After winning all the grand prix cups in 100cc, I decided to try out some online races for the first time in the Wii wee hours of the morning. I chose a worldwide vs. race, and I soon noticed that the starting vs. rating (VR) is 1000. In Mario Kart Wii, the default rating was 5000; so you really have to work your way up in Mario Kart 8.
I chose my character, and I’m now playing as Walugi again (as I started to in Mario Kart Wii towards the end). As much as I like Koopa Troopa, I seem to do better with Waluigi. I found myself in a lobby, which quickly filled up to the maximum of 12 racers. We could vote for a track to race on, but there was one huge problem: There were only three tracks to vote on, plus a random option. Are you kidding me? Mario Kart Wii would let you vote for any of the 32 tracks in the game, so this is a huge step backwards.
The game randomly selected one of the three tracks, and all the Miis in the lobby reacted excitedly. Yeah, let’s pretend we’re happy with only being able to choose from 3 of the 32 tracks in the game.
Despite that big disappointment, I continued on and began my first race on the GCN Sherbet Land track. I hadn’t spent a ton of time with the game so far, so I wasn’t expecting to do very well. And indeed, I finished in 7th place out of 12 racers.
But the second race was a different story. It took place on the Bowser’s Castle track, and within about 30 seconds, I took the lead. Once I did, I never saw anyone else the rest of the race and finished with an easy win. Of course, the other players were probably noobs like me, but it still felt good to win my second online race. Goodness gracious, great balls of fire.
I raced on a total of nine tracks before ending for the night. For the most part, I was finishing in the middle of the pack, and occasionally doing better. Here are my results:
- 7th / 12 – GCN Sherbet Land
- 1st / 12 – Bowser’s Castle
- 5th / 12 – N64 Yoshi Valley
- 5th / 10 – Cloudtop Cruise
- 6th / 12 – Thwomp Ruins
- 1st / 10 – Electrodome
- 5th / 12 – GCN Dry Dry Desert
- 4th / 12 – Mount Wario
- 5th / 12 – DS Cheep Cheep Beach
I finished the night with a versus rating of 1111. Despite the limited choices when choosing tracks, I had a lot of fun racing online. I’m going to be having my first get-together very soon. But I won’t be sending everyone an individual invitation message like I did for Mario Kart Wii get-togethers. I’ll be posting on Twitter and Facebook, so if you’re on my roster and want to be notified, make sure you follow me on one of those two places.
Or if you’re not on Twitter or Facebook, you can still bookmark those pages and check them out from time to time. Don’t feel bad if you can’t make it to any certain get-together though, because I’ll be having them fairly often.
UPDATE: I’ve heard from some people who said the new method prevents people from choosing the same courses over and over. That is a good point, but limiting the choices for everybody is not the ideal (or only) way that goal could be achieved. What if the last five courses played in a lobby were grayed out and unselectable? That would keep things varied, while still letting people choose their favorite tracks.