Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

Even Nintendo fans are conditioned to not expect much from the Wii’s online abilities. When Mario Kart Wii showed up with a very workable (and potentially Friend Code-skippable) online multiplayer mode, we were all ecstatic. Happily, Nintendo appears to have some online secrets hidden up their collective sleeve.

The latest online tournament features a completely unheard-of battle stage – Galaxy Colosseum – and spotlights a style of play not seen since Mario Kart DS, the boss attack. Four of the Topmen enemies from Super Mario Galaxy appear and you have to bump them off the platform in succession.

This is the third Mario Kart Wii online tournament since the game’s release (I think). The first tourney was a simple race through one of the courses, with the cute change of having Chain Chomps roaming the road. In the normal version of the course, the Chomp is chained to one particular curve. Clearly Nintendo has built in a series of subtle and not-so-subtle challenges designed to be revealed as they unveil new online tournaments. Releasing Chain Chomps was neat enough, but hiding a completely unselectable bonus stage like Galaxy Colosseum is going to send people scurrying to edit their FAQs.

More pictures after the jump.

Can Galaxy Colosseum be unlocked for offline play? Or even made selectable for online multiplayer? Or is it solely for Nintendo’s tournament use… IE, is it even physically on the game disc?

Pretty boring stage, actually. I’m not even sure it’s large enough for the game’s typical six-on-six battle mode matches.

Tags: mario kart, Nintendo, Online, wii