Mario Kart Wii/Oddities

This is a sub-page of Mario Kart Wii.

To do: Get better images of everything. Maybe even in-game ones?

Unobtainable Item Boxes

There are three 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 (warning: volume).

Big AREA on DK Summit

AREAs are invisible regions in Mario Kart Wii where, when you're in them, the game knows which camera to use for the replays and other things. For some reason, there is one on DK Summit that is massive, way bigger than the track itself.

Bowser's Castle Cannon SFX

Track slots that have cannons load up cannon sound effects from the revo_kart.brsar, and tracks that don't have cannons do not. Bowser's Castle loads the cannon sound effects even though there are no cannons on the track, suggesting that it had them earlier in development. Supporting this fact is the fact that course.0 had a cannon point.

Overlapping Item Boxes

GCN Waluigi Stadium has two item box objects placed in exactly the same coordinates (the top box over the first big jump). You can sometimes see them clipping through each other during gameplay.

Luigi Circuit Model Differences

For some reason, the version of Luigi Circuit used in the credits has a slightly different model than the normal one. The sunset version has a whopping 13 less triangles than the normal one.

Normal	Sunset

Sherbet Land Pole Texture

The finish line poles in N64 Sherbet Land don't have their own texture, instead borrowing from the "I" from the "MARIO KART" banner.

You can even see that the pole has a slight gradient to it:

French Lap 3 Texture

For some reason, the French version of the "Lap 3" texture is stored in a palette format. All other HUD textures, no matter what language, are stored in an IA8 format instead.

Out-of-Bounds Button

There is a button that appears to have no text or properties tied to it just outside of the visible area of the menu.

GCN Peach Beach Duplicate Routes

Enemy routes 4, 5, 6 and 7 are exactly the same and duplicates of each other.

Character Stats Mixup

There is a programming mistake in the code of the game that results in some characters stats being assigned to the wrong characters. The following characters are affected by the bug:

- Small Miis use Rosalina's intended stats, making both characters the only ones that use the same stats slot.

- Medium Miis use Small Mii's intended Stats.

- Large Miis use Medium Mii's intended character stats, which results on their programmed stats to become unused since they're not assigned to any character at all in-game. Below is a table comparing the unused (intended) stats with the actual ones used in-game.

	Weight	Speed	Speed (while steering)	Acceleration	Acceleration (while steering)	Drift	Drift (while steering)	Handling	Handling (while steering)	Traction	Traction (while steering)	Miniturbo	Off-Road Speed (KCL 0x02)	Off-Road Speed (KCL 0x03)	Off-Road Speed (KCL 0x04)	Off-Road Speed (KCL 0x05)	Off-Road Handling (KCL 0x01)	Off-Road Handling (KCL 0x02)	Off-Road Handling (KCL 0x03 and 0x04)	Off-Road Handling (KCL 0x05)
Unused	0	0.53	0	0.025	0.035	0.09	0.01	0.000555	0.00029	0.000265	0.000222	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Used	0.252	0.53	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	0.0171	0.0184	0.0113	0.00641	0.00263	0.00368	0.00263	0.00211

This can be proven by modifying the character stats for Large Miis. Whatever changes made will not affect the character stats for Large Miis (nor any other character in the game).

(Source: Custom Mario Kart Wiiki)

Blank Text Entries

When online, the game shows the name of your country under your Mii when you join a room. For some reason, the text entries for Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and China are blank (but the game still tries to display them, there's just nothing to display)

Monty Mole Scoring Problem

If a tournament/competition has the scoring objective set to hitting Monty Moles, the player will also score if they are hit by a Monty Mole. No tournaments appear to have this objective, however.

Mii T-Pose Glitch

A very obscure glitch where if you are playing 2 player online and someone else in the lobby is using a Heavy Male Mii Outfit A on either the Wario Bike, the Shooting Star or the Phantom, then their Mii will be constantly in a T-Pose. The reason this happens is because Nintendo seems to have forgotten to put the Mii in the sitting back position in files le_bike-la_mii_m_4.szs, lb_bike-la_mii_m_4.szs, and lc_bike-la_mii_m_4.szs. This does not happen when you play as a Mii, and it doesn't appear anywhere else in the game because Mario Kart Wii loads higher quality versions of those files for offline play and single player modes (and these files don't have the glitch). If CPU racers were allowed to use Miis, then it would be possible to view this in 4 players multiplayer too.

Values Not Reset

The game has a pretty big oversight in that when entering a mode, certain flags are set to change the behaviour of certain objects and other things. However, when exiting the mode, the flags are never reset, causing the changed behaviour to carry over to other modes. There are a few different things you can do with this bug:

Bigger Character Icons

Normal	Big

There's a bug in the game's code that causes the minimap character icons to be bigger than they are intended. When playing a normal race, the icons are the normal size, unless you've played Time Trials. When the game launches, these icons are set to a specific scale. When playing Time Trials, these icons are made larger because the only other racer is the ghost. These icons aren't scaled back down when you quit Time Trials so they remain a bigger size until the game is reset.

Online Nametag Drawdistance

In VS mode, nametags of players are only drawn when they are a certain distance to you, if they are too far then they will not be drawn to the screen. However, in battle mode, the nametag will be drawn regardless of how far away the other player is from you. If you enter a battle, quit and then enter a VS Race, then the nametags will be drawn as if it was a battle. Which can help when playing competitively.

Thwomp Desert Physics

The Giant Pokey on Thwomp Desert tournament actually sets flags that changes how the sand physics work, and it no longer constantly pulls you inward. If you play this competition and then go play battle mode, the changed physics will carry over. This is particularly problematic for online play, as it could give quite a huge advantage. Luckily this glitch could only be performed when the Giant Pokey tournament was the one currently running.

Blue Fake Item Box in Solo Races

If you enter a Team VS race while on the blue team, then exit and go to a solo VS Race, your FIB will retain its blue color from the team mode. This is purely a visual bug and the FIB is still able to hit everyone in the race.

Disabled Objects

In Mario Kart Wii, the KMP defines has a presence value for every object to determine wether it actually loads the object or not. The "presence" value in the KMP is set to disable for certain objects, so in the final game they are essentially unused.

Koopa Cape

There are 3 disabled flags on top of the giant Koopa shell.

Chain Chomp Wheel

There are 4 disabled item boxes in the star ring on Chain Chomp Roulette

N64 Mario Raceway Misplaced Invisible Walls

The walls on Mario Raceway have invisible walls above them to prevent players from going over top of the walls, however on the U turn with the mushroom, the invisible wall juts out a lot further than the brick wall.

DK's Foot and Mouth Disease

"On the character selection screen, looking closely at Donkey Kong's innermost toes shows a red texture resembling painted nails (left: normal view, middle: zoomed in). This is actually a mapping error that applies Donkey Kong's mouth texture to his feet (right)."

(Source: Supper Mario Broth)

GCN DK Mountain Porting Issue

Mario Kart Wii	Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

When porting DK Mountain to Mario Kart Wii, Nintendo seemed to have removed the transparent transition from rock to dirt from Double Dash making it look a lot more ugly.