Some games are very, very serious indeed. There's plenty to be said for true-to-life physics, painstaking motion capture, and AI so frighteningly realistic that it's hard not to believe that the game's developers haven't been going around stealing people's souls and storing them on little silver discs. However, deep down, we're all glad that for every Tiger Woods there's an Everybody's Golf, for every Final Fantasy there's a Kingdom Hearts, and for every Gran Turismo there's a Mario Kart.

From the moment you pop the disc in and the Wii menu triumphantly yelps "Mario Kart Wii!" at you like an excited puppy that's desperate to be played with, you know this is going to be fun - but the scale of the fun on offer here is truly something else. As anybody who has ever played any prior incarnation of Mario Kart will tell you, all the game modes are great but multiplayer rules all, and with this in mind I made certain that when I got my hands on a pre-release copy there was a second Wii wheel to hand. There's something pure and joyous about a group of grown adults jumping up and down in excitement while swinging white plastic steering wheels around, but this control method is not (as I originally feared) just an exercise in Wii user-friendliness (read: silliness). It is surprisingly responsive and to me the tilt control has a far greater degree of hands-on input than a d-pad or analog stick ever could. Sure, there have been some embarrassing moments where I've forgotten myself and veered violently left into a gaping chasm while reaching up with one hand to itch my nose, metres from the finish line, throwing away a hard-fought first place, but that all adds to the overall fun of the experience.

The Wii wheel is not the only control method on offer though; Nintendo has catered for all tastes most admirably. The Wii remote slots into the fascia of the wheel with the buttons facing towards you and the trigger behind, and this control can be easily mimicked without the wheel, although it feels a little less natural. In addition to this, you can play with nunchuk and Wiimote together, the Classic Controller and even the old faithful Gamecube controller. All the control methods work well and have their pros and cons, so ultimately it comes down to your own personal preference rather than some of the control systems being inadequate. I don't doubt that the most serious players and ultimately those who win most races and post the best times will be those who use the more traditional analog stick control methods, as there is less margin for error (you won't come a cropper of nose itching or pint quaffing), but if you ask me they need to lighten up a bit.

Following on from the idea of a control method for all seasons, Nintendo seem to have broadly spread that 'throw everything we have at it' approach throughout the game, and while more doesn't always mean better, it certainly does in this case. You start the game with twelve characters available, and in traditional Mario Kart style these are grouped into lightweights (the likes of Toad and Baby Mario), middleweights (Yoshi and Peach) and the heavyweights (DK, Bowser et al). As always, your choice of character impacts the way you play the game due to the difference in statistics and styles. The lightweights have good acceleration and handling but can be easily shoved aside, the heavyweights are slow to hit top speed and harder to handle but violence comes easily to them, while the middleweights well balanced but unexceptional in every respect. Nothing new then, but add in a choice of vehicles and things really start to get interesting.

You see, Nintendo have added bikes for the first time in Mario Kart history; no longer is this a four-wheel only affair. It is a little strange to get your head around at first and you don't slip into the saddle of the bike quite as comfortably as you do behind the wheel of the ever-reliable karts, but this adds another new dimension to the game and, once again, the experience is richer for it. Bikes aren't a case of simply dropping a different set of polygons over the top of the karts either; there is a learning curve involved in getting to grips with how the bikes handle. The game is structured into different 'cc' classes of race that loosely denote difficulty, but this also dictates which vehicles you'll be taking control of; 50cc races are kart only, 100cc are bike only and 150cc is a mix of the two. They handle differently, they are twitchier over jumps (but fly a lot further), you can wheelie them for a speed boost by flicking your wheel upwards (but can't actually corner properly until you nudge the front wheel back down again) and while it takes some getting used to, the variety is definitely a bonus.

This choice in vehicles within the categories isn't purely cosmetic either, as is often the case with serious racing games. Because of the cartoon nature of the game, the stat increases and decreases of the various vehicles are quite exaggerated - admittedly it seems a little strange to watch Baby Peach in a pushchair go flying past Wario in a hot rod, but there is method to this madness. You can team a more lightweight, better accelerating vehicle with a heavyweight character, for example, to compensate for the innate abilities of the driver and find some middle ground in between middleweight and heavyweight. Or alternatively, you could go in the opposite direction and turn your already beefy sort into a veritable tank. This variety and scope certainly adds a feeling of customisation and tailoring your racer to your own style, and while most players will settle on their favourite combinations after a few trial runs, the experimentation is enjoyable and you'll always find yourself testing out that new character you unlocked or trying the modified kart you just won to see if it improves your racing by a fraction of a second.

So you've chosen your racer, you've chosen your vehicle - what happens when the lights change and the race begins? Absolute chaos, that's what! For all the changes and additions made (throughout the years, not just in this game), one thing has remained fairly constant - the gameplay. This game is just as fast, just as silly, and absolutely every bit as brutally violent (in a Wile E. Coyote kind of way) as any Mario Kart that has preceded it. You can be the most skilful, talented driver in the world, but if the tide of power-ups turns against you, you're toast. That's not to say that more talented drivers won't win more races, but the little boxes of cartoon malevolence are a great equaliser, and in truest Mario Kart tradition, if you're losing you get the best gear. If you're in the top two or three places, prepare for an endless (and mostly useless) supply of banana skins or fake power-ups, but be lingering towards the back of the field as the final lap starts and find yourself in possession of a veritable smorgasbord of mischief makers - lightning bolts that shrink every other racer, power stars that speed you up and make you invincible, bullet bills that transform you into, well, a bullet bill that shoots round the course at great speed knocking over anything in its path, and the ultimate in weaponry - the blue spiky leader missile shell, that locks onto whoever is leading the race and cannot be stopped or avoided until it smashes into them, exploding on impact and taking out anyone in the blast radius to boot. This power-up weighting system has always been one of Mario Kart's great strengths and is a definite boon to the multiplayer game, but I wonder if perhaps it's turned up a little too high in 100/150cc races, as I once counted four leader missiles in the final lap of the final race to stop me achieving first place!

There are some new power-ups in the arsenal here too, and the mega mushroom (taken from New Super Mario Bros. on DS) is a particular favourite, growing your racer to gigantic proportions and flattening anything in your path, although the new thundercloud is a bit of a poisoned chalice - it hovers above the head of the player who collects it and if you can shift it to another racer by colliding with them then they get zapped and shrunk down, but hold on to it too long and you get the blast instead.

With twelve racers in the field at once and dozens of power-ups flying around, you'd expect that the game might suffer a little slowdown during periods of high stress, but there's not a bit of it in evidence here. The graphics are bright, colourful, and above all, very fast and slick at all times. All the characters are modelled superbly and as well as looking generally fantastic, they have a great range of movement during a race. Gone are the days of characters sitting static in the driving seat - they'll look over their shoulder as someone overtakes or throw a fist into the air as a celebration when they take out an opponent - this isn't a big thing, but it's the little touches that make a game truly great.

As well as your racer giving you an indication of what is going on around them, the Wiimote's speaker is very cleverly used as an early warning system for incoming weapons of mass hilarity. You get an audible tone that increases in frequency and volume as the weapon approaches (think when the two submarines are heading straight for each other in The Hunt for the Red October) and this removes any kind of confusion as to who is about to get nailed in multiplayer. The sound switches cleverly between TV and Wiimote speakers all the time and you rarely even notice it happening, but that is one of the drawbacks of playing with the Gamecube controller and you'll soon miss the local sounds when they're gone. The music and atmospheric sounds are also top notch, and in a game where the bar has been set so high, they do not disappoint, in spite of not showing off quite so much as the graphics or gameplay.

The courses are also pretty spectacular to look at and very intricately designed. There are sixteen brand new tracks available to complement the sixteen reworked of retro classics, taken in roughly equal measure from the SNES, GBA, N64, Gamecube and DS versions of the game (eight new tracks and eight classics are available from the start, with the rest being unlockable). I was overjoyed with the inclusion of the retro courses and while a few of the SNES and GBA courses feel a little flat (they were designed before Mario Kart went into full 3D) they have all been brought up to spec visually and none are an obvious letdown. The new courses are vibrant, living affairs, with shifting floors, moving obstacles and all manner of strange activity going on around you, to add extra insanity to what is already akin to Wacky Races on Red Bull. It does sometimes seem like the most bizarre of Mario-inspired hallucinogenic trips, with stadia full of a combination of Mario World denizens such as Shy Guys and Koopa Troopas, mixed in with the denizens of your Mii parade, but the fact that things are alive rather than static is a nice touch.

Nintendo has also resurrected the SNES powerslide along with a handful of the courses - gone is the shaky, snaky, somewhat flaky drift system that was introduced in Mario Kart 64 and back is the old hop into the air to get your kart sliding laterally around the bends. I personally prefer this method of control; I find that it gives you more freedom to concentrate on the line you're taking and stops you having to shift the steering from side to side in order to maintain the slide and get the speed boost at the end. Like real life oversteer cornering, it becomes more of a question of nerve - how long you can hold the slide for - and you are rewarded with a bigger boost accordingly. You can turn off the manual drift cornering in favour of an automatic system that barrels you into the corners sideways depending on how severely you turn, but you do lose out on the speed boost with this option. Boost can also be picked up by flying through the air however, so all is not lost on the automatic setting. If you flick the wheel as you fly over a jump and get the timing just right then your racer performs a little stunt in mid-air and you get a boost similar to coming off a big powerslide. Again, it's a small difference but it feels fairer than removing speed boosts completely for those who don't want to drift manually, and on more than one occasion the jump boost has proved the difference between victory and defeat.

There will be many victories and many defeats too; Mario Kart will keep you amused for a very, very long time. As well as the standard Grand Prix, where you compete in a four-race cup (this is where the secrets and additions to the game are unlocked) there are some game modes as old as the series itself - Time Trial, Versus and Battle Mode have all made their way into this version. Versus is made more interesting with a team mode, where the winners and losers are decided by which group of racers tallies the highest points overall, while Battle Mode is all the more welcome for bringing back some of the old-school arenas, as well as having a different mode of play where the aim is to have more coins collected as the final buzzer goes, rather than to have scored more hits on your opponents. Multiplayer can be played by up to four people on one machine, or in a big messy melee online; while the online games are fun and the Mario Kart channel is great for keeping track of friends and top scores, nothing beats gathering around one console for some turbo-charged violent mayhem. In fact, the only criticism I can level at the entire game is that the Grand Prix mode is not available outside of single player, which makes it impossible to unlock any secrets of the game while playing in two, three or four player mode; while this isn't a big problem, it is a shame when you'll always find yourself wanting to play multiplayer over solo when given the option (and I personally struggle to find times when I'm the only person wanting to play in order to unlock new tracks and characters - "What's that, you're putting Mario Kart on? Pass me a controller then!" being a phrase you'll hear for the rest of your waking days).

Mario Kart Wii has more variety, more to do, and ultimately more to keep you coming back than any Mario Kart before it (and as a hardcore advocate of the SNES original, I never thought I would find myself saying that); but more than that, it is a flagship title for the Nintendo Wii. Not only is Mario Kart Wii the most important title that will be released on the format this year, but it will stand the test of time as one of the best games the Wii has to offer. No matter what may happen with console technology and games of the future, get a copy of Mario Kart Wii and hang on to it (and your Wii) for dear life. Do not trade them in for love or money; in fifteen years time, people will be trawling second-hand game shops looking for Wiis and copies of Mario Kart in the same way they do for the SNES version today, and there can be no greater indication of brilliance than that.

Reviewed by Tom Baines for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).

We had the opportunity to attend the official Mario Kart launch event and meet Jennifer Metcalfe and Jodie Kidd, click here to find out what the day held in store.