Mario Kart DS Dominates

Nintendo's Goodie Should Be On Everyone's List This Year

(CBS)  Let's move on to the Multiplayer mode. Grab a couple of friends with game and race with up to eight people within wireless range with no problems and no wires. If some of your friends have the Nintendo DS, but don't have the game, no sweat. The game sharing feature will have the players that have the physical game share with the players that do not have the game, and let them all race together. Granted, in game sharing mode, the full set of available tracks is not available, but enough tracks and racers are open and playable to ensure an intense racing experience, especially if you race with smack-talkers like I race with.

So you're probably saying to yourself, "Wow, that’s a lot of cool stuff that Mario Kart DS can do wirelessly." And you would be right. But that's not the coolest thing wireless trick Mario Kart DS can do. That's where the last game type, Nintendo WFC, comes in.

WFC stands for Wi-Fi Connection, and when selected, will start you on your way to playing over the Internet against other go-karters. Nintendo wanted to make a safe and easy Internet gaming experience, so they created the WFC to be able to detect wireless networks and connect to them given the correct permissions. They make it safe by not allowing voice communications over the Internet enabled play. They also created a friends list for finding buddies on the Internet that you want to race against, which was made safe by making a dual-authentication scheme. If I want to add my editor Chad to my list of friends, I must first confirm that I actually want Chad's name on my friend list, (which I do,) and add him to my list. Chad will get a notification and must authorize that he wants to be on my list. Kind of how some instant messaging applications adds to lists of friends. This way, you will never have anyone you don’t want or know on your list without your consent, and wont have to worry about verbal profanity that sullies some current Internet enabled games. Sharp.

The ease of finding a wireless network, especially if you have one in your home using a wireless router, is built into the WFC setup. It will search and automatically configure itself if your wireless network is unlocked. If it is locked, just add your network's key and you are on the Internet. This feature makes getting online easy ... sometimes.

Unfortunately, one of Mario Kart's strongest possible points might be its weakest. In reviewing this, I have been exposed to 15 wireless networks, including 2 that I have personally setup and locked with a security key at work and home. The rest were unlocked networks acround my work and home neighborhoods. While the setup would find each of these and other unusable networks easily, I could only connect to 4 of the 13 open networks. I could not connect to either of the 2 locked networks that I created. Being a networking tech, I find this unusual. If I was someone who had little knowledge of wireless networking, I would find this frustrating. Nintendo's new wireless homepage (www.nintendowifi.com) has valuable resources on getting your WFC enabled games connected to the internet, and their support and information is clear enough for most users to use and comprehend. They even have a list of wireless routers that are and are not compatible. So, while your mileage may vary, my personal wireless connection rate was 26.6%. Basically, 1 out of every 4 wireless connections that I tried worked.