There’s a Nintendo Wii with all the bits, two controllers and steering wheels plus Mario Kart in the charity shop for £20.

Worth buying?

My gamer mate always sneers at Nintendo so won’t even bother asking his opinion. But I’m not a gamer. I have an old N64 which I occasionally play Mario Kart on and was actually thinking of getting a Switch just for MK8. So would the Wii be a decent upgrade? Or is it worth paying for a Switch and MK8?

Personally I’d go for the Switch. It’s a great little console and worth it for the Indy games on the store. The Wii was okay, looks ropey on most modern TV’s and had a lack of really good games.

Thanks, even though I’d never play the Indy games? On the N64 all I ever play, is MK, Super Mario, and occasionally DOOM/Quake.

Even with that usage I’d still go Switch. Mario Odyssey is one of the best Mario games and the Doom port on Switch is quite good considering the hardware it’s running on.

It’s worth £20, can play N64 games too i think.
Switch is a brilliant platform, but it doesn’t take older cartridges.
Be aware that the online game playing options for the wii closeed down in 2014 or so.

Cheers, I wouldn’t be online. I don’t even have broadband…

I didn’t like Skyward Sword so much, but it’s worth buying just so you can play Zelda: Twilight Princess! You can also run Gamecube disks (although you need a GC controller) on the Wii, so the older ones (OOT and MM) are also playable (and great) if you like that type of game.

Alright, let’s rephrase the question. I will ONLY ever play Mario Kart. And offline. So is it worth sticking with my N64 which I’m happy with. Paying £20 for Wii MK, or paying £200 (unlikely anytime soon) for a Switch and MK8?

I mean how much better is Wii MK than N64 MK, and how much better is MK8 than Wii MK?

Should’ve just bloody bought it for £20 but I’m home now and debating whether to go back out… probably gone now anyway.

For £20 you could buy it, play it for the weekend, then sell it to CEX for a (small) profit.

Wii Mario Kart is brilliant fun and probably as good as it gets.
No idea how it compares with the N64 version – but for £20 I’d buy it.

My son also has the Switch MK: it’s too complex and lost some of its charm.
In fact the Switch just tends to sit unused.

Went back. It was gone. 🙁

That’ll teach me for dithering.

Wii with Mario Kart and 2 controllers for £20 is definitely worth it,  go get it!

I’ve had N64, Wii, WiiU and have a Switch and had MK on all of them, the Wii version is pretty good, especially local multilayer. The movement controls also add an extra dimension to a really good game.

The switch version, which is the WiiU MK8 jazzed up is really good but only really shine with online for multilayer and dlc. Probably not worth the £200 just to play it either.

Get the Wii and also sniff out Mario Galaxy, awesome game.

Edit: too late, gutted!

Dammit!

Shame as the sports packs are good. Okay graphics are dated by an hour or so of tennis is a hell of a lot of fun and a decent cardio workout!

a decent cardio workout

Careful now!

Yes, well worth it. Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom is worth getting hold of if you like fighting games and Gatchaman (G-Force!)

edit- ah… gutted for you.

For just one game I’d be looking at RetroArch or similar on the PC and emulating the Wii.

Wii Mario Kart is brilliant fun and probably as good as it gets.

This is the truth.

For just one game I’d be looking at RetroArch or similar on the PC and emulating the Wii.

This. The Dolphin core (Gamecube/Wii emulator) is very good. For reference Wii games (and PS2, some PS3 and XB360) run ok in Dolphin on my cheap i3-6100 with GT 1030.

There’s a Nintendo Wii with all the bits, two controllers and steering wheels plus Mario Kart in the charity shop for £20.

Absolutely. See if your telly has got the right inputs. Mario Kart/Wii Sports Resort a few of the other games are well worth it. Doesn’t matter how old the console is if the gameplay is as fun as it is.

EDIT: Oh, saw the update…never mind…

If it is just MK8 you want to play then the Wii U would be my choice. A hugely underrated console and a shame it was such a commercial flop.

MK8 on the switch is mainly just a port from the Wii U, as are many switch games.

A strange update…

Went in again this morning (it’s on my run route) and there was another one!

No Mario Kart though, but I can eBay that.

This one comes with Wii Sports and a Singing game 🙂 Plus gun, steering wheel, microphone and loads of other bits.

Wii Sports is a lot of fun. We used to spend hours at work bowling on lunch breaks.

Really needs the Remote Plus though, check that it says something like “WiiMotion” on the controllers. The original (very old) controllers were rubbish. IIRC “Sports Resort” was the updated version which came with updated controllers.

Here.

https://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wii/en_na/windows/wiiRemotePlus.jsp

I think I want one myself now…!

Wii Mario Kart is probably the best Mario Kart of all of them

Cheers! Will check out the new controllers.

Just realised though that I bought a new telly last month that only has HDMI inputs so it won’t connect anyway, and neither will my old N64  🙁

I give up. Is the pub open yet?

N64 to HDMI
Wii to HDMI

It’s worth £20 I reckon especially if it’s got Mario kart with it. The Wii was alright, our old one is somewhere in the garage, along with all the standard games like Wii sports etc. The kids liked it and we played various games…

You’ll get your money back on eBay once you’re bored with it I reckon. Retro gaming/consoles are a bigger thing now post Covid, people have spent two years trapped indoors…

You’ll get your money back on eBay once you’re bored with it I reckon. Retro gaming/consoles are a bigger thing now post Covid, people have spent two years trapped indoors…

Yeah, exactly. For £20 I’d even give it back to the charity shop. It’s a nostalgia trip for me. I lost interest in games when girls, clubs and psychedelics came along 😉 so it’s nice to occasionally have a little blast down memory lane with Mario/DOOM etc. Modern games don’t really interest me, I’ve tried. Too hard/complex, or just my attention span is shot, who knows. And yeah, you can probably get all these things as emulators and what not, but I’d never use it like that. To me it’s the difference between having a guitar in the corner that you can pick up and play, to a guitar plug-in instrument on your laptop plus hardware controller. By the time you’ve loaded it all up you’ve lost interest.

Need a PS1 and Resident Evil now…

Buy the Wii for sure.

it’s nice to occasionally have a little blast down memory lane with Mario/DOOM

I don’t know why but this made me imagine a world where a Mario DOOM crossover type game got made, Mario shooting demons with a mushroom gun or something.
I want to live in that world…

The Wii was okay, looks ropey on most modern TV’s and had a lack of really good games.

Twilight Princess
Skyward Sword
Mariokart
No More Heroes
Mario Strikers Charged (yes really)
Smash Brothers

Plus all the Gamecube back catalogue.

That’s just off the top of my head. The Wii has a decent catalogue let down by the usual pile of landfill fodder 3rd party titles. But for the benefit of having the Gamecube functionality plus being able to sideload emulators via Homebrew it’s a no brainer.

Mario kart Double Dash for the Gamecube is worth picking up as well but as said you need a controller (also works for Wii version though)

I don’t advocate piracy but the Wii is a few gens old now….

Buy one.
Soft mod it via USB.
Can download a load of Wii games onto a USB stick.
Can play a load of emulators via a usb stick as well.

Cheap fun.

Wii Mario Kart is probably the best Mario Kart of all of them

It’s good, but the Switch one is waaaaaaay better IMO.