I stumbled across this game in late 2007 and decided to try it out as a way to “warm up” for Mario Kart Wii. I quickly fell in love with it and became addicted. It was simple but oh-so-fun and “replayable” (if that term can apply to online games.) The controls were kind of crappy, as they were just the keyboard arrows plus a few buttons, but then I mapped them to a gamepad I have and I was in heaven. At one point my wife went out of town for a few days and I swear it seems like all I did was play Kart Rider. For whatever reason, I quit playing (I really can’t remember why at the moment) and Mario Kart Wii came and went (ended up being a letdown, IMO.)
Earlier tonight I decided to fire up Kart Rider again and it kept throwing errors at me instead of loading. A little googling revealed that it hasn’t been working since sometime in early/mid 2008!
Did/does anyone else play this? It was a wonderful little free racing game and I’m wondering if it will ever come back to North America. It’s still all the rage in Asia as far as I know.
Come on, no one played/plays Kart Rider? It was a really unique, fun game. It had a bit of an RPG element in that you could build your character up by earning licenses in solo mode, or by buying things with money you earned in online races.
It also had very Mario Kart-inspired, but also IMO very original items in the race. Like one offensive item made the other drivers’ steering reverse for a few seconds so that left was right and right was left. There were also the standard bananas, rockets, etc.
I’m sure you know the game was developed by a Korean company, and I remember a couple years ago it seemed like everyone was playing the game (like 2/3 of people aged 10~20 easily). Yea it was a lot of fun, and it looked a lot better than in the youtube video. Haven’t played it since though… I had no idea it was even played outside of Asia.
Yeah, it was made by Nexon, who apparently has some sort of relationship with Nintendo. Kart Rider Wii is pretty close to what I’d call a dream game. Especially if it supported online play and Wiispeak.
Unfortunately it’s not, at least in America, for now. I don’t know why they’d give us the game and then take it away like that. Doesn’t make any sense* :mad:.
*I suspect it could’ve had something to do with Americans not being willing to pay real life money to paint their go-kart a different color or get a customized license plate, etc, which - from what I gather - is how the game makes all of its money. It’s free to download and play, and there are no ads or anything.