Tag: Mario Kart 8

Nintendo is bringing online servers back for Wii U multiplayer games

Almost half a year after taking Wii U servers offline, Nintendo is letting fans play their multiplayer games online again

Almost half a year after taking Wii U servers offline, Nintendo is letting fans play their multiplayer games online again. The news comes five months after Nintendo removed online play for Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon following the discovery of critical vulnerabilities in both games.

At the time, Nintendo only said the takedown was for “extended maintenance” and didn’t mention the vulnerability issue. Dataminer OatmealDome originally suggested the problem stemmed from an ENLBufferPwn exploit, a critical problem that affected multiple Nintendo first-party games, including Animal Crossing New Horizons and even Splatoon 3, along with older games on the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. 

ENLBufferPwn lets the hacker execute code in your console just by playing an online game with you. The result could give the hacker control over your game or the entire console, which is particularly problematic given the sensitive financial and personal information that may be on there.

A group of software-savvy dataminers pointed out the problem to Nintendo in 2021, and since then, the Big N has issued patches for a wide range of its games to fix the vulnerability. It’s unclear why Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon had to remain offline for so long, but whatever the case, it’s fixed – for now. 

In Nintendo’s statement on the matter, the company said they may have to disable online functionality again at short notice if further problems arise.

Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF

[mm-video type=video id=01fvcjnp6fsbvxksdqgj playlist_id=none player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01fvcjnp6fsbvxksdqgj/01fvcjnp6fsbvxksdqgj-63f0de0fb272e8e5052147565eaa6662.jpg]

The 10 best Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Cups

Mario Kart 8 has loads of great tracks, both original and classics from previous games. We’ve picked out the cups that are the most fun.

Mario Kart has a lot of things that make it special but by far the most impressive is the great visuals of each track. With a massive variety of settings and ideas, truly nothing is off-limits and it can make for some very memorable experiences. Plus, now we have the expansion packs for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe we get to see a bunch of our favorite classic tracks reimagined on modern hardware.

All of these tracks are expertly weaved together into cups of four, which lets you be taken on a journey of rage-filled racing. It does mean that the quality of tracks across a single cup can often be unreliable, so we’ve picked out the best Mario Kart cups that stay consistently strong for the entire competition.