Welcome back to my spring passion blog, through which I am discussing each of the Mario Kart Wii Grand Prix circuits. I have been pushing off the post I am currently writing because of how much I despise nearly every course in Leaf Cup, but here we go. Although these courses are more challenging than those of Shell Cup, they took me annoyingly long to get a star rank—so my vendetta against these courses is somewhat personal.
Desert Hills is the first course of the circuit, and although it has more interesting obstacles than other first courses of the other cups, there are some particular obstacles and features in this course that always make me stray away from racing it. As you would expect from the name, the race takes place in the middle of the desert, with mountains of sand surrounding the track. In part of the course, the track zigzags around many of these hills, and with powers such as the golden mushroom, one would expect that using the power would enable them to fly above the racers struggling below and have a straight shot to the finish. However, these hills become quicksand towards their tops, causing any racer attempting to perform such a shortcut to go out of bounds rather than get ahead to the finish, which I found out the hard way. In addition to the lack of shortcuts, the obstacles in Desert Hills are placed in the most inconvenient spaces for racers. For example, there are lava bubbles that fly around before the finish line, creating the perfect opportunity to destroy any racers approaching the line. I am noticing that I am starting to ramble on about my despise for the design of this course, so I am going to move on.
The next course is my least favorite of the game—Bowser Castle 3. The entire race track is over lava outside of Bowser’s Castle and reminds me of some “the floor is lava” fever dream. There are barely any obstacles because avoiding a plummet into the lava is the main challenge. The actual track is the other obstacle—the turns are often ninety degrees, making it particularly challenging to navigate. As I have said before, I often love courses in which the actual race track creates competition, and although the race track IS the obstacle in this case, it remains my least favorite of the game. It might be due to my irrational fear of those kinds of fever dreams or the rather crude aesthetic of the course, but I digress.
Donkey Kong Jungle Parkway is the next course, which I neither love nor hate. The race track goes around a jungle surrounding a river, with a tiny bridge and cave that racers go through before nearing the finish. The course is another one that the course is the main obstacle—the main challenge of the course is the sharp turns and offroad grass that slows players down. On top of that, the bridge leading to the cave is extremely narrow, which creates much room for error entering the last part of the course. The course overall is not entirely terrible, but the chance of losing momentum due to miscalculating turn angles is extremely high, which makes the course somewhat frustrating.
GCN Mario Circuit is the last course of the circuit. Although the course is the best of each of the Mario-themed courses, the statement is somewhat misleading. The general layout of the course is what one would expect of any Mario-themed race track—you can see Peach’s Castle, there are wandering shroombas, and the classic chomp chain. These obstacles make the course rather enjoyable for the most part and the course itself has a good mixture of turns, straights, inclines, and declines. But the course has a fatal feature—right before the finish of not just the course, but of the entire Leaf Cup, there are piranha plants that line either side of the track, waiting to spoil any racer’s chance of attaining a star rank on the series. These piranha plants therefore require nearly perfect centering as racers fly off the final slope towards the finish line, as anything other than near perfection results in disaster.
Although the courses in Leaf Cup are some of the more challenging of the game, their course designs create incredibly frustrating experiences for racers including myself. Therefore, the cup’s ranking of last moreso corresponds to my personal experiences with racing it, but I maintain that I would not recommend racing the series for anyone who wants to keep their sanity when playing the game.
