Mario Kart Wii

Mario Kart Wii, the 6th game in the series (not counting Arcade editions), which introduced bikes and... Mushroom Gorge.

Petey Piranha


Petey Piranha was playable in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, but was scrapped here. Rarrrrrrrrrrgh!!!

Koopa Paratroopa


Paratroopa was also in Double Dash!! Interestingly, he uses a different pose here than in the final Double Dash!! icon.



This same icon can be seen in early screenshots of Double Dash!!

Hammer Brother


This would have been the Hammer Brothers' debut in the Mario Kart series.

Unused Mii Outfit


Apparently, there was going to be a Mii Outfit C. Oddly, though, it has a different icon compared to Outfits A and B. While Outfits A and B are circles with "Mii" on them, C appears to be a grey jacket with the letter "C" on it.

old_mario_gc_b
dterLPtM6ok Identical to GCN Mario Circuit. However, there is no Chain Chomp, and the Piranha Plants lack pipes (they are floating in mid-air). There is no minimap, and the minimap icon of the character scrolls off the screen.

draw_demo
yHQDE8vzfFw Identical to Mario Circuit, but with corrupted textures. No objects or items are present, and the lap counter does not work. It does have a minimap, though, which is also identical to Mario Circuit.

Additional Lakitu Flags
3xz3i3IxHwc

Through hacking, it is possible to add more than three laps to a track. Doing so shows that Lakitu actually has extra graphics on his flag for laps 3 through 8! While flags 3 and 4 were used in a tournament, one where you race the babies in Cookie Land with 5 laps, the flags indicating laps 5 through 8 go unused. The lap 5 flag goes unused because in the Cookie Land tournament, Lakitu uses the final lap flag on Lap 5, since Lap 5 IS the final lap.

Misc. Graphics
A coin graphic from Super Mario Bros.

A very old American flag graphic.

The icon of Mario in the Dragster might have been an early design for the banner icon on the Wii Menu

This Mii face, presumably of former head of Nintendo R&D 1 Hirofumi Matsuoka, could have been for testing licenses.

While the Wiimote graphic is used, it's only seen with the Nunchuck.







Some additional graphics that are not used. The circles appear to be simple test graphics.

Koopa Troopa's Wings
Koopa Troopa has two unused bones named wing_l1 and wing_r1 in its model file. While the bones aren't used in this game, they were used in the game's prequel, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, as Paratroopa's flapping wings, since both Koopa and Paratroopa shared the same model in that game. These were probably just leftovers from when Nintendo ported the Double Dash model to Mario Kart Wii.

The bones aren't referenced in any of Koopa Troopa's animations, so if someone were to hack a texture over the bones, they wouldn't move.

Chain Chomp


While Chain Chomps DO appear in Mario Kart Wii as obstacles in courses such as Mario Circuit or Chain Chomp Wheel/Roulette, there is an icon for the Chain Chomp item, as seen in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Next to the mouth, there is some kanji (仮), which translates to "Temporary" more or less.

Placeholder Items


Three placeholder items labeled "NEW1", "NEW2" and "NEW3" are stored in the game's graphics, and are obviously unused.

Course Names
In different regions, certain tracks have different names.

Item Boxes out-of-bounds
There are 3 item boxes in DK Summit located under the map. They are a bit after the S curve, but on the bottom of the level (on the respawn plane). In the image to the left, they are highlighted in red.

A video can be seen here (go to 1:38, and watch out for the volume).

Specific-item Item Boxes
Just like in Mario Kart DS, item boxes can be made to always contain a specific item, every time, regardless of the player's position. This feature is never used in any of the game's courses.

Debug Folder
An empty folder named debug can be found in the game's filesystem. Its exact purpose is unknown.