Monday, 11 June 2012

Mario Kart Wii - Intro/Mushroom Cup

Mario Kart Wii



Well, enough excuses and experimenting, it's time to get back on track on whittling away my games backlog. Actually, when I say "enough experimenting", that's a complete lie as I'm kind of using Mario Kart Wii in order to test out my game capture device. You'll be seeing my exact playthroughs of each 100cc tournament (as long as I finish 1st overall). Once I have beaten each 100cc cup, I will consider that as 'beaten' and then move on. This is a secondary game after all, they're meant to be swept away as soon as possible.

Mario Kart is something I'm very familiar with, I've played just about all of them and the only ones I don't own are Mario Kart 64 and Mario Kart 7. The latter will be fixed in time. I played 'Super Circuit' and 'DS' to death, but I don't have as much experience playing the console versions. This will be my excuse for any silly mistakes that are ahead. Although I bought Mario Kart Wii pretty much the day after buying a Wii, I've only played it once. 

So, here's how this will work, I will post a video of my playthrough of a tournament. Underneath it I will basically provide circuit-by-circuit commentary. I will show off a different character per tournament, so we'll see half of the cast of Mario Kart Wii as played by me. I'm playing with the Gamecube controller, half because I don't want to use the wheel and half because I don't want to use the wheel. Simple as that. So, let's go!

(note: all circuit images are taken from www.mariowiki.com)

Mushroom Cup

File:SuperMushroom.png

Video


Luigi Circuit

File:LuigiCircuit MKWii.jpg
File:Overhead Luigi Circuit.PNG

We open up the tournament with the Luigi Circuit, a simple enough course that will be the first one that many people who play this game will race on. There's not much to say about it, I never really had any problems with this stage at all. The biggest obstacle, and this is a common theme with any Mario Kart game, will be your opponent's power-ups. If you don't get hit by one in the whole race, it probably means you're in last place.

Position: 1st
Points: 15

Moo Moo Meadows

File:Mkwii MooMeadows.jpg
File:MooMeadowsLayout.PNG

Now, stop if I'm wrong, but I don't think it's very safe to have cows wandering onto the track. Where is this incompetent farmer? But yes, most circuits have a gimmick, this one is cows. Try to avoid the McDonalds fodder or else you'll be in for a delay. They honestly aren't going to be a huge problem. What is a problem is a mixture of my own god-damn stupidity and that god-damn blue shell. For those who don't want to watch the video, basically towards the end of the third lap I noticed a blue shell heading my way. In slight hope of stopping someone before they could overtake, I launched a green shell behind me. It didn't work and when I recovered from the blue shell I was down to 3rd. And then my green shell came back and hit me. Luckily I managed to recover enough to get up to 2nd place.

Position: 2nd
Points: 27 (+12)

Mushroom Gorge

File:Mkwii-shroomgorge.jpg
Wii Toad Canyon.png

THIS. The gimmick to this one is the red mushrooms are bouncy. Now, skilled players (and by that I mean anyone whose ever played this game) shouldn't have much problem with them. But I'm not a skilled player. There's a section with a number of these in a row, if you don't hit the first one well enough you have a chance of falling into the abyss. Which is what I did. Three times. Coupled with being blasted by opponent's power-ups and well, let's just say I never finished very high up the course. Luckily my nearest rival on the scoreboard, Wario, finished dead last. If this was most other Mario Kart games, he'd be pretty much in the same position every time, so that's nice at least.

Position: 10th
Points: 29 (+2)

Toad's Factory

File:Mktrack7.jpg
File:ToeFactroyLayout.PNG

(Apologies to those who actually watched the video, I wasn't particularly in the mood to watch the track intro after the last race...)
Well, I do much better here at least. There are a few gimmicks in this track, being the finale for the tournament it would make sense for it to be the hardest one (though for me it wasn't because it didn't have bouncy mushrooms). There are conveyor belts that either help you go faster or slower, there are crushers that will crush you and also mud, which will slow you down unless you hit the boost pads. It's a really fun track and there is a lot of item boxes along the way.

Position: 1st
Points: 44 (+15)

Overall Position: 1st...somehow.

One cup down, seven more to go. The next update will have either the next two or three. See you then.

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