What happens if you take the best part of a race, the best part of a battle, and put them together? MrBean35000vr set out on a grand quest to find out, and here is the result. Nowadays it can be hard to find games, so check here to see if there are any Countdown (or indeed, CTWW) races ongoing: chadsoft.co.uk/online-status/
Introducing: Countdown Races! These races are an online only form of race, not to be confused with the videos by all the doom and gloom people who are doing "Countdown to WFC shutdown" nonsense. The aim of the game in a Countdown Race is to get as far as you can around a race in the time that you have available (you have a Countdown clock, hence the name), while hitting people with items to gain more time to race.
"But wait," you may cry, "what about the WFC shutdown? What's the point of making an online only game mode when WFC will be gone very soon?!" My answer is a simple one. We will still be able to play Mario Kart Wii online after the servers shut down!
"He's mad."
"There's no way."
"How can that be a thing?!"
Well, my friends, Wiimm and Leseratte and several others have been working very hard at creating a server that can do what WFC currently does, for use when the official servers are shut down. I'm also pleased to say that it's almost working and stands a very good chance of being completely working before WFC shutdown. I have connected to this server myself, and the Wii could not tell the difference between it and the real WFC. Either way, Mario Kart Wii will not be going completely offline, so you can relax.
Also, send Wiimm and Leseratte all of your love for their work :P
Anyway, that's all quite a tangent, but an important one, I feel. Now, back to this video.
In a nutshell, what I said in the brief summary above vastly covers what Countdown is: A race mode with battle elements, where you have a countdown clock and hit players with items to gain additional time. Specifically, you gain 3 seconds per item hit. You do not lose anything if you are hit, however, so feel free to charge headlong in there and get molested, although it would be worth noting that giving your opponents points is not the wisest idea; after all, they can score too!
The Score counter is responsible for counting the hits. Generally speaking, your current score x 3 is the amount of additional time you have earned. You can earn points from any item that you get from a box, including mushrooms and bloopers. You can have a maximum of 10 points, which is 30 additional seconds. Hits beyond that don't add more time! When your time runs out, your engine stops, and you cannot control your vehicle. You can roll to places, if you're on a hill for instance, but you cannot influence your path or anything. Since everyone's going to have a different score, that means everyone will finish at different times. If you see any unmoving players on your travels, they probably ran out of time before you did (not a bad idea to pick up some points off random expired players, either). And of course, if you stop moving and everyone else still is moving, that means that your score must've been lower than theirs.
There are several new items for this mode: Triple fake item boxes ("triple fibs"), mushroom + green shell ("shroom green") and mushroom + bomb ("shroom bomb", "Dio"). Mega Mushrooms are also altered and do not drop if you are hit with a star, shock, etc if they are still in your item hold. You can also use mushrooms and golden mushrooms to earn points, by ramming people with them.
The winner of the race is determined purely by who's the furthest around the track when everyone has run out of time, hence the race element; it is important to body everyone, but you must also not forget how to drive. You can quite easily lose with a maxxed out score, or win with zero points.
This mode comes for free in the current version of CTGP, so just update to the latest version to try it out. If you don't have CTGP, a Riivolution version is available, here:
www.chadsoft.co.uk/downloads/c...
But you can only play this one in friend rooms. It's also not compatible with the CTGP version.
If you wish to texture hack the countdown race interfaces, download this:
www.chadsoft.co.uk/downloads/C... and place the contents in your My Stuff folder, then texture hack away!
Known bugs with Countdown Mode:
Star/Mega/Bullet hits are currently tied to what you see, not to what actually happened. That means you can get points using these even when you didn't really hit someone, or not get a point when you DID hit someone.
Race finish leaderboards are individually calculated, and if the position tracker goes wrong in a race, they may differ from Wii to Wii.
Sometimes using a mushroom to score points actually scores twice instead of once.
And with that said, enjoy the video and hopefully enjoy the mode!