This is interesting. Jeremy Parish over at 1up has launched a pretty devastating salvo at Nintendo regarding Mario Kart Wii. In short: he seems to hate the game. Nintendo fans are abuzz over this because Parish is, and remains, an ardent supporter of Nintendo's overall strategy.

I had written a a week or two ago about the bias against the Wii in some portions of the gaming press. Yet Jeremy Parish clearly is not part of that group, so you have to take his opinion a little more seriously than some other media outlets. What is his gripe with Kart? Punishing skill. According to Parish, Nintendo has dumbed down the game so that winning is almost totally random.

Interestingly this is something he accused Smash Brothers of in the same blog post. Now, Smash Brothers has been at the center of gaming controversy for some time: does it require skill or not? Many Smash players claim it does. I've seen players list dozens of techniques, and Smash Brothers has even been accepted into legitimate, for money tournaments like the Evo competition (maybe the most respected fighting game tournament in America). So Parish might undercut his case a little when he lists a game like Smash that seems to have a large contingent of players that can, in fact, defeat you without trickery or getting lucky.

I know in my personal experiences with that game, I had one friend in particular that always won. He was just better.

Mario Kart, though, has always been about "rubber band AI," that is, "no lead is safe." That is of course part of the appeal yet part of the reason why some have been turned off by the series. I count myself in the former group. With realistic racers, I just don't have the motivation (or car lust) to learn how to really drive. I then get my butt handed to me online. That's cool. I can always race against the computer, on an easier mode, and more or less enjoy the game.

I've learned other games well enough to actually enjoy the skill based aspect of it. I'm no David Sirlin (God forbid!), but I've spent a little bit of time learning to play Street Fighter II and its variants with a small degree of skill. Hence when the game went online on the Xbox 360, I did reasonably well as long as I played other "half decent" players. While I haven't really taken to realistic racing games, I do seem to enjoy learning hard to play fighting games. To each their own!

So I guess the degree in which you hate Nintendo's strategy for Mario Kart might depend on how much you appreciate realistic racing skill. Personally Mario Kart and F-Zero are usually the only racing games I like, so take that to mean I am not a racing gamer. Mario Kart is probably made for people like me and not hard core racing buffs. Still, though, if the gameplay is cheap, that shouldn't matter- it'll stink regardless. In any case, I won't know for myself until Friday, when I personally buy Mario Kart Wii.

Finally, I would suggest reading Parish's take: like I said, this isn't from some typical media guy who rips anything that doesn't involve a machine gun and hookers. Parish is pretty intellectually honest and, disagree or not, this is fascinating reading.

Read.