Nintendo Refuses to Fix Mario Kart 7 Exploit

[TitanAura]

Blah blah blah whine whine whine. I consider finding shortcuts PART of the Mario Kart experience. Hell, Mario Kart 64 had several designated shortcuts as well as a few unintentionally exploitable shortcuts that were also approved and even ADVERTISED IN NINTENDO POWER. There's a reason Rainbow Road on the N64 is one of the most memorable tracks.

It's not like the computer players are going to use the exploit so it's only the multiplayer mode that's affected (mind that's half the reason you play a racing game at all), but these exploits are always high-risk, high-reward situations. I say if you're willing to risk taking the shortcut and succeed, you deserve to use it.

 

[Leemaster777]

Eh, I can see this being annoying for some, but I understand Nintendo's rational by not doing anything. It WOULD be borderline impossible to fix this for EVERY single game, and then not only would there be cheaters, but there would be cheaters with no possible way to balance the cheating.

By leaving it in as it is, ANYONE can exploit it. So, in a way, it's sort of just another route shortcut. At tournament-level play, all the pros would be exploiting this anyways, so I don't think it's THAT big of a deal.

 

[Sabrestar]

I'm assuming they "can't" because it's a cartridge game, and fixing it would actually require making new cartridges? Thus only owners of the rev.B carts would have the exploit fixed, while rev.A owners could still exploit away.

I don't think there's a way they can resolve this as long as they stick ham-fistedly to cartridge-based game delivery.

I'm sorry to say this, but you're assuming wrong. You see, just as RaNDM G said, that's pretty lazy over Nintendo's part, on the Wii, if they screwed up, they had to replace entire discs or you had to send them your save file to get it fixed.

The 3DS allows for an easier update process, more akin to what the 360 and PS3 users are used to and as far as I know, they do have the capabilities of patching any game at any given time and in my opinion, this is just lazy and stupid.

I did assume, because I don't have a 3DS, so I don't know what procedures they may or may not have at their disposal. No offence taken. Thanks for giving me more info!

If they have that sort of patching ability and choose not to use it, then they can go rot.

 

[Micalas]

And the millions of people who defended Skyrim will now come to the charge of damning Nintendo in 3...2...1...

Well aren't you smug.

There is a difference between buggy single player games and buggy multi-player games. Another big difference is that Bethesda can and do patch their games. Nintendo however, refuses to get with the times and have a decent online network and this cripples their ability to patch and deliver DLC. Was it Skyward Sword they had to do that stupid fucking "channel" thing to fix a glitch of some sort? People would be more willing to defend them if they weren't using tech from around the time of the Sega Dreamcast.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

And the millions of people who defended Skyrim will now come to the charge of damning Nintendo in 3...2...1...

What does Skyrim have anything to do with this?
I love Skyrim as much as the next guy, i also hate the fact its a broken mess as much as the next guy (for example i hadnt been able to play it for the past 4 days without it crashing within 3 seconds of loadup).. but how is this anything like Skyrim?
At least Bethesda are putting patches out TRYING to fix their game... Nintendo are just being lazy.

 

[Azuaron]

Is there a particular reason why cartridges are still individual games instead of removable hard drives with the games delivered wirelessly over the cell phone network? Aka, why does Nintendo want to profit share with retailers, when their device is nearly designed to bypass them already (ala Apple's App Store)?

Because Nintendo seems to have something against building proper online functionality into their products. When they do include online features they're usually so limited by bullshit security measures like the friend code that they've inadvertently made the online features pointless or unusable in spontaneous play to anyone who doesn't live in a large metropolitan area. (IE Japan where a DS is just as common as the average iPhone)

So when the article says "online", what's meant is "local peer-to-peer wireless network"?

 

[KeyMaster45]

Is there a particular reason why cartridges are still individual games instead of removable hard drives with the games delivered wirelessly over the cell phone network? Aka, why does Nintendo want to profit share with retailers, when their device is nearly designed to bypass them already (ala Apple's App Store)?

Because Nintendo seems to have something against building proper online functionality into their products. When they do include online features they're usually so limited by bullshit security measures like the friend code that they've inadvertently made the online features pointless or unusable in spontaneous play to anyone who doesn't live in a large metropolitan area. (IE Japan where a DS is just as common as the average iPhone)

So when the article says "online", what's meant is "local peer-to-peer wireless network"?

In a nut shell, yeah. I can't speak about Mario Kart 7 for certain since I don't own it, but the typical MO of "online" for a DS game is either local multiplayer between people in the same room or that contrived bullshit they call friend codes that only lets you play with people over the internet so long as you've got their super special code. I think they've got a similar system in place with the Wii which is equally frustrating when it comes to online multiplayer.

 

[Vault Citizen]

Why can't they patch it? Can someone explain to me why DLC is possible but patching is not?

DLC is new content, delivered electronically. If the game is designed for it, it has hooks which allow DLC to be integrated into the game in a defined manner.

The track data is coming from a cartridge, and it's unlikely they built in any hooks to allow external programs to access that track data directly -- especially to make changes to it, because these are the exact sort of things that cheaters will use.

So that means a patch would somehow have to crack into the memory space of the game once it's loaded, and make alterations to the track. Cracking into used memory space is simply not something you want to be doing. Ideally, it's not even possible, so I can understand why Nintendo doesn't want to spend resources essentially proving there's a hole in their software security.

OT: I think they did the right thing. So long as they widely publicize the cheat information, it simply becomes the new track route, and doing it in such a way as to minimize your time taking it becomes part of the skill-set of that track.

Thank you as I have shown in other topics I have no techinical knowledge whatsoever.

 

[THEoriginalBRIEN]

Fuck no they shouldn't fix it.

Exploiting glitches has always been a part of Mario Kart. It's tradition!

 

[BabySinclair]

There has always been track exploits, or at least as far back as Kart64. It's just part of the gameplay.

 

[Stormz]

It would be unfair to not allow cheaters to cheat? I...wha...I have no words for this. Seriously what is Nintendo smoking? I want some.

The thing is, with the way cartridges and ROMs work, they simply can't patch the track for those who already bought the game. So patching the game now would only work with any unsold future copies. Thus future buyers will still have to play against old buyers that can cheat. In this case it's better to let everyone cheat, so that it becomes "fair", than let a select group of people continue cheating while the others are left at disadvantage.

Oh okay that makes more since, thanks for clarifying that.

 

[Kapol]

Still not as bad as the Metroid glitch that made it so you either had to restart the game or buy an SD card, put your save file on it, send it to them, wait for them to fix it and send it back, and then start playing the game again. Nintendo really needs to learn that updates are an important technology that's been around for how long now? I guess this really just helps show how behind the curve they really are for some of the things we take for granted. Just imagine if Skyrim had been on the Wii. Well, besides the fact it'd have horrible graphics and 50% of the content would have to be cut out.

 

[Pebkio]

Their big mistake was not putting out a console that allows games to be patched... AND to then put out broken games just like companies that CAN patch. It's already looking like the Puu... sorry... the Wii-u won't be able to patch as well. I've got my Gamecube, and that's probably as updated with Nintendo as I'll ever get.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I think they made the right decision. Besides its fun, its not like they could do it in a serious competition or anything and everyone can do it. Sure it would be better if it wasn't there but if you get a water gun instead of a M16 you might as well still use it. [sub] I couldn't think of a better analogy.[/sub]

 

[surg3n]

There's probably a glitch on every level, it's been like that since Mario Kart on the SNES.

Anyway, this is being blown out of proportion, for one thing it's not possible for Nintendo to patch every copy universally, so any patching would cause discrepencies between versions.

The main thing is though that it's freakin MarioKart, does anyone with any sense get that bothered by glitchers? - it's par the course, playing online MarioKart. You can't play MarioKart online then complain about someone using a glitch, because finding and abusing glitches is all part of MarioKart.

 

[The Name's Bond]

I'm not sure how fixing the glitch will make it unfair, but my guess is the reason that Nintendo haven't decided to patch the game and fix it is because I don't think that many people actually care. Look at it this way, if the entire Mario Kart owning populace were outraged by this problem then Nintendo would get emails and people would be ranting about more than they already are. I don't know how expensive it would be for them to fix it so that's just about all the reasons I can think of

 

[Electrogecko]

Is there a particular reason why cartridges are still individual games instead of removable hard drives with the games delivered wirelessly over the cell phone network? Aka, why does Nintendo want to profit share with retailers, when their device is nearly designed to bypass them already (ala Apple's App Store)?

Because Nintendo seems to have something against building proper online functionality into their products. When they do include online features they're usually so limited by bullshit security measures like the friend code that they've inadvertently made the online features pointless or unusable in spontaneous play to anyone who doesn't live in a large metropolitan area. (IE Japan where a DS is just as common as the average iPhone)

So when the article says "online", what's meant is "local peer-to-peer wireless network"?

In a nut shell, yeah. I can't speak about Mario Kart 7 for certain since I don't own it, but the typical MO of "online" for a DS game is either local multiplayer between people in the same room or that contrived bullshit they call friend codes that only lets you play with people over the internet so long as you've got their super special code. I think they've got a similar system in place with the Wii which is equally frustrating when it comes to online multiplayer.

Ummmm.....no. When the article says online, it means online, and entering a 12 digit friend code is about as bullshit as having to enter a gamertag that could be much longer and mixes upper cases, lower cases, numbers, symbols, and spaces.

I'm reading a lot of comments from people who don't seem to have any clue what they're talking about.

I don't care to find and read the source of this quote, but it seems pretty obvious to me that the "update" mentioned is not an online patch, but a hard fix that would be included in newly printed cartridges, yet half the comments here seem to be misunderstanding that.

There is no mention of an online patch anywhere in this article, and while it seems highly unlikely that one will come around, it is not ruled out here.

And to everyone saying "it's not a big deal," "Mario Kart is supposed to have exploits," or anything similar, let me just say, this is worse than anything I've ever seen in any Mario Kart. It would be one thing if the trick were at all exclusive or difficult to pull off, but every time Maka Wuhu gets picked all 8 racers perform the glitch, and even if they screw it up 3 times before getting it, they'll still beat the time they would've gotten otherwise.

 

[-|-]

In a nut shell, yeah. I can't speak about Mario Kart 7 for certain since I don't own it, but the typical MO of "online" for a DS game is either local multiplayer between people in the same room or that contrived bullshit they call friend codes that only lets you play with people over the internet so long as you've got their super special code. I think they've got a similar system in place with the Wii which is equally frustrating when it comes to online multiplayer.

You can play mario kart on the DS against anyone in the world. No need for friend codes.

 

[Woodsey]

And the millions of people who defended Skyrim will now come to the charge of damning Nintendo in 3...2...1...

Yes, because fixing bugs in each game is exactly the same.

OT: Well, if they actually can't patch it, then I guess its somewhat understandable.

 

[weirdee]

Since this would only mainly concern the people playing online, can't you force the people playing online to patch the exploit out in order to play?

I guess it would be too much trouble to have everybody make room for a fixed track in their game data anyway...