the only way to "drop" and save yourself from losing points is to actually turn the whole system off; something we don't see many racers doing. Snaking is also totally removed, and when we tried to race backwards through a map, hitting serious players with shells and forcing them off the road the game actually booted us from the server via an automated, perhaps magical "anti-asshole" system. You may not like the restrictions of friend codes or the lack of manual drifting around corners, but Nintendo is certainly taking steps to make sure one jerk can't ruin the experience for everyone in a game, and that's commendable.

Overall our experience with Mario Kart's online offering was very positive. We've now got an import copy of the game, and are already trying to rise the ranks of online play again with our vs. and battle scores. Right now seems that more players are getting into vs. play rather than battle though (battle games are few and far between), but it's certainly an addictive, extremely entertaining aspect of Kart. If only Smash was as dependable and fun to play online as Kart is…

Be sure to check out our new direct-feed online videos below, and check back soon for more Kart coverage as we near the game's US release.