twitter.com/chinesenintendo/status/1025262778875957248
twitter.com/chinesenintendo/status/1025416396346294274
According to various sources, Nintendo are bring Mario Kart Wii for the first time to China, on the Nvidia Shield TV. It will have 1080p support, a full official Chinese translation, the automatic Rosalina unlock from owning Super Mario Galaxy on the system, and perhaps the most fascinating thing for most people here, official online support with up to 12 players simultaneously in China across up to 12 Shield consoles.
This isn't the first time Nintendo have released upscaled Wii games on the Nvidia Shield TV in China, though this is arguably their most advanced project yet. Given the similar nature of the chipset of the Nvidia Shield TV to that of the Nintendo Switch, this could all be a big experiment to see how well that Wii games could perform on the Switch. If that's true, there may well be official online multiplayer for Mario Kart Wii once again in future for the whole world. Though I highly doubt they'd extend that support to the classic Wii console.
In the meantime, when the game releases in China, I will be doing everything in my power to obtain it, and will hopefully document the network protocol to see how similar it is to the Gamespy one, and general differences in the game. It doesn't seem like getting the game will be easy thanks to China's policies on gaming and the Internet, but it's theoretically possible. Wouldn't it be fun in future if crossplay between things like Switch, Shield and Wii were possible?
Watch this space...
twitter.com/chinesenintendo/status/1025416396346294274
According to various sources, Nintendo are bring Mario Kart Wii for the first time to China, on the Nvidia Shield TV. It will have 1080p support, a full official Chinese translation, the automatic Rosalina unlock from owning Super Mario Galaxy on the system, and perhaps the most fascinating thing for most people here, official online support with up to 12 players simultaneously in China across up to 12 Shield consoles.
This isn't the first time Nintendo have released upscaled Wii games on the Nvidia Shield TV in China, though this is arguably their most advanced project yet. Given the similar nature of the chipset of the Nvidia Shield TV to that of the Nintendo Switch, this could all be a big experiment to see how well that Wii games could perform on the Switch. If that's true, there may well be official online multiplayer for Mario Kart Wii once again in future for the whole world. Though I highly doubt they'd extend that support to the classic Wii console.
In the meantime, when the game releases in China, I will be doing everything in my power to obtain it, and will hopefully document the network protocol to see how similar it is to the Gamespy one, and general differences in the game. It doesn't seem like getting the game will be easy thanks to China's policies on gaming and the Internet, but it's theoretically possible. Wouldn't it be fun in future if crossplay between things like Switch, Shield and Wii were possible?
Watch this space...