Imagine the scene: the year is 2008 and you, a big Nintendo fan, are preparing for the next episode of the Mario Kart series after the amazing Mario Kart DS online experience and pouring a lot of it, a lot hours in past home console efforts on Mario Kart: Double Dash!! But something is different this time. Instead of playing the game with the conventional analog stick and button inputs, you bang your Wii Remote into a white plastic wheel and swerve around the track in In fact steering.

Mario Kart Wii turns 15 today, and for many of us those controls are still appreciated. Playing Mario Kart with motion controls felt like revolutionary stuff back in 2008. We weren’t just playing a driving game anymore, we were actually driving. Collectively, we grabbed the steering wheel at ten and two o’clock, leaned into corners while seated in our chairs, and made every jump count by quickly lifting the controller into the air to mimic the on-screen take-off. It was brilliant.

Even if you didn’t put the controller in the wheel itself (which many copies of the game come with), there was still some level of fun to be had. You might feel like a fancy F1 driver with one of those tiny little steering wheels they use. Well, okay, an anthropomorphized dinosaur gliding around a shiny mall might not be enough the same as driving around Silverstone at 150mph, but you get the picture.

Of course, this was not the control scheme for everyone. While for some the Wii Wheel was the closest thing to driving Rainbow Road IRL, for others the tilt controls were nothing more than a gimmick, preferring the analog methods of the game. old school for accuracy.

Mario Kart Wii, being the great game that it is, answered exactly that. You can use the Wii Remote and Nunchuck controls if you want a more authentic Wii button experience, or there’s the Classic Controller / GameCube Controller for Double Dash aficionados.