What Made Mario Kart Wii So Perfect? 

I remember finding out how to cancel the pow block as a kid by hopping. I felt so smart and have so much nostalgia for it

for me, what made this game perfect is how un-perfect it is. it's buggy, so many ultra-shortcuts, its items are super unbalanced, bikes are just objectively better than karts, and so on. but all of those things is what makes it so fun. it's amazing seeing ultra shortcuts getting found and the excitement in the community when they are found. its unbalanced items make each round different and super chaotic. and seeing someone pop off using a kart instead of a bike is super impressive.

For me, what makes this game so great is: The tracks The music (every piece of it) The skill requirement The ultra shortcuts The physics In combination with the crazy items and stuff happening, it's the definition of "perfect imperfection"

Seriously seeing that unlocking animation feels like a suprise party everytime

There's just something about the music, the graphics, sounds, great track selection and overall aura of the game. 10/10

My favorite thing about MK was playing it with my late grandfather. He LOVED MarioKart and we would rotate double dash and mariokart wii all the time. He was never very good and he'd always get mad at the "invisible boxes" since he'd miss them, but he still had so much fun. His character was always the green Koopa and it never changed. It got to the point he wasn't able to play anymore but he was able to see the graphics when MK8 came out and was amazed at the replay system. Since he has passed but I always play as his character now no matter what, winning races for him when I play 🙏

the vibe I got while playing this game was so different. Mario Kart 7 or 8 never had the same vibe.

Seeing the credits after beating the special cup on 50cc for the first time when I was a kid made me feel acomplished and is a legit core memory for me

I started playing MKWii when it first came out when I was 8 and now I'm 22 and still play it in my free time, it never gets old and is always a very fun game to play.

Lets also not forget how they put mii's as bystanders, statues and more. made the game feel more personal, i also say this as my siblings went crazy with the mii creator. ive also been waiting for more wii tracks in 8 deluxe and when i see 2 tour tracks i feel sad as i miss playing on wii rainbow road, koopa cape and all the other tracks that i played for years on. other then that. great video :)

This game still is my favorite game, since 2014 when I first played it with my cousin, it's had a place in my heart since then and I will never ever forget the game ❤️

Wii’s Rainbow road is STILL probably my favorite MK track ever. Really hope they bring it back in 8 Deluxe.

Mkwii is no cap the best game ever played! The community absolutely makes this game such an icon. Thank you for making this my guy…. Saw this off your Reddit and was instantly hooked

I'm surprised you didn't mention any of the mechanics. I loved just how much there was to do to be a better racer. Ever race felt so dynamic and interesting. There was always some technique to be performing to get that slight edge on the other players, not mention the plethora of track specific shortcuts and tricks.

The unlockable stuff in wii is undoubtedly my favorite part. Just this summer me and my friend re unlocked everything and it was the absolute time of my life. Beating the hard ghost on rainbow road after 3 hours straight was so rewarding. Also bikes were the only thing I ever used and it's never been the same

I was one of those hackers who had 35555vr and created chaos lobbies. We would duplicate thunderclouds to give the normal players a permanent speed boost, create insane item chaos throughout the race, then intentionally lose in order for the normal racers to insane huge amounts of VR for beating hackers with 35000VR+. So fun!

What I love about this game are the little things, like instead of having a luigi head on Daisy's Circit, you have your mii head. Which makes me to believe that the developers had fun making this game, and that really makes me smile

I was a monster on DK summit. Had so much fun playing this in middle school while spending the night at my friend's house and playing online. 14 years later my buddies enjoy it as a drinking game and my wife is getting pretty good at it too.

You deserve more attention. Mario kart WII was a great memory for me too, and I continue to play it! the love the support the community and even you are a great effort at showing a multi million idea Nintendo tried to throw away from millions of fans. This game deserves what it got. here s a tip btw: Outside drifting bikes are the best vehicles in the game, as outside drifting bikes are the worst. give them a try. flame runner/bowser bike and the mach bike are the best.

as a TASer of Mario Kart Wii, I think it's very crisp. every input corresponds to a tangible movement. there's little smoothness to it but that's what makes it feel so precise.

This, Wii Sports and Wii sports Resort are the holy trinity of video games and nobody can convince me otherwise

On the topic of the music, when I was a teenager our tv like didn’t work properly or something and the audio just wouldn’t play when we used our wii. We would get the noises from the controllers and nothing else, so we would be playing in complete silence just listening to the sound of us crashing into stuff. We always assumed it was a problem with the wii or the disc, but didn’t think much of it. Then, when I moved out I brought the wii with me and plugged it into my roommates tv and finally got to listen to the music in all of its glory, as a fully grown adult, and it was wonderful. I truly didn’t realise how much the music enhances the game, it makes a huge difference!

There were two kinds of hackers. The ones that set their VR to 35,000 and came in last place to reward everyone for putting up with them having fun. And the ones that gave themselves 0 vr and came in first because they hate you.

if anyone asks what was THE game of my childhood, this is my answer in a heartbeat... remember being in primary school and sharing my accomplishments with my pals and all that. good times

Best part hands down was the giant roster of characters that were hard to unlock as a kid. Getting dry Bowser for the first time felt great

You are very underrated! This was a great documentary and I can tell you put a lot of love into it!

With 8’s track selection so far, it’s on par with Wii thanks to the inclusion of the greats like Coconut Mall and Maple Treeway. The only thing left for it to go beyond Wii is to add another masterpiece Wii track like Toad’s Factory or Rainbow Road.

Mario kart wii was the introduction to the franchise and my childhood was such a joyride !!

I'm so happy to see Mario Kart Wii get some love, I said for years it's the best Mario Kart but people always wrote it off

Bro, what a game... you made me want to play it again ! The tracks, the musics...

mkw time trial scene makes it special, everyone pushes everyone to the point of human perfection

One thing I hated about Moonview Highway is that the cars change lanes for no reason. And from what I remember, they don't even turn on their blinkers when doing so.

My younger cousins hate this game because "its so hard" and " it sucks because when you fall you lose your items"

I'm so glad you brought up the hacker lobbies lmao, I always assumed the ones I remembered were false memories but apparently they weren't! I vividly remember one game where the only item I could get was a blue shell and I had no idea what was happening

I just love how MKW is so cruel, unpredictable and has no mercy on destroying you. One simple mistake can literally end you which makes this game super challenging and extremely fun.

7:48 omg your so right! Something about the still white screen and happy music just got me so excited back in the day.

MKwii is a great game, and it's the first mario kart I ever played, but it is nowhere near perfect, I think mario kart 8 deluxe is the real perfect mario kart game. It has minimal bugs, the most characters and tracks, and it is the best selling.

The best part was that every single kid had a Wii and Mario kart. I played this with every friend and everyone knew how to play. Very few games are like that imo

I do hope more games have creative ways to unlock characters and items

Mkwii was also my first experience with Mk wii During the corona season i got the wii from my parents and reinvented the online servers last year with my two roommates. Didn’t have as much fun in a game in a loooong time. Got me right back in the community. On the spot with the reviw

One word "nostalgia"

You honestly could’ve just ended the video at the existence of funky Kong but you went the whole distance for this video. Great work!

The answer is simple, Funky Kong I loved this game as a child and I love it now, just something about the charm, track design, and the overall replay ability of the tracks is great. The glitches also helped out. So far the best mariokart Edit: The music fricking slaps, and no one can change my mind

i remember my brother and i were always playing when we were around 10 at the time and we were always freaking out and having an uproar of excitement when we always joined a lobby with hackers, that game was a core memory of my childhood

My absolute favorite thing to this day is, how tight it feels to drive around (with bikes). Just cutting those close corners never felt better in any Mario Kart game before or after.

I grew up playing mkwii and it is still my favorite mario kart game; there's just something untouchable about it.

tbh...I will never understand nor trust people who tell me that Mario Kart Wii's controlls with the wii remote are easy lol

For literal years, my whole family didn't know you could use a nunchuck, we all thought you had to use the wheel, so while we liked playing together, we didn't want to get 3 stars on all the cups like we did on ds cause it was too hard to control 🤦‍♀️

I remember this game from my early childhood, the memories are fuzzy but still there. My family didn't have a lot money at the time and I was only about 4. Both of parents worked full time jobs so my uncle babysat me a lot. I don't think we had a TV because I remember we had the wii hooked up to projector that would shine it on a wall. My dad had hacked the wii so we had some weird characters. Mainly glitchy or bugging character mods that look funny. I can remember staying up past my bed time playing that game thinking I'd get in trouble and the small amount of time both my parents were home all of us piling around the projector and making death threats to each other over silly stuff that happened.

for me, it’s nostalgia. i played this game all the time when i was 7 in 2017. STORYTIME: in, i think, 2016, my parents played this game alot and i once walked in the room to see what they were doing. they let me play, too. i IMMEDIATELY fell in love. i don’t remember who i picked at first, but mom always played as peach and dad as toad. we played in multiplayer races that day. i quickly saw how op the lightning was and i would always want to get one. everytime i hit an item box i was like “please be lightning, please be lightning” and everytime i didn’t get one, i’d be like “aww.” it was so fun. my dad also had another game on the wii, and it was mario party 9. i tried it out and, once again, IMMEDIATELY fell in love. i would always pick koopa troopa cuz i always loved the sounds he made. another game i found, mario sports mix, i played alot too once i found it. for the next, like, two years, i played those three games NONSTOP. then, one day in early 2019, i went to turn on the wii, only to find out… it wouldn’t. i tried multiple times, but it wouldn’t come on. my dad came up to help me, but nothing happened. we came to the conclusion that… our wii was broken. i was heartbroken. i knew i would miss playing those games cuz of how much i loved ‘em. i still do, five years later. 😢😭

Mario kart Wii is my favorite game of all time. It’s fun to play alone, online or offline, and it’s fun to play split screen. It’s fun with the wheel or with the controllers. I’m very bad with tech but I watched like 3 tutorials so I could download custom tracks and the online service. While my friends were grinding cod I was ripping some CTPG. Unfortunately my Wii broke a few years ago and I’ve been looking for a new one ever since

really cool video, 2:35 caught me so off guard hahahah

You need so many more subscribers man. As a fellow lover of the wii and it’s whole vibe, Can’t wait to go down the rabbit hole of your channel

My twin brother and I were only six years old when the servers shut down, so we never got a chance to play online. I was always scared of the Nintendo WFC screens because the music creeped me out and it never worked anyway. When I was older, I finally realized what WFC actually was, and I was really mad that I missed out on it. We figured out how to change the DNS, and we got to play online for the very first time. I had the time of my life! It's such a magical feeling to be able to play with other people around the world... especially knowing that the Wii is nearing eighteen years of age and that the servers have been shut down for over ten years. It's really something special.

this is one of my favourite games due to it being my first mario game, nostalgia, the tracks, the music, the insane shortcuts etc

0:32 I loved watching this cutscene!!! I remember when me and my brother watched it countless times

I love toads factory too! I love it so much I even built it in minecraft and I really hope it appears in the DLC

Inside drifting bikes are the reason i still play it over the new games. It feels so much better and let's you take way faster lines when you get good at it

I have both Mario kart Wii and the new switch version, and despite the switch’s stunning graphics and new (to me at least) tracks, I still find myself deciding to play on the Wii version instead from time to time😂 The tracks are so solid and I find that even after not playing for years I still remember exactly when to wheelie and which path to take. And I sing along throughout most of the races because the songs are such bops. Also the sound bites for the characters are so good (especially Waluigi). When my brother and I play together, one of us will always pick him and we still laugh at everything he says.

Not only were the unlockable items and new tracks fun for me but the halfpipes are what made it my favorite, the thrill of speeding into one and performing tricks consecutively filled me with excitement that lasted until today and im even happier their coming back

i revisited this game once after playing alot of mk8dx and i just stuck to it, modded my wii, installed ctgp and now i play it everyday!

Mario Kart Wii was NOT the first to offer online multiplayer. We had it on Mario Kart DS and it was awesome as well.

The number of glitches in this game is crazy especially the tas only glitches. That made the game more fun.

I think Mario kart 7 is criminally underrated and should have at least gotten a mention. Underwater, antigravity, 3 stage courses, it’s really good

Could you make a video on what the next 2D Mario should be like to you, like you also did for 3D Mario? :)

Mario Kart Wii was the first ever video game me and my little brother ever played. I remember a Christmas morning long ago, where we woke up to find a large box under the tree for the whole family. I remember our parents hooking it up and us being terrible at it. This was back in, i'd say 2014-2015, while ago. For a good while we shifted around where the Wii was, and me and my brother got better at it. 2017-2018, we would sit out there in the garage where we kept it for long hours, my brother trying to unlock all characters. We kept busy pretending I was a announcer on live TV watching as Bowser took the champion title again and again. Our Wii still works to this day, and yet we don't play together anymore, just hearing the trailer music from waiting on the title screen or the credits takes me back to those days. One of my favourite games, those of which brings me much nostalgia.

Mario Kart Wii is far from perfect. However, I like the roster, track selection, and battle mode in that game.

100% most nostalgic for the credits. Man, unlocking dry bowser was so rewarding when I was younger and whenever I hear it I am transported bak to that moment. Perfect vid.

The melee of Mario kart, such a beautiful game

I personally love how Mario kart Wii let us unlock races. I missed that while playing 8 for the switch

I’m so glad you gave credit to Troy he deserves so much more cause he’s so good ❤❤

A special memory from this game for me was one time back in elementary when my friend and I were playing. I can't remember which character he was playing as but I was watching since I was newer to the game. Peach Beach. Lap 3. In that final stretch before the finish line. Donkey Kong a whisper ahead of us, about to claim first. We had already thought we would have to settle for second, until our salvation. A blue shell. Zooming by above us and zoning in on DK, stopping him in his tracks inches before the checkered line, allowing us to slide past and claim the gold. We were going NUTS, replaying it over and over, asking if that really just happened before our eyes. We had never seen such a spectacle of good luck to that amount in that game. I hold the memory close to my heart.

Mariokart ds did have online play 3 years earlier, but it was much more primitive, and you could only have up to 4 player lobbies.

my childhood game and it’s the best for sure

Mk Wii is actually my least favorite. And I grew up with it in my later childhood. My biggest issue has something to do with the item mechanics. It feels like no matter how well you drive, someone from the back will send a blue shell your way and then you are back where you started. For mk8 they seemed to have fixed this issue. How well you place in mk8 seems much more tied to your driving skills and not so much your items. Mkwii is a great game but that issue makes it not as enjoyable for me.

Getting that all-green report card after hours of gameplay was always the most satisfying way to earn a sense of accomplishment. I've always loved racing on those amazing tracks with amazing music with an insane amount of fun.

What makes Mariokart Wii so perfect? You grew up with it.

Still play it with the family every Christmas

For me MKWii was one of the weaker games. The race is almost random due to item overflow

2:38 this entire segment of emulation jokes had me dying. Good job!

Mario Kart 8 is better then Mario Kart Wii.

I’ve been an mkw player since I was young. And this game has wheelies, techniques, strats and glitches like fwg and swg and ejecting from the floor and clipping through walls and custom tracks and we now have item rain and countdown and ctwws. We now have mega clouds, ko modes. And we can activate bonuses whenever. We have easy mods like FKW and tt online. This game has half pipes and incredible shortcuts. Truly one of a kind. And still has an active and thriving community.

I don't think any Mario Kart Game is perfect

i still play ctgp-r to this day, even once held a world record on kinoko cave 200cc. this game is my childhood, used to play this A LOT and also with friends

MKWii isn't perfect, nor the best Mario Kart. It's the MK that most of the people who are adults now grew up with and are now experiencing duck syndrome. There're only one or two usable combos in MKWii, which everyone who competes uses, many of its shortcuts are broken and are basically competitions who exploit the game the best, and all the hate towards the later entries is based on "I can't use my old exploits to have unfair advantage, therefore game bad." People who say MKWii is perfect are either trying to pull all the newcomers on their home field to have unfair advantage every time or are just delusional.

I think the nostalgia of the game plays a really big part too. The wii itself was really inventive as it introduced gaming to the whole family instead of just appealing to young boys and girls. So a lot of us played this game with our whole family

I have very fond memories of this game despite never owning a Wii. By the time I even knew what a video game console was the Wii was already over. However my cousins had a Wii and I remember having a blast playing Mario Kart Wii with them. I already had Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U at home so it felt weird playing a similar game but with different tracks. However something they had and I didn’t was the Wii Wheel, which felt so good in my hands. My other cousins had a Wii U with Mario Kart 8 and they also had the Wii Wheel and now that I knew it worked with Mario Kart 8 I really wanted it. However even after all these years I still do not own a Wii Wheel or a Switch Wheel but I still plan on getting them eventually once I see them at GameStop or the Retro Games Store.

This game holds a special place In my heart. I remember as a kid grinding the living hell out of time trials since I was scared of losing on grand prix and I would spend hours trying to figure out how to unlock dry bowser. I miss those days.

i’ve played this game with my brother since i was 3, and we still play it together to this day

The soundtrack of this game is very underrated. Each circuit having its own specific theme that suited the mood was amazing. Like the Desert ruins circuit wih an Arabic tune, the Moo moo meadows with an Irish tune, or the Wario gold mine with a country tune. A lot of creativity and effort was dedicated to each aspect of the game

The Wii was ahead of its time and remains in a league of its own, just like the iconic games made for it. This and the Galaxy series are top-tier for any game on any console

If we got the kart mechanics from Mario Kart 8, with the inside drifting bikes mechanics from MkWii, we could have the best Mario Kart ever. Would still need great maps and a good battle mode tho

5:50 Someone actually hates it because "a mall is a place you go often in everyday life and that’s boring" and they most likely didn’t understand the whole point of this track taking place in a mall.

The unfair, stressful, and hectic moments when your next to the finish and you see on your friends screen a blue shell and you start yelling, cursing, and trying to get to the finish before it gets you is what makes this game so great. It’s those moments that bring me back to this wonderful game. The maps are just so good too.

I think a feature of this game that made it magical and special that absolutely NO ONE talks about is the cinematic cut-scenes. The opening one, the one when you end a race and get Top 3, and the one you get by beating the game ALL made it way more memorable and magical to me. And now in 8 Deluxe we don't have a single cut-scene which makes it almost lifeless when you win cause all you see is some trophy now. I really took this for granted back then but I'd really love to see cut-scenes come back for Mario Kart so everyone can experience the same feeling that I did back when I first beat Mario Kart Wii.

One of the reasons I love MK WII over MK8D is that how much u can throw yourself off the track and be fine. I feel like MK8D shortcut lists r just like cutting corners but the ones in MKWII are crazy and fun

Clicked on this coz I was bored didn’t expect bro SPITTING FACTS FOR 13 MINUTES AND 2 SECONDS

MarioKart Wii was the first MarioKart game I ever played, I have so many fond memories of my childhood playing it with friends and family. Wii games made my childhood and this game was one of the ones on top. 100% my favorite MarioKart game. If anyone was wondering (nobody) my main in MarioKart Wii was my Mii and Luigi same goes for every other MarioKart game. Note: I wish Nintendo wouldn’t shut down old online services I would still be buying stuff from the eshop on Wii U and 3DS and I’d be playing the hell out of MarioKart Wii Online.

That game was my childhood. I was always Yoshi with a motorcycle, my sister was always Daisy with a car, my dad was always his wii avatar with a car, and my mom was always either peach or her wii avatar with a car

I had the game since the wii came out and I still play it to this day and I still have my wii I took really good care of it and it never has problems! As of now I’m 16 and I had it for 13 years ❤