Mario Kart war journal, entry the first

Friday, November 25, 2005 » gaming thought

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I've now been able to play Mario Kart DS online for about a week, and for the most part it's been fantastic fun. Nintendo's Wi-fi Connection is fast and painless to set up and it's usually pretty easy to find a game. I did have a little more success finding 4-player matchups and connecting to friends with my old router that died last week, but I'm hoping my current connection issues are just due to some switch in the router setup that hasn't yet been thrown. I've been looking at different forums and many people are having similar issues, but so far there aren't any definitive solutions.

The races themselves have been pretty intense. With four players competing and shooting items around, the outcome is really up in the air until the last seconds of the final race. Many times I've passed the guy in 1st right before crossing the finish, or have gotten hit with a red shell just feet away from the line. But that's Mario Kart for you.

There are only a couple problems I've encountered playing people online. The first is the people who disconnect during a race rather than have a loss added to their score. This is especially prevalent in 1-on-1 races. Although it would potentially harm people with unreliable connections (like me), I would rather Nintendo have counted each disconnect (and maybe only those occurring after the first race) as an automatic loss and added some kind of forfeit option for people who don't want to finish the game. There are always situations where someone is so behind point-wise that there's no hope of them winning. If they chose the forfeit option instead, maybe it could just add to a separate forfeit tally and the leading racers could still get their points. It'll be interesting to see how future Nintendo Wi-fi games handle disconnectors.

The other problem is snaking, which is either an advanced racing technique or a cheap exploit. A player who snakes constantly powerslides to get the mini-turbos, especially on straightaways. I tried this in a time trial match and, while it does require some practice and concentration to use effectively, if someone decides to use it online it basically turns the match into a snaking competition. And that means whoever didn't pick the one or two carts with powerful mini-turbos is out of luck. What's even more obnoxious is that the snaker I ran into online constantly voted for the Figure-8 Circuit because of its wide, lengthy straightaways. I'd like to be able to pick whatever kart I feel like using and have an interesting race and not worry that the match is going to be decided by who's spent more time swerving back and forth.

Of course, I did mention that I've played against a lot of excellent racers who stayed on through the final track. Are a couple lists of people I played (whose names I managed to remember or note down).

The honorable competition
BiG BeNz
David
jamie
jocean
nal0083
Nathan
Nico
P-stic
SPIKE
strater (spelled with button icons and katakana)
waKak
zeta

These people disconnect when they start to lose
flash_fox
Johnyc
Jonny 5
MACHIBA
Mattomonex
MetalSlugX
Oliveros
OniZer0

This guy snakes and only wants to play Figure-8 Circuit
SSBM Lord