Staff ghosts are 10.3 years old though or so.

What really matters is the worldwide release imo not just the japanese one.

But, this is the legit anniversary.

I've played for 9 of the ten years.

I selected Toad standard bike vs Omega in 2008 july.

I was 3/4ths thru my first fire emblem game and said "i'll try mario kart one time" and then got hooked and didn't finish and then forgot how.  I remember hooking up my Wii to my window with tape in hopes of leeching wifi for the Wii, and switching from parent to parents house, one having internet and one not.

I remember joining iS, meeting TWD98 and Brett, and all the forum posts here including the ones with Alaktorn and MVT.

I was 1v1v1'ing my cousins on rDS in 2008.

I was amazed by Prez and Omega for some reason the most in 2008, and Sword, before joining the community via GameFAQs initially.  I met Hahaae and Jaws before anyone >=D .  I never thought people would have stuck around this long.

But no I rememember the WR battles between OBI WAN and MEGURU, flame and tyrera, .. in fact all of them (if you want more nostyalgia search up my daisy circuit essay thread lmao), Jaws telling me to beat his 2:05 rPG and analysing my 2:08 ghost, trying to beat Omega with Automatic spear, the time trial ghost races vs friends that started it all (you could send people ghost challenges before dirfectly!), my first 2:08 regional on rDS

It saddens me that I have to rush this post, I could write a novel.

I was 13 and now I'm 22.

2008's last few weeks had some strong WR's tbh.  I think syuto was around back then.

I could monologue for years.


Fun game. I hope the community stays at least somewhat active for centuries.  But likely won't happen  

Fuck being 15

I did love downloading rival ghosts and the WRs (even though there were hackers) and wondering how to get the race to end by simply sitting there. One of my greatest memories playing WFC casually was when I beat an FTW hacker

Even as a filthy casual, there were fun times to be had

I remember downloading all the wr ghosts in 2008 and being absolutely amazed.  
And there was nothing better than finding clans to join from their shitty youtube videos  

Wow it's been a long time.

Aruba got me into MKW by having me TT rMC3. Got hooked to the game instantly.  

I always loved racing games, but before MKW I mostly played on the OG Xbox with arcade racers/street racing (Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 & Underground 2, Midnight Club 2&3…) and racing “simulators” (Forza Motorsport) that featured REAL cars. The only MK experience I had was MKDD, and I did like it, which kind of made me excited when I got to play MKW on release date (pre-order).


I remember my dad connecting the Wii to the internet and downloading all the updates and whatnot during the first week after release. You know how they had the Mii bubbles that featured the WR (and regional record) in the Mario Kart Channel? A couple of weeks after, when I got slightly better and beat the time in the Mii bubble, I legitimately thought I had WR on like half the tracks… I was so disappointed to find out I didn’t since those bubbles hadn’t been updated since the first week, and I was even multiple seconds off of the regional top tens  


For some reason Coconut Mall attracted me from the very first day, since I vividly recall TTing it first out of all the other tracks with Yoshi/Mach/Automatic and getting a 2:20. I started off using the Wii Wheel but my little brother wanted to use it instead so I used the Nunchuk (probably the best thing that ever happened in MKW for me). I remember Sword and that Japanese dude with the green shirt duking it out on CM and would check the top tens every other day. But the person I really looked up to was DarkLouis, an American TTer. I remember seeing him with a 2:03 which was AR. IIRC he was always near the bottom of the WW top ten, but over the weeks he climbed slowly and surely until he finally got WR. I thought his progress and perseverance were cool, and it gave me motivation to improve my 2:08 with Waluigi/FR/Automatic (just like others, I didn’t know that Funky Kong was the fastest). I still remember the moments I first got on regionals, worldwide tops, then finally WR with the first two minutes sub, beating DarkLouis himself. That’s where it all began and I started to love TTs. Unfortunately, DarkLouis didn’t play much after, but someone else did and I consider it as my favourite WR battle to this day. Sword reclaimed the WR, and when I beat him, I made a YT account just to comment on his WR video with something like “I can’t believe you got beat by a 10 year old” (please forgive me, was a cocky little one) and Tim (former rMC and rPG WR holder, among other achievements in MKW) replying “WTF you’re 10?”. Age was in my favour too since I had so much time to play, so it really didn’t make sense. Truth be told, I was turning 11 the next month but I was still technically 10 after I beat Sword.


As for wifi, I was only active in clans from August 2008 up until December 2009, where I decided to focus more on TTs and if I did play wifi, it would only be WWs every now and then. I didn’t get to participate in any of the GameFAQs stuff that Hahaae mentioned (mostly because I didn’t even know that site existed, and I was still a noob compared to those players), but damn those rooms were stacked. The first clan I joined was called PikaRiders (I used the clan tag [PR] on one of my CM WRs), which was a no name clan that I literally picked on a whim by looking at the recruiting threads on mariokartwii.com. It only started to become well known after it merged with Evolution and became Ep. This was the most fun I had on wifi, made many online friends like Elche (clan leader, he’s still 10th WW on DKJP no glitch), Kenza (former RR WR holder), Force, General, Mischief, Eltri.. too much to name and frankly I forgot a lot. Later on Ep wanted to become a more competitive clan and reformed into AE7 with new members. I did have fun as a member of AE7 and met more players like Norway, Larry B, but quit immediately after we won WCL division 1 season 3 (or 4, can’t remember exactly) due to in-clan fights/drama. It didn’t help that half of the good players like Brendan and Chaos who I wanted to play with quit the clan very early on. I wasn’t that good of a wifi player and used my items a lot incorrectly, but I could frontrun a lot of tracks if given space (most notably rWS where like nearly everyone sucked at it lmao). I’ll be honest and say that I never actually got my whole friend roster full, I think I had like 5-8 spots open every time. Most of the people on my roster were clan members, but I had other people who wanted to add me through YT/other sites like rusoX, Leif777 (good Canadian TTer back in the day, I think he almost had a chance at DDR WR), Dylan (from Bullet Bill), Nagisa (I still don’t remember how I ever got his FC lol), and some others that I can't quite remember.


Kind of unrelated to MKW but still involving the past decade was the old YT layout. Looks like an ancient mess when I see it now, but the amount of personalization and customization involved… I instantly knew whose channel I was on back then due to the design/layout. I really regret signing up with yahoo and associating it with YT/everything MKW-related. Last year when I returned I wanted to go through my old emails and apparently, they deleted everything from early 2009 and before… I remember that Doom/Brendan sent me an email telling me to join their clan since they wanted to recruit young players lol (I think Doom was 12 and Brendan was 13 at the time, I was 11), but that got deleted by yahoo. Also, those old IRC and xat chats that I would randomly join; I used to join the Star Dashers IRC chat a lot just to find Sword and talk to him about some Coconut Mall. It’s also a shame that mariokartwii.com is gone since I really wanted to read through old messages and threads.


2008-2009 (and some bits of 2010) were the best years in MKW for me. The game was so much more fun when the meta (both TTs and wifi) was in its early stages and wasn’t solved. Finding new strats, new glitches (seriously how do people discover these?), testing out wifi and clan war strats/lineups, competing against like half of the WW top 10 for WR… The activity back then was insane and I'm glad to have witnessed the dominance of players like Yavieron, Bubbles, Alvin, NMeade, Brendan, Vayu... When you set a regional top ten time back then you can bet that the same time wouldn’t be on the top ten two weeks later. Less cheating and TAS back then as well (only things I remembered were the ONEIROI incident, that Rameloma guy who clogged the top tens and took forever to get removed by Nintendo, and those other 0 second times that were removed quickly). On a somewhat related note, the CM glitch in 2011 was a massive kick in the balls to me since it along with DKJP were glitched (my main tracks) and the Nintendo charts were the only charts people cared back in the day… Yes there were some multiple license spammers like squatter on DKS and c-bass on MC, which ruined some of the integrity, but being on those charts was very important. I was sure that I was going to quit MKW at the time CM got glitched since I cared a lot about having those WRs back then, and I couldn't do glitches to save my life. Thanks to all the people like Cole for making mkwii.co.nf/mkwrs.com and recognizing other categories... which was one reason for me staying a little longer.


There’s still so much more to talk about the first half decade of MKW (not even getting into the second half yet) and this is only my perspective, but I’ll stop here for now since this post is getting too long.


EDIT: Went through some old pics/vids and damn how did I forget the legends Kenny, Aubrey, and Jimbo were in Ep/AE7  

Ah, all your stories remind me of those good old summer days where I had nothing to worry about except meeting friends, girls, and getting some top 10s/WRs. Started in high school at 15, took a break during University, and came back after getting full-time work. The crazy part is now I'm competing for WRs with people that are the same age, if not younger, than I was when I first started playing 10 years ago. I don't know if I have the time to compete with them anymore haha.

I too first idolized one, DarkLouis, on rBC of all tracks. I really wanted to beat that guy, I don't know why. Got my first regional there and moved on. I was never the best at copying other people's runs and executing better than them... The only way I could compete for WRs was by doing me and innovating/implementing new shit. From my first WR in DDR when I beat Yavieron by being the first to use the cavern turnskip, that would be my mantra. rDH double trick, BC using Spear, SGB using Spear (got flap WR beating magikruser and told either Mick or ROM I forget to use spear for 3lap as they were more motivated than me at the time), MC ramp dive, DKJP turn skip, GV shroom strats and ending outward drift, PB glitch, and the list goes on. These days I'm forced to actually study runs and microoptimize in order to compete, which is fine, but like my boy Jascha said, it was a lot more fun back in the day when the meta was evolving and the game was still in its exploratory stage. Miss a lot of the old legends (glad many are still around) but hopefully they've moved on to better things. A handful of our Japanese legends have probably entered the work force and have no time to play anymore as they work ridiculous hours and schedules, but I'm sure they remember this time fondly too. Could go on forever about this game's history and my experiences but I'll leave it at that.

Cheers to all those still around, new and old, and even if this game dies eventually, let's enjoy the next few years together  

MKWii in its prime years was without a doubt the hottest section on this message board, BY FAR. I was here before MKW came out on the MKDD section. I then first expirienced how intense the MKDD community was and how fanatic the karters were. But MKWii was NEXT LEVEL. For me personally this was the best community ive ever been in, despite the cheating and trolling. And ive seen my fair share of communities. People outside the game and from other sections always looked a little down at "us". But meanwhile they were all following and knew what was going around at "our" section. The core members in here were so goddamn smart and highly highly respected by the whole community, not to kiss ass but they were simply always spot on on every disscussion

I soon realized I wasnt the most talented MKWii player cuz I was pretty tight with Reinier. SO MUCH FRUSTRATION seeing him beating every PR I Worked so hard for, within half an hour. I lost interest in AF because of this and got slowly sucked more and more into the mkwii messageboard. Resulting in a PM from NMeade one day to replace him as moderator. HUGE!  

The period I was moderator and I decided to open the "Time to Prove" thread I knew I was about to get so much shit. This was so fucking intense for me. I was literally thinking about mkw and possible cheaters the ENTIRE DAY, 24/7. Checking the boards every hour and countering arguments as much as I could. At some point this whole discussion became putted above real life, no joke. I may sound like a fucking geek telling you guys this, but sadly, its the truth.

Despite all this I had a blast. Want to thank everyone involved. I dont play much videogames anymore but when I'm looking back at my gaming carreer, MKWii period was the best

yaz wrote on 04/24/18 at 12:51:19:


Had to check your posts to see who you were  

Can't believe it's been 10 years since your legendary LC run

yaz wrote on 04/24/18 at 12:51:19:


https://youtu.be/rwBk1pi3aAs  

RVZ wrote on 04/22/18 at 12:34:38:


I still remember when we first met you grabbed my hands and said: so these are the magical hands eh?
Good times were had!

Rhodechill wrote on 04/27/18 at 01:44:48:


yaz = YAZZO = FROSTBEULE

Rein_666 wrote on 04/26/18 at 02:14:25:

lol, I really said that?   awfull lol

Hopefully ur gf says the same thing nowadays