I’ve been using Waluigi and the Wario Bike and I’ve managed to score a 2:00.287 time so far.
It appears that I’m slightly over the center line in the world ranking. But man, 1:32, that’s insane. Insane, but doable with a flawless run.
I did 1:59.991 with Waluigi and the standard bike. I’m a bit surprised that they set this up in GP format, with all the possible crashes and items. But I guess that’s just the philosophy of the game.
Can you explain the tournament to me?
My guess for the freakish time: he found a shortcut that no one else knows about yet, or mastered a difficult one.
If you go into the Mario Kart Channel on the menu it gives you the option to race a GP race of Mario Circuit (with a loose Chain Chomp running around the track) in a tournament. You can choose any character and any kart and your best time on the track is uploaded to the tournament scoreboard.
I think the record setting time went like this:
- Gets the speed burst to begin but still in a lower place
- Uses that lower place to pull a Bullet or Super Mushroom from box
- Uses the B/SM to gain a huge lead
- None of the other racers pull a POW or Lightning Bolt or Blue Shell
- Keeps getting green shells out of boxes and hitting the Goombas for free Mushrooms
It’s doable, but it requires a lot of luck and skill.
Well, it’s obviously doable. I think the way to do it is to get lucky with powerups. You’ve got to ride with the pack and amass muchrooms or stars or bullets.
I’m at 1:52. I used my Mii to set it.
I think that record takes more luck than skill, personally. Going out and kicking ass skillfully (getting 1st during the first lap and keeping it after that the entire race) is skill. Sitting back with the pack to luck into powerups is not skill. It’ll get you a faster time (sometimes), but it also proves that there’s something wrong with the game, or at very least, the online tournament component.
I wish there was an option to race without items.
I used Kart Rider to “warm up” for Mario Kart Wii, but I’m starting to think it might be the superior game . . .
Agreed. Then we’d see the “skill”. At least give us a way to limit the possible items. See, this, again, is one thing Nintendo fucked up on. The replayability is already high, but it’d be near-infinite if they had this level of customization and a way to save replays.
And since they already have the tournament infrastructure in place, it would’ve been great to allow us to set up a custom tournament with all these options.
This is one of those games where there’s so much right that the poor stuff stands out. It’s almost more disappointing than just a bad game, because you can see the tweaks that would make it great.
I doubt it’s too late to fix most of this stuff through updates, but will they?
Exactly. It’s not just this game, in my opinion. It’s all the Wii games I’ve played (which isn’t a lot, admiteedly), but there seems to be some fatal flaw or two that just make it ordinary. It’s a shame, because it’s capable of so much more.
I know what you mean. Mario Galaxy is one of the best games I’ve played in years, but I was constantly annoyed that I couldn’t run. For god’s sake, you could run in Mario RPG, why leave it out of an action platformer?! Same complaint to a lesser extent with Super Paper Mario. It’s such a simple and foregone feature that it must have been a conscious decision to leave it out, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why.
Oh, and in a lame attempt to keep the thread on topic, my time is 2:03. I’ve only tried twice and got nailed with blue shells both times.
I haven’t tried the tournament yet, but I’m kind of disheartened after reading about the super-awesome record time. Just like I’m extremely frustrated doing any time trials because the best person is always some genius who did nothing but plan out the best route for the course and play it for hours upon hours at a time. 
Focus on the Dope record. It’s the only attainable one.
2.02.somethingsomething. Rosalina/Wario Bike. Maybe I’ll give Waluigi a try.
Thirded. This is insane to me. It’s like they’re making conscious design decisions to make the game LESS fun. This should be a system-generation-defining title, and it has EVERYTHING in place to get there, and they’re just missing the obvious stuff:
- Optional voice chat during multiplayer with people on friends list. I think this makes the people who want it happy, and keeps the people who don’t want to deal with it happy.
- Customization on items. Hell, customization on the degree to which the “equalization” measures of the game come into play. It was acceptable that you couldn’t adjust this back in the days of, say, the N64… but look at what you can do with Smash these days! How can this be any harder than that!
- We’re REMOVING the battle mode that was the defining multiplayer feature of the series?!
I mean, do you think they even had a meeting and mentioned this stuff at any point before they released the game? I love my Mario Kart Wii, and it’s not going to stop me from playing it and unlocking everything… but it’s probably going to stop me from playing it any more after that. Which will probably just make me buy another game to play. So I guess maybe that’s what they were going for, after all. 
P.S. 1:59 or so with Rosalina and the Wario Bike. I refuse to admit that there is such a character as “Waluigi”.
With the Wii already receiving games from most of Nintendo’s main franchises, I think it’s only a matter of time until sequels to Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart, Brawl, Zelda and Metroid are released.
I would hope these sequels would answer a lot of these fan complaints.
Rumor has it sequels to Galaxy and Zelda are already in development.
Huh?
Mario Kart was always known by its 4-player battle mode. But in Mario Kart Wii, the only option is 2 vs 2 instead of a 4-player free-for-all. I gotta say, I miss the free-for-all. It was a mistake to remove it.
Oh shit, I didn’t even know because I haven’t had 4 people over yet, but I will soon. Good to know. That sucks. Yeah, I’m starting to get really curious about why they would remove stuff like this. No way of talking to your opponents online, no running in Mario Galaxy or Super Paper Mario, no free-for-all and no jumping in Mario Kart. It doesn’t make sense.
I really doubt that there will be a sequel to Mario Kart or Brawl for the Wii. Mario Kart and Smash Bros are usually one-edition-per-console. Then again, if the Wii’s lifespan is longer than normal they might change it up, but I won’t hold my breath.
Now Mario Party, on the other hand, there will undoubtedly be about ten more of those on the Wii. 