Actually, that only ever happened pre-Double Dash. You know, scratch my comment about luck--it's always luck-based when it comes to items, and a bit of luck makes a multiplayer game fun (Like this one time when hammers just kept falling right where I was standing in Melee and I never got KO'd). My complaint is that now only people doing a really bad job ever get good items, and that annoys. I can understand a low likelihood of the leading racer getting a Starman, but to make it impossible? Unfun. It is luck-based against computers--either you'll get hit by twelve blue shells in once race or you won't.
Perhaps coins should be brought back for the Wii Mario Kart. It's very Mario-ish, and if I'm not mistaken a large amount of coins betters your kart's performance. Therefore a racer good enough to get many coins and not hit many obstacles would have an advantage, unlike the pity advantages that items grant to bad racers. Of course it'd just be a matter of remembering where coins appear, easily remedied by floating, moving or randomly appearing and disappearing coins rather than yellow circles all over the track.
