While everyone has been busy speaking and commenting about Rocktar’s GTA IV, Nintendo released one of its best and funniest game: Mario Kart Wii.

As usual, Nintendo introduced along with the game a new accessory - the Wii Wheel, basically a plastic steering wheel in which one can place the Wiimote.

The Wiii Wheel makes the new Mario game one of the most accessible Mario Kart games to date and allows complete novices to compete with ease and comfort, ensuring no one is left in the dust. In addition to the Wii Wheel, the game supports Wii Remote turned on its side, Wii Remote and Nunchuk combination, Classic Controller and even Nintendo GameCube controller. However, the Wii Wheel remains the best way to interact with the game.

The game is also fun to previous fans of Mario Kart as they will find the 16 classic tracks from previous Mario Kart games, along with 16 exciting new tracks.

In Mario Kart Wii, for the first time ever players will have the option of racing with karts or a brand new mode of transport – Bikes.
Using bikes as your chosen method will offer some interesting and different gameplay possibilities such as carrying out a “wheelie,” which in turn will give you a small boost that could be crucial and make that all important difference at the finishing line.

True to the series, the game features tons of racing, plenty of power-ups and oodles of objects for players to use to slow down other drivers.

The offline races are split up into Grand Prix, Time Trials, VS and Battle modes. As you might imagine in the Grand Prix mode, the players should master their way through 50cc, 100cc and 150cc cups (and more). In Time Trials the players can race alone or against a ghost driver, while VS mode will put the player to compete against 11 CPU racers. Battle mode offers the classic Balloon Battle and Coin Runners modes.

In addition to its regular characters like Mario, Peach or Bowser, Mario Kart Wii showcases some fresh mugs, such as Funky Kong, Baby Peach, Baby Daisy or Rosalina. Up to 12 characters can take part in a race.

Players are also able to hit the road as their own personalized Mii caricatures in addition to many classic and even some never-before seen characters in Mario Kart games.

Mario Kart Wii offers multiplayer races, including tournaments, but unfortunately it doesn’t have any voice or chat integration, which is rather annoying. In the multiplayer mode, the game supports up to four players.

Mario Kart Wii was very well received by the gaming critics, and the game gained a score of 83 out of 100 on the review aggregator Metacritic.com, which registered 47 reviews.

Although it is very possible that in terms of sales Mario Kart Wii will be defeated by GTA IV, it will surely boost Nintendo sales and it will attract new fans.