Nine years later, Mario Kart Wii's cut mission mode found
Bloody shell.
Mario Kart Wii was once intended to have a full mission mode, one fan has discovered.
Now, nine years after the racer's release, remnants of the mode have been found.
YouTuber MrBean35000vr uncovered clues to the abandoned mode while poking around the game's files (thanks, Nintendo Life).
Mission mode had been part of the series' previous installment, Mario Kart DS, but disappeared for its Wii incarnation and has not returned. It's a shame, as the mode offered another activity for people playing in single-player.
In Mario Kart DS, missions included slalom races on tracks with added obstacles, hitting goombas for coins or trying to collect as many coins as possible before a timer ran down.
The Mario Kart Wii mission mode looked like it would have been more of the same. Options included challenges to gain mini turbo boosts or pick up item boxes to score points, hitting enemies, pulling off wheelies, nabbing coins, passing through gates, hitting other players and performing boost starts.
You can see some of these below:
Why did it take so long to find? MrBean25000vr explained it was probably because the cut content was hidden so well:
"You may be wondering, how has nobody found this before now? The reason all this took so long to find is just because the game doesn't try to load these screens at all, ever, even on the menus that would once upon a time have contained them," he explained. "So in order to get at them, you'd have to convince the game it was supposed to load them first, which I did, and then politely asking them to render actually works!
"Moreover, these screens change the game state into an unused mode, similar yet different to that of Competition and Tournaments, revealing a bunch of features that were once part of Mario Kart DS, hiding away in the depths of Mario Kart Wii's code."
Mario Kart has since returned for Wii U and Switch but, while offering time trial, grand prix and battle modes, has not featured missions again. Why not, Nintendo?