Mario Kart Wii is one of the most acclaimed and innovative video games ever released, capturing the true party feeling of the Wii and incorporating motion controls that would become synonymous with the game. It dominated the gaming world, introducing new features such as the Wii Wheel and more accessible online modes of playing together and would become one of the best selling titles ever released on the system, as well as the highest selling game in the Mario Kart universe.
Here are some of the best tracks to relive the glory days of Mario Kart Wii.
Coconut Mall
The second track from the Flower Cup, Coconut Mall is the first Mario Kart track to take place in a shopping mall. According to the official guide for the game, Coconut Mall is located next to one of the beaches on Isle Delfino and houses food halls, shopping malls and tight corridors for karters to race through.
Coconut Mall continues the Mario Kart Wii tradition of devising tracks with multiple routes available to players, with escalators going in different directions, upper and lower levels and plethora of shortcuts available.
The track isn’t necessarily the hardest one in the world with a fair amount of space, boost panels to maintain speed and a good amount of item boxes stacked to ensure players trailing can claw back some ground, though the Mii-driven cars in the car park outside have gone down in Mario Kart infamy as being some of the most infuriating obstacles going.
Coconut Mall would make a return in Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart Tour, though the original is still easily the best version to date.
Delfino Square
Plucked straight from the Super Mario Sunshine universe, Delfino Square is set in the heart of Isle Delfino and sees players racing around the town square and across the docks for the town. It made its debut as a track in the Flower Cup on Mario Kart DS and was one of the best tracks on that game, however it benefitted hugely from the upgrade in graphics and technical features brought about from the Nintendo Wii.
Delfino Square’s design and layout was hardly changed from the DS to Wii versions however, and the track is a favourite for those who want to play games for real money with its intense strategy and high skill ceiling. The course has plenty of jumps, multiple splits, a good couple of shortcuts and an abundance of turns that separate the veteran manual drivers to the automatic ones.
Mushroom Gorge
In many ways, Mushroom Gorge is the poster boy of Mario Kart Wii and everything new it brought to the table. Littering all of the publicity art, trailers and gameplay demos for the game pre-release, Mushroom Gorge is centred around the mushroom worlds from the New Super Mario Bros. on the DS and the Wii and showcases the new trick feature making its debut in Mario Kart Wii through the introduction of bouncy mushrooms players can jump on.
There is a plethora of shortcuts around the map that vary from skill level to skill level, however there is undoubtedly a real sense of adventure around the course that very few tracks over the course of the Mario Kart series.
Mushroom Gorge would return with Mario Kart 7, the game so bad that it had to bring back every good Mario Kart Wii course to remain relevant, and the 3DS version would bring with a new blue mushroom that utilised the new gliding mechanic. Nevertheless, there’s no beating the original thrill of the original Wii version.