Mario Kart Wii

Mario Kart Wii (マリオカートWii Mario Kāto Wī?) is a 2008 racing video game and the sixth major installment in the Mario Kart series, developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii video game console. Mario Kart Wii was announced at E3 2007 by Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. The game was released worldwide throughout April 2008, but one year later in South Korea. Like its predecessors, Mario Kart Wii incorporates playable characters from the Mario series, who participate in kart races on various race tracks using specialized items to hinder opponents or gain advantages. The game features multiple single-player and multiplayer game modes. Online multiplayer via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection was available at launch, but has been discontinued as of May 20, 2014, along with all other Wii and Nintendo DS games that supported online play. Mario Kart Wii takes advantage of the Wii Remote's motion sensing to provide intuitive and conventional steering controls; each copy of the game is bundled with the Wii Wheel accessory to augment this feature. Traditional control schemes are also supported. Mario Kart Wii received positive reviews, with critics praising the online features and the large number of tracks, characters, and karts. It received an aggregate review score of 82.07% on GameRankings and 82% on Metacritic. In 2010, the game was included as one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. With 35.53 million copies sold worldwide as of March 31, 2014, the game is the second-best-selling game for Wii and is the best-selling racing video game of all time.