I’ve had my own personal weblog for like a decade now, and I don’t want to make a habit of mining my old weblog posts as “new” for Aeropause, but the guys on the Aeropodcast convinced me to dig up this one. This is a short video I made of me and my son playing Mario Kart Wii. The last half is completely NSFW due to extravagant swearing. It does have a happy ending! Enjoy at your own risk; Director’s Commentary after the jump.

My son is three, and the Wii Wheel totally makes it possible for him to play the game. He doesn’t yet have the fine motor skills to simultaneously control a stick and differentiate buttons, as we see when he plays Smash Brawl with us. But he is used to a steering wheel because of his real-life tricycle. So he intuitively steers, and keeps one thumb on the “present button” and the other on the “go button.” I personally can’t stand the Wii Wheel, but I have to send huge thanks to Nintendo for pushing this out there.

Although my boy was pretty lousy when this was shot, in the three months since his skills have grown to the point where he can do an entire lap all by himself (in the time it takes the rest of the racers to do three). That’s assuming he doesn’t get distracted or lost… relatively open tracks like DS Peach Garden are still tough for him because he isn’t sure where the road goes. Or he decides he wants to just drive around in one of Princess Peach’s flower beds.

In the video, I love when he jerks the wheel off to his right and you hear the poor Mii onscreen bouncing into the walls.

He always plays as his Mii, and he usually drives the duck-shaped bike. Although lately he has been branching out to some of the other bikes. His favorite tracks are Koopa Cape (“the water tube one”), Dry Dry Ruins (“the King Tut one,” he has a strange-but-welcome fascination with Egypt’s Boy King), and Coconut Mall. In Battle Mode, he likes Funky Stadium and DS Twilight House.

Before you ask, my son was NOWHERE near me when I recorded my portion of the video. It was naptime.

Both our reactions were entirely unrehearsed, excepting that I probably spoke aloud more than usual (I do tend to talk to myself while gaming). That is some honest frustration. For my part, I recorded about an hour of me attempting and re-attempting the final Grand Prix (the set with Rainbow Road) on 150cc Mirror Mode. Then I clipped out all the best swearing. I did genuinely beat the GP, thus completing my gold trophy selection as you saw. I felt pretty damn good after that.