In the same way as it was a struggle to get to the historic charts this blog is built on, getting to any kind of accurate historic UK sales records is tough. It is clear that Mario Kart Wii sold very well indeed here, but not to what extent. The worldwide picture is slightly clearer, and for a long while no game had ever sold more un-bundled copies on a single format (one of the few to have overtaken it since is one of its own sequels). It was a hit almost anywhere it could be a hit. Mario Kart Wii kicks off a run of three successive #1 games which all reached unprecedented heights of popularity in their own way.
In one sense this was a culmination of a much longer process of video games moving towards a position of centrality, accelerated in the UK by the PlayStation consoles even if in 2008 they were barely playing any part among the big hitters. The timing was part coincidence, part the fact that this was the point at which the new generation of consoles reached critical mass and games developed from the start for them came out. Or, with hindsight, also one last rush just before the economy collapsed.
In the case of Mario Kart Wii, the roots of its standout success aren’t that hard to fathom. More than any other game on the Wii, it succeeded in reaching Nintendo’s established and new audiences alike. The Mario Kart series had a long build up, with Mario Kart: Super Circuit on the Game Boy Advance one of those rare non-Pokémon portable games to top the UK charts, and Mario Kart DS one of that handheld’s essentials. Mario Kart was a known quantity, its wacky races had an easy-to-understand appeal, plenty more people would have enjoyed it at a friend’s party or sleepover than had ever owned it. Then, enter the Wii as its ideal home.
Plenty of Nintendo’s established series got motion controls added for the Wii before Mario Kart Wii. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess had some pointer aiming and waggling sword strikes added onto what fundamentally remained a Gamecube game. Super Mario Galaxy had some much more carefully integrated motion controls which were still secondary. Metroid Prime 3 was built around transformative new aiming abilities, but didn’t reach a mass audience any more than its predecessors had. WarioWare: Smooth Moves was defined by motion controls, but that was kind of a continuation of the series’s entire gimmick. Mario Kart Wii, though, just made motion controls feel natural.
You hold the remote sideways and turn it like a steering wheel. An unnecessary and also essential plastic peripheral lets you turn it into just that, or at least a visual simulacrum. Mario and Luigi are shown on the game’s cover with their Wiimote steering wheels, invisible karts only apparent by their shadows. They lean into the corners in exactly the way which feels natural as a player, and which the game is built to further encourage with all of its drift power ups. Holding an unattached wheel and pulling off slides in each direction, shaking it to pull off tricks, feels both satisfyingly kinetic and endearingly silly. Which is basically the combo which Mario Kart’s gameplay had long gone for.
That central triumph is backed up by plenty of additional details needed to make it work as perfectly as it does. A largely working online system. Some new power-ups to add into the traditional late-race even-ing up, including the particularly effective thundercloud that gives you bonus speed until it strikes you down, but which you can transfer to someone else. The introduction of motorbikes, which fit even better with the control system. The perfect balancing of that drift mechanism, removing Mario Kart DS’s snaking exploits and rewarding track mastery without requiring it. Some utterly wonderful course design, from bouncing mushroom platforms to weaving between semi-rollercoastered minecarts to discover shortcuts, to Coconut Mall’s vision in escalators, ramps and posters of your Miis.
Mario Kart Wii is an already excellent experience refined further. It was for a long while the superior mechanism for easily getting a group of people together to share the fun of playing Mario Kart, which for all the strengths of single player and online modes remained the definitive way to play it. Just like Wii Sports, the fact of being an appealing social focal point acted as its own best possible advertising mechanism. It carried on selling and selling as first-time players became enthusiasts and brought it to others, as close as anything that originated on the SNES ever got to being a game for everyone.
Mario Kart Wii spent a total of 10 weeks at the top of at least one UK chart. Details on what else was #1 at the time after the page break.