Up until Nintendo dropped Mario Kart DS I was never too keen on the popular series. I always saw the games as these goofy little titles where people wasted their lives putt putting along and hitting one another with turtle shells. I enjoyed the games, but I also knew I had better things to do with my life, so I was definitely stuffing dramatic irony down my throat as I played this game because I couldn't put it down. That's not to say that this feature packed race fest is perfect because that's far from the truth, but it's a damn fine achievement and a must buy whether you're after the hot single player action or looking to dive headfirst into a little online play.

That's right. After years of spewing text book PR BS about how there's no future in online gaming and how Nintendo wasn't ready to take the proverbial plunge, Mario and Co. decided to make Mario Kart DS its very first worldwide online title and it's quite spectacular. Through the power of the branded Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (and a wireless router), you can plunge your little kart racer into cyber space's digital innards and challenge up to three other people, and everything runs about as seamlessly as it does offline. Actually finding opponents can take a few minutes and every so often some unsightly lag will hinder a race, but none of that's enough to hinder the experience, and once you hook up with some buddies you can continue to race against them without any prolonged waiting periods.

The best part is how easy the setup is. Nintendo's gone to great lengths to make it as user friendly as possible and the game's developers have succeeded in making it a plug & play system. In fact, so long as you have a wireless router set up or acquire the Nintendo USB router (awkwardly codenamed: dongle), you shouldn't run into many problems.

The online stuff is all well and good but a couple of things really stick in my chicken fajitas. First, you can't move too far away from the router. I'm all right when I'm playing downstairs, but if I go up to my room I lose the signal. Secondly, the actual online play is very impersonal. With no real way to communicate to anyone, most of the time I'm racing against these no name people and when I beat them I can't trash talk. Furthermore, instead of the game providing you with the option of adding friends after you race, you can only create such a list by exchanging a personalized 12 digit "Friend Code". But unless you have a means to contact these people it's impossible to acquire their codes, so this really blows.