Kart/Character Stats, MKWii Edition

EDIT (2023-02-16): Long-overdue update, but CampbellMop has a ton more in-depth knowledge about Mario Kart Wii stats than I had at the time of writing this article, and also distilled down the raw stats (which you can find on the Custom Mario Kart wiki) into a better simplified table, which you can find here: https://tinyurl.com/mkwstatlist

I’d also recommend checking out their wonderful in-depth video guide on acceleration stats!

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Prior to my work on this, and pretty much still now, Ark42’s Mario Kart Wii stat guide has been the go-to source for MKW stats.  While I appreciate how soon his guide went up after the game came out, I can only assume he measured the bars shown on the kart select screen, which aren’t particularly accurate, and used some inconsistent rounding to get the “values out of 80” in the guide.  In short, they’re pretty inaccurate; in particular, the Drift values on the kart select screen are all over the map compared to the karts’ actual stats; the Dolphin Dasher has a better-than-average Drift stat, despite what the game’s bars would suggest.  Furthermore, his guide’s values for character bonuses are considerably more varied than those in the actual game; in particular, Funky Kong’s speed bonus is a fair amount more than Large Mii’s or Rosalina’s.  However, the game data actually contains some pretty easily crackable tables of attributes for both the characters and the karts, and like Mario Kart DS, it includes a handful of other stats that aren’t shown in the game.

Conveniently enough, the Top Speed, Off-Road, Mini-Turbo, and Weight values for karts are all based on twenty different, pretty much equally spaced values, so I decided to adapt a twenty-point system for the other stats, as well.  The characters’ stat bonuses are always in one of two distinct tiers (three for Weight), but the effectiveness varies a lot by the stat; a weak boost in Acceleration is worth a mere 0.6 kart points, but a weak boost in Mini-Turbo is worth a whopping 3.0 kart points!  As such, the bars on the kart selection screen clearly don’t accurately reflect the worth of the bonuses.

Here’s a table of the stats, with vehicles arranged by weight class and by “build”, or the general distribution of stats compared to the average.  Note that the Miis’ actual stats aren’t what are listed in the table, likely due to some coding error; Large Mii actually has Medium Mii’s stats, Medium Mii has Small Mii’s, and Small Mii has Rosalina’s, for whatever reason.

A brief description of the stats and builds:

• Weight Class (WC): Small, Medium, or Large; this dictates the kart’s rough weight and which characters are able to drive it.
• Vehicle Type (VT): Kart or Bike. Only karts are able to do double (red) mini-turbos, and only bikes are able to do wheelies. There’s a significant difference in playstyle between them, and each have a large following in pro circles.
• Build: A catchy name I came up with that describes the stats of the vehicle at a glance. More on this further on.
• Drift Type (DT): The new, “Inward”-drifting bikes take turns much more sharply than “Outward”-drifting vehicles.
• Weight (WT): Controls the physics of bouncing, tricks, and bumping into other vehicles.
• Speed (SP): Dictates the maximum speed your vehicle can reach.
• Turn Speed (TS): A completely hidden stat that determines how much speed you lose while turning without drifting.
• Acceleration (AC): Determines how fast your vehicle gets up to speed. I graded it on a basis of going from 0-60kph (top speeds in kph are listed below).
• Handling (HN): How quickly your vehicle turns without drifting.
• Drift (DR): How sharply your vehicle turns while drifting and holding into the turn.
• Off-Road (OR): A higher stat makes you lose less speed while off-road.
• Mini-Turbo (MT): Controls how long your speed boost lasts while getting a Mini-Turbo from a drift. This does not affect the boost you get from a standstill Mini-Turbo in any way.

Builds:

• All-around: As the name suggests, All-around vehicles have balanced stats. These vehicles include all of the standard karts/bikes, as well as the Piranha Prowler. Similar stat classes are the Off-Roaders and the Drifters.
• Charger: These vehicles have the highest acceleration, and good increases in handling and drift. In exchange, they lose a good amount of speed and turn speed. The Slow class is fairly similar.
• Slow: These vehicles have massive reductions in speed and poorer drift than average, but have greatly raised stats in everything else. The Charger class is similar to this, and this is pretty much the opposite of the Mach and Fast classes.
• Off-Roader: These vehicles are fairly average in most stats, but have a much higher off-road stat than usual. In exchange, the drift and mini-turbo stats are slightly lower than average. The Drifter class is an almost direct opposite of this class.
• Drifter: This class comprises only two vehicles, but they share the distinction of having greatly increased Drift and Mini-Turbo, in exchange for slightly lower off-road and other stats.
• Mach: Widely regarded as one of the best classes, these vehicles have greatly increased Speed, Drift, and Mini-Turbo, but sizable reductions in everything else.
• Fast: These power-packed vehicles are designed only for speed, at the cost of six- or seven- point reductions in everything but acceleration. Although the Jet Bubble’s speed is clearly sub-par, it made the list because it has all the characteristic downsides of a Fast vehicle (just without the super speed).

Finally, here’s a table summing up the actual stat values for some stats based on the 20-point system (with weak/strong bonuses at the bottom):

• Speed: Measured in kilometers per hour, these are the exact top speeds that correspond to the stats in the charts above.  Ranges from 75-86 kph for karts alone.
• Acceleration: The approximate time, in seconds, it takes a kart to accelerate from 0 to 60kph; ranges from 4 seconds to just under 1 second for karts alone.
• Offroad Multipliers: How much of your top speed you retain while driving over various terrains. In addition, you can only get Mini-Turbos off-road if this value is .5500 or higher for the type of terrain you’re driving on.
  Offroad 1 – Thick offroad areas, such as the pink snow in DK Summit, dark sand in Desert Hills, etc. Ranges from 0.185 to 0.400 for karts alone.
  Offroad 2 – Most standard offroad areas, including practically all grass. You can still drift in this terrain with a total Offroad stat of 14 or higher. Ranges from 0.325 to 0.675 for karts alone.
  Offroad 3 – Shy Guy Beach’s water, and the rocks on the sides of Grumble Volcano, Moonview Highway, and Koopa Cape. Ranges from 0.550 to 0.875 for karts alone; a strong bonus can push the max up to nearly 0.900.
  Offroad 4 – Just used in Sherbet Land, everywhere excepting the cave. DS Desert Hills is not offroad, contrary to popular belief. Ranges from 0.881 to 0.989 for karts alone, and a strong bonus can get it up to an even 1.000.
• Mini-Turbo: The duration of a blue Mini-Turbo boost, in sixtieths of a second; ranges from 1/4 to 2/3 of a second for karts alone. Red mini-turbo boosts always last exactly three times as long as blue ones.

Turn Speed, Handling and Drift aren’t on the chart since the values I got weren’t too exact, and Weight’s, understandably, pretty difficult to quantify.

Stat	SP	AC	OR1	OR2	OR3	OR4	MT
1	75.00	4.00	.1850	.3250	.5500	.8810	15
2	75.53	3.71	.1963	.3434	.5671	.8866	16
3	76.06	3.43	.2076	.3618	.5842	.8921	18
4	76.59	3.17	.2189	.3802	.6013	.8977	19
5	77.12	2.94	.2302	.3986	.6184	.9032	20
6	77.65	2.72	.2415	.4170	.6355	.9088	22
7	78.18	2.52	.2528	.4354	.6526	.9144	23
8	78.71	2.33	.2641	.4538	.6697	.9199	24
9	79.24	2.16	.2754	.4722	.6868	.9255	26
10	79.77	2.00	.2867	.4906	.7039	.9310	27
11	80.30	1.85	.2980	.5090	.7210	.9366	28
12	80.83	1.71	.3093	.5274	.7381	.9422	29
13	81.36	1.58	.3206	.5458	.7552	.9477	31
14	81.89	1.46	.3319	.5642	.7723	.9533	32
15	82.42	1.35	.3432	.5826	.7894	.9588	33
16	82.95	1.25	.3545	.6010	.8065	.9644	35
17	83.48	1.16	.3658	.6194	.8236	.9700	36
18	84.01	1.07	.3771	.6378	.8407	.9755	37
19	84.54	0.99	.3884	.6562	.8578	.9811	39
20	85.07	0.92	.3997	.6746	.8749	.9866	40
Weak	+0.53	-5%	+.0171	+.0184	+.0113	+.0064	+4
Strong	+1.06	-10%	+.0342	+.0368	+.0226	+.0128	+8

For further reading on these stats, you can check out my FAQ on the subject on GameFAQs; it also has a lot of useful notes on item probabilities, which were also taken directly from the game data.  There’s even charts for probabilities of CPU-controlled karts getting items; you might be surprised at some of the differences (for instance, they can never get triple red shells).