Retro Rewind · Players & Rooms
View rooms and track players currently playing ZPL's Mario Kart Wii mod
Overview
A web application for viewing rooms and tracking players currently playing ZPL's Mario Kart Wii mod, Retro Rewind.
Background
Like many growing up in the 2000's and 2010's, the Nintendo Wii was a staple for any and all interactive party entertainment. Alongside the iconic Wii Sports (and an unusual love for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2009 of all things), Mario Kart Wii sat proudly at the top as the pinnacle of competitive social gameplay.
The game provided endless laughs, frustration and close finishes, and showcased the unbearably frustrating Wii motion controls that were once revolutionary for its time. The competitive scene flourished, particularly with CTGP providing custom tracks and longevity to the online servers.
Like all popular online multiplayer game franchises though, new releases will slowly steal away the player base in favour of fresh content on more advanced hardware. Mario Kart Wii's community continued to plod along, but my copy of the game began collecting dust on the shelf.
Retro Rewind
Recently however, my interest was piqued by a new distribution Retro Rewind, with a focus on high-quality retro custom tracks and improved gameplay.
Setup was extremely easy, thanks to the wonderful work of the devs of Wheel Wizard, and within minutes I was in a room with 11 other Funky Kong Flame Runners on some of my favourite retro tracks. If you grew up with Mario Kart Wii like I did, I highly recommend checking out the links below and giving it a crack.
The distribution has gathered a consistent player base, with it now being very rare to struggle to find a full room.
Development
Like many of the personal web application projects I've undertaken, Retro Rewind · Players & Rooms stemmed from a desire to learn and develop, rather than a real-world need or tangible use case. Others in the community, including the devs of Wheel Wizard, have already provided players with a way to view who is currently online and who is in what room.
When Next.js migrated to their new App Router and adopted React's new Server Components, I'd already moved on to learning other frameworks and libraries, such as Sveltekit.
With an easily accessible active rooms API, this web application felt like an easy gateway project into learning Next.js's new ways of developing, as well as Mantine's recent adoption of the Styles API.
Hence this simple web application was born..
Features
- Fetch currently active rooms, including dynamic auto-refreshing
- Search by player name
- Sort by room name, player count or average VR/BR
- Responsive design and dark mode