Platform:Nintendo Wii
Age Rating:3+
Year of Release:2015
Review:
It all started in pre-COVID days. My kids were playing MarioKart8 and invited me to have a go. I was awful. I couldn’t master the controls and was lucky to finish the races at all let alone achieve any form of competitive parity with the children.
Well. Two years later, all that has changed. I am now proud to say I have the maximum three gold stars on every level of MaroKart8 – including the fiendish “mirror” level where everything is the same but the wrong way round. Very much like Mario from the 80s, you initially can’t imagine a world where you can possibly achieve the Dragon track or the first Rainbow Road at 200cc but this is something I can now do with ease.
The impressive thing about it s that it gives you “wins” fairly early on. My Twitter post embedded here was early on in this odyssey and remains probably the most skilful passage of play I achieved. I’m impressed by Mario. In the opening sequence of every race sequence, he’s committed and ready – giving it 100%. I have drowned him, had him fall into lava, had him attacked by a vicious spherical “dog” but he’s kept the faith throughout. Never questioning, only giving.
The game made a big fuss of me getting 2 stars on every level – but when I got to the maximum 3 stars, nothing happened at all. It was like having a chisel-jawed, gritty northern parent not even looking up from his paper when his son returns from war with a George Cross.
Might suit people who like:
Lon-term projects that deliver no tangible benefit.
Time Thief Rating:Time? Not so much a relative concept as a black hole
“Might suit people who like:
Long-term projects that deliver no tangible benefit.”.
… top stuff. Speaking of which, I must get back to constructing my definitive nineties playlist.
Asking for a friend – how long did it take to go from “What? How? Which one is Stop?” to “You know what, this is fun”?
Anytime my friend has picked up the controls and pressed Start the resultant laughter and jeering from the young uns has sent him red-faced and out of the room
The answer to that one is simple. You send THEM out of the room until you’ve reached an acceptable standard of play.
Yes that’s the answer. Allow yourself a bit of time when they’re in bed to grasp the basics and slowly but surely you’ll be better than them – which is what it’s all about.
I’ve been a huge fan of Mario Kart since the N64 days. We loved playing it on the Switch but sadly have the ‘dodgy’ controllers which don’t function properly any more.
Almost as bad as having a dodgy transformer
Replace that dodgy transormer! It could explode and burn down your house!
These games have I played through to End Boss on my computer:
Glider (for Mac), back when pixels were the size of postage stamps.
Myst (I think we’re seeing a pattern here)
Wolfenstein (terrifying)
—- montage of calendar sheets being blown away by the Winds of Time —-
This game have I played through to End Boss on my telephone:
The one with no ads or in-game purchases set on a deserted island off Norway or Finland or wherever where you have to solve puzzles involving runes an’ stuff and free ancestral spirits from standing stones. Forget the name. That was good.