Dry Bones Kart Wii is the sixth installment in the Dry Bones Kart series released for the Wii. It came out on April 10, 2010 for Japan, April 11, 2010 for Europe, April 24, 2010 for North America, and April 27, 2010 for Australia. It introduces bikes and stunts. Like every previous installment, Dry Bones Kart Wii has 12 racers per race. This game also introduces bikes and tricks.
The game plays similarly to the previous Dry Bones Kart installments: using items scattered around the track, players and computer-controlled opponents must race around the track, avoiding obstacles and items gained from Item Boxes to win. Depending on the game mode, various different things can be won:
In Classic GP and Grand Prix mode, players win points that go towards their total. The racer with the highest total at the end of the cup, wins.
In Time Trials mode, players must race against time for the fastest possible outcome. They can do this alone ("1TT"), with others locally ("LTT") or against ghosts of the highest ranked on the Online Leaderboards ("OlTT").
Depending on the battle mode, players can win differently. Each time, players' scores get tallied, allowing for tournament or versus-style challenges.
Grand Prix
In Grand Prix mode, players must race in a cup of their choice, containing four cups. Points are awarded depending on the places that the player places in, and the person with the largest number of points at the end of all four races, wins. This is the mode where almost everything is unlocked.
This mode can not be played with two or more players.
Time Trials
Players race against time on a course of their choice. Racing against no one, or a ghost (of a "staff ghost" - Nintendo employee, another player on the same system, or an "expert staff ghost" - another Nintendo employee). Beating the normal "staff ghost" by more than 7 seconds, will unlock the expert staff ghost for that course.
Versus
Versus Mode is a returning mode from previous installments of the series. Like in Mario Kart Wii, Versus Mode is the main playable mode for multiplayer, and includes the ability to customise the races in various ways, being able to choose how tough the computers are, should there even be computers, the number of laps, the number of computers, should hazards be on, the items that can be obtained (either balanced, strategic, aggressive or none, though there is a custom option as well), Classic Versus mode and Elimination Mode.
Battle Mode
Battle Mode, a somewhat popular game mode present in all incarnations of Dry Bones Kart, returns in Dry Bones Kart Wii, and introduces a new game type to choose from. Both battle modes are won in teams.
Balloon Battle
In Balloon Blast, racers must use items to pop the balloons of the other racers. Popping a balloon earns the team/person a point. The higher the number of points one has, the less common rare items become. Additionally, the Lightning Bolt - only available to people with 0 points - will pop on balloon from everyone, and acts as the "Golden Snitch" of the game. Getting all of your balloons popped will result in the person popping the final balloon getting 2 points instead of one, and the racer will respawn with three new ones.
Coin Runners
In Coin Runners, racers must race around the battle arena collecting coins. Hitting other players will result in them losing half of their coins, with them either spilling out of them, or flying away to respawn somewhere else on the map. In the beginning of the game, there are 50 coins that are spawned, meaning the most coins a person/team can get is 50. The number of coins is totalled for the entire team in team battles.
Items
The percentage of items refers only to standard 12 racer matches. For less than 12 racer matches, data for rarity of items is subtracted from the middle of the group (i.e. if there are nine players, fourth, fifth and sixth place do not exist in the data). For online 24 player matches, the rarity of items is doubled up (i.e. first and second share the data for first, third and fourth of second, etc.).
Many characters return from previous installments. There are also some new characters, like Baby Thunder Daisy, the rest of the Koopalings, and Lakithunder.
