I just decided my WiiU was faulty and took it back to get it replaced. Good thing I still had the receipt. I forgot to return the Wii Wheel thing though, but they were nice enough to just take that out of my replacement bundle to compensate. Everything has been working fine so far now.

I was just unlucky enough to get a broken system fresh out of the box. lol

I worded my OP wrong about the tv turning off. It's just the console itself that suddenly shuts off. After that, the only way to turn the Wii U back on is to unplug the AC adaptor and plug it back in. And the Wii U isn't in any case, aside from an extremely large and open shelf with plenty of space.

Brand new disc. No scratches at all.

I am playing in 1080p. That causes problems?

This problem only seems to happen when I'm playing Mario Kart 8. Using the console itself has no problems and I tried another game to see if the problem continued (Super Smash Brothers Brawl) and it ran with no problems.

Doesn't seem to be that at all, since everything else works just fine.

Yesterday I purchased the Mario Kart 8 Wii U bundle. I got it set up and played it for maybe about an hour with no problems. Then all of a sudden, my tv off and the gamepad tells me the signal stopped working. I tried everything I could think of to fix this, but nothing has worked so far. Now, I can barely finish a single race let alone a whole cup without this problem continuing to ruin what would have otherwise been a fun time with a fun game.

So, is there a fix to this problem or did my Wii U get bricked on day 1?