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Mario Kart DS Online Primer
Written by Maxwell Shackleford on Thursday, November 10, 2005
Everything you need to know before slinging red shells at your online buddies...
It's clear after spending some time with Mario Kart DS' online features that Nintendo has a ways to go before their Nintendo Wi-Fi service can become the Xbox Live-killer that Nintendo fans insisted it would be. The truth is, at least for first party games, Nintendo Wi-Fi will most likely never be comparable to Microsoft's online approach. The two company's have two very different goals in mind for online functionality.
Nintendo's first foray into the world of online gaming might not be perfect, but one thing the big N absolutely got right was the ease of setup. Nintendo has insisted from the beginning that their service would be free, and so easy that casual gamers ages 5 to 95 would be able to get online. It's clear now that Nintendo achieved their goal, with most gamers able to hop online in literally seconds with just a few taps of the A button.
Before we dive knee-deep into what Nintendo did (and didn't) get right with Mario Kart DS Online, let's take a closer look at the finer points of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.
With a Wireless Router
If you're in one of the many homes with a compatible wireless router (Nintendo has a list of routers that will and won't work), setup will take less time than it will take you to read this quick guide. My home wireless router worked perfectly, and from my couch I set up the connection and was online and racing in approximately 2 minutes.
1)Select Nintendo WFC Settings from Mario Kart DS main Menu
2)The Wi-Fi Connection Setup menu is universal regardless of what DS Wi-Fi game you're playing. The first time you connect, you'll want the (appropriately) massive blue "Wi-Fi Connection Settings" button.
3) From there simply search for an access point...
4) The system should find your router without issue. Hit A and it'll test the connection.
5) ...there is no step five. That was it. You can now back out of the menu back into Mario Kart and hop online. Everyone (myself included) had been told repeatedly the process was easy, but I'm not sure anyone expected it to be quite that easy.
Without a Wireless Router
If you don't have Wi-Fi in your home, or have an incompatible router, or protect your Wi-Fi with WPA (currently only WEP is supported), then to get your Mario Kart Online on from home you'll need to purchase Nintendo's Wi-Fi USB Connector from their online store.
The device plugs into your PC's USB port and acts as a kind of middle man, so your DS sends and receives data from it, allowing you to use whatever broadband connection you have at home to go online with your DS. Nintendo puts its range at 35 feet, but in practice we've found it to be farther. Its also worth noting that the device only interacts with a Nintendo DS. You won't be able to use it to get online with your PSP if you only have a wired connection, for example.
The connection is still easy breezy to set up, though. From the Wi-Fi Connection Setup Menu (the big blue button, remember?) just select "Connect to your Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector."
On your PC itself the Wi-Fi application you just installed should sense your DS
To prevent other DS owners pirating that connection, you have to grant it permission.
After that, setup is the same as if you had a wireless router in the home. Your DS will test the connection, and you're free to race online. I never ran into any complications setting up or going online with either method.
Mario Kart DS Online Play
Before hopping online, you should personalize your kart.
You can set a new Mario Kart DS nickname for yourself (the default is the DS nickname you chose), or you can create a custom emblem visable when racing online. If you're not the artistic type you can use one of the 29 presets and then use color fills to still create a unique identity for yourself. If you ever race someone with a Robomo emblem, prepare for pain. Last place pain.
The Wi-Fi Connection Menu is also where you enter friend codes (as well as view your own).
After taking a few seconds to connect to Nintendo WFC, you'll be given the option of searching for Friends, players in your country, players worldwide, or players of your skill level. In Mario Kart DS you can't "make" a game. Instead you just do the searching and the system puts you together.
After you've selected your option you wait to be matched.
Since we've had the games the waits have generally been pretty long, but I'm willing to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is most likely because there's simply not enough players online to make matches quickly.
And then its off to the races! Select your character, then your kart, and finally the track. Track selection is interesting. You can choose what track you want, or select random. Whichever track garnered the most votes is where you race. In 3-player races I've seen players wait for their two opponents to pick and then select which of those two courses they wanted more, giving them a higher degree of control than if everyone just picked random (which is what typically happens).
NintendoWifi.com
NintendoWifi.com does feature some minor stat-tracking, but first you have to jump through some hoops since Nintendo doesn't have a Gamertag-style universal account. To track your online statistics you first must have a My Nintendo account, obtainable at Nintendo.com.
From there, things get a little complicated. From the options menu within WFC Settings (next to the big blue button), you can obtain your unique Nintendo WFC ID. Then you'll need to enter this # at NintendoWifi.com. The site then gives you a temporary nickname to enter into your Nintendo DS (which will look something like 'jg76sf9kd,' which is apparently the only way Nintendo's online system can verify that you indeed are who you claim to be.
With that nickname in place, hop online within Mario Kart (no need to race), and you're verified. NintendoWifi.com will now track various online statistics for your account, including when you last played, how much you're playing compared to others, and your total number of logons to the Wi-Fi system.
Linking up with NintendoWifi.com is the only aspect of Nintendo's entire system that doesn't feel completely intuitive, and the company told the press that they're looking into a better verification solution. For the time being the stats tracked aren't overly impressive, so many online MK players might want to skip it.
The Good & Bad of Mario Kart Online
As I said at the top of the article, its unlikely that Nintendo Wi-Fi will ever be Xbox Live-esque in its execution. Not because Nintendo in incapable of creating such a community-based system, but because they chose not to. Two major downsides of Mario Kart DS Online is that there is no way to communicate with your fellow racers, even via preset post-race comments and the like, and that there is no way to get someone's friend code if you don't know them outside the game.
That's right, if you race with someone all night and have a great time, you can't add them to your friends list, or even communicate to work out a way that you could get their info via AIM or email. These ommissions weren't oversights on Nintendo's part, however. Nintendo intentionally set up the system to work that way. The kid-friendly company didn't want strangers to be able to make connections in any sense with their system. The infastructure is strictly for playing.
Even with those issues excused, there are other problems that dampen the experience. If you do have a friends list populated with gamers you know in real life, you can't choose specifically who you want to race. All you can select is to "race friends" and it'll then randomly pick from other friends of yours that are online. This is a major problem that prevents communities from setting up tournies, and is a level of control needlessly taken away from gamers.
Additionally, only 20 of the game's 32 tracks are playable online. Initially it was speculated that the 12 withheld were done so for tech reasons, such as it being difficult to sync up the moving parts of the track (giant pinballs, for example). A closer look at the line-up shows that some online tracks do have moving parts, while some withheld don't. There are 10 retro and 10 new tracks playable online, which reinforces the belief that it was a conscious decision.
Lastly, you can't "drag" items behind your kart, when racing online.
So what does all this mean? Despite all of Mario Kart DS' excusable and inexcusable online shortcomings, I still paused during the writing of this feature twice to catch a quick online race. I've gotten my DS battery into the red almost every night since I've had the game.
If Mario Kart DS can be this much fun online when the functionality is so limited, I fear for what will happen to gaming publications when a full-featured online Kart drops.
posted November 11, 2005