No fix coming for Mario Kart on Wii Virtual Console

Nintendo has today revealed that there will be no fix for the Virtual Console release of Mario Kart 64.

The release of Mario Kart 64 on the Wii Virtual Console has been greeted with great pleasure by gamers the world over, but a problem with the memory pack emulation left it impossible to save time trial ghost data.

Ghost data enables time trialists to save their best lap times as a racing ghost, giving you something to race against next time you load up the game - thus making it easier to better your previous best time. Unfortunately the Wii Virtual Console version does not support this feature, with the game insisting that no memory pack is inserted.

Pro-G contacted Nintendo to see if there are plans to address the problem and it appears we're stuck with what we've got.

"Due to unavoidable technical reasons unfortunately it is not possible to save ghost data from Mario Kart 64's Time Trials in the Virtual Console version of the game," reads the statement issued to Pro-G.

For its part, Nintendo does say that it has "placed messages advising users about this before they download the game both when the Wii Shop Channel is first accessed and in the More Details tab on the individual game page."

It is, however, not the answer we were hoping for and raises doubt over Virtual Console compatibility with other N64 games that used/required a memory pack.

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User Comments

Anonymous

think its possible to mod the game so you can do a mariokart marathon? like one race starts right after the previous finishes?

Posted 05:53 on 05 February 2008

DemonicYoshi

To everyone who's saying 'who cares?? just one part' sort of stuff, think about it. think about loner gamers like me who use the ghosts to find someone to play against...and how can Craig Atkinson say 'you'll never play this N64 game again'?! this is a CLASSIC. A CLASSIC!!!!! JEEZ!!!! Rant over. Resume reading.

Posted 21:17 on 12 August 2007

Jake

If the game game play works fine wat is wththe probelm. so you cant save you ghosts i dont caere

Posted 22:05 on 30 June 2007

moth

I'm sorry that your family is so dysfunctional that your parents would actually enjoy seeing you leave, but I fail to see why enjoying Mario Kart 64 would be a sign of a basement dweller. I hope your family isn't as bad as your logic.

Posted 04:03 on 15 May 2007

Get a Life

Are you people serious? Get a life. Are you still practicing Mario Kart 64? What, did the Dungeons & Dragons tournament get cancelled this month and replaced with a Mario Kart 64 tournament? Go on a date, I'm sure your mothers would love their basements empty for one night.

Posted 06:16 on 20 April 2007

Jez

Firstly Ilovemywii .. wtf did u just say its all garbled rubbish!

Anyways I don't think its a problem with the Wii emulator supporting mempacks as you can save games in other N64 titles which would have used mempacks and they work fine. Maybe it's required a rewrite of a certain module within the game to support the Wiis memory system, because very little money will be made on selling the title it would not be profitable for the business to put time into rewriting sections of this old classic (lol I think im making less sense then Ilovemywii :P )

Posted 12:02 on 18 April 2007

ilovemywii

this game is gameplay and gamply is the wii so no problem the wii is can see you move and make the game move and that is fun no grafics

Posted 17:22 on 01 February 2007

Cheep-Cheep

Who wants to go surfing on the wave of Nintendo apologists' tears?

Seriously, this is really weak Nintendo. It's a 10 year old game for crying out loud.

Virtual Console is for tools in most cases anyway. Especially at those prices.

Posted 15:41 on 01 February 2007

reinhold

Disingenuous idiots, at that! Because you know that Nintendo is aware that emulators have this capability.

Nintendo can do it. They simply didn't care to try, which is BS. If some geek can make this work for free in his spare time, there's no reason that Nintendo couldn't assign some of its development resources to get this fixed.

Posted 15:14 on 01 February 2007

Wiiner

Has anyone else noticed that the sound is kinda garbled or sounds overly compressed now?

Posted 08:05 on 01 February 2007

psperl

Pretty soon someone will get linux or something else running on the wii with a n64 emulator that supports memory packs. Then nintendo will looks stupid for saying its technically impossible when some random fool can do it.

Posted 02:11 on 01 February 2007

Satertek

N64 PC emulators are able to save to a fake memory card file, so I don't see why it would be a problem for Nintendo. Perhaps it wasn't included in the emulator, but why can't an update be released to add it?

This is purely a flaw with the emulator, not with the game.

Posted 00:30 on 01 February 2007

LC

It might actually be possible that they no longer have the source code to the original to allow them to fix it.
It wouldn't be the first time a project was lost.
Having the object code is easy, lots of people bought it, but the source code will be sitting on a floppy disk somewhere in a box under the stairs.

Posted 00:14 on 01 February 2007