http://wii.ign.com/articles/855/855033p1.html

February 26, 2008 - Nintendo fans still hoping that the arrival of Mario Kart Wii will herald the beginning of voice chat support on the company's home console will have to put those hopes on hold for a while. The publisher's European subsidiary confirmed in an official Mario Kart Wii posting that players will only be able to communicate with each other via text chat, and not during matches.

"You can create rooms for friends to join and even text chat while you're waiting for other racers," Nintendo of Europe revealed.

Very likely, Mario Kart Wii will support a USB keyboard to communicate -- most of the Wii Channels do this already -- but we expect the majority of gamers will use a good old-fashioned Wii remote to input messages, such as "Bozon, you suck!' and "Craig, you're terrible!" or even, "How the hell is Casamassina so damned good at this game?" (The latter message will probably take some time using the Wii remote, but the importance of the statement should not be ignored.)


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So, text chat with friends confirmed. That's pretty sweet, but man do I want that headset...

Text chats alright i guess... actually i really dont care if theres no voice chat because ill most likely be playing online with a buddy.

I WANT A TOADETTE CONFIRMATION!! *begins temper*

No confirmation for Toadette, but if you look a bit down, I say something.

Team races are back though. And apparantly, in online too?



Look at the names over the players, the fact that there are colours around the players on the map, and that 1st and 4th are in team colours. I'm guessing it is in online as the names are above, why would it say "Bowser" over bowser's head?



Triple Banana confirmed. It was rumour-confirmed before, but now it is confirmed I believe. The golden mushroom is also still here.

For a character list of known and probable.

Known:

Baby mario
Baby luigi
Baby peach
Boo
Bowser
Diddie Kong (Dixie is in, so Diddie really has too..)
Dixie Kong (NP)
Donkey kong
Koopa troopa
Hammer Brothers (Nin Power)
Luigi
Mario
Mii
Peach
Toad
Toadsworth (who the heck is this?)
Waluigi
Wario
Yoshi

That's 19.

That might be in. About 30 unkown characters are out there, according to Nintendo Power

Baby Wario
Birdo
Bowser Jr.
Daisy
Donkey kong Jr.
Dr. mario
Dry bones
Goomba (Even though he is pretty much de-confirmed, since he is an obstacle)
King Boo
Lakitu (VERY unlikely, he starts the game)
Luma (more likely as an item)
Metal Mario (we already have 2 mario's)
Paratroopa
Petey piranha
Rosalina
R.O.B
Shy guy
Toadette (As Toadsworth is in, Toadette really should be in too.)
Waluigi's Girlfriend (Nintendo Power said there is a change of this, or maybe they confirmed it. I do not know, sorry!)
Wario's Girlfriend (Same as above)

Any other potential characters?

can' t wait for the release date!!!

yay gonna be so mcuh fun dude!!

super smash and wii fit are too you know...

i bet they could fit 40+ characters in because a game like MK doesn't seem to take up as much space as a game like SSBB so I hope there are 40+ characters!

I'm rather disappointed that like Galaxy and Metroid Prime...and Zelda...Nintendo isn't improving the graphics much at all from the gamecube games. I wlll probably buy this game since Mario Kart is one of my favorite games, but the Wii just overal dissappoints me.

If they get the online right then I'll forgive the ugly graphics, because I so badly wanted online play for DD.

The screenshots. Understand that I also own a PS3 and I've been playing Burnout and GT5 Pro demo. The art in Mario games is generally great but it would be nice to improve the graphics a couple of times a decade.