Saturday, December 24, 2005
Review of Nintendo Wi-Fi
Well I've put in some where along the lines of at least 36 races of Mario Kart DS on Nintendo Wi-Fi and I must say I am fairly impressed.
After some intial confusion installing the software which was more my fault than the actual software, it is pretty much a simple process limited mostly by how bitchy your computer may be at the time. Just plug in the dongle (aren't technology names just splendid?) and you are good to go.
Mario Kart DS on Wi-Fi Review
Well aside from being MK-lite (only 20 tracks and no battle modes, some weapons not used, weapons can't be dragged, and at most 4 racers per race) it is pretty darned good. It takes some time to get paired with people but thats okay. A lobby or something would have been very nice but that's minor really.
So far it has been a lot of fun. I haven't had the problem of people disconnecting mid-race or series (each series contains 4 races) so that frustration hasn't occured. Though the slight lag at the beginning of each race (it takes about 5 extra seconds to really get to the countdown) sucks it gives you time to situate yourself though the program can lock-up and the race will never start.
In the end you can tell this is almost a beta of what is to come in the future of Nintendo Wi-Fi. I get a feeling that this and Animal Crossing are both selling (duh) and experiment games for Nintendo's Wi-Fi service. If Nintendo releases a 2nd DS Mario Kart I could bet that the Wi-Fi will be completely full featured and have easier race set-up. It would be great if you could choose lap number, weapon mix, even bots into the mix.
But as a first game for online play I'll give Nintendo an A for accessibility and performance.
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After some intial confusion installing the software which was more my fault than the actual software, it is pretty much a simple process limited mostly by how bitchy your computer may be at the time. Just plug in the dongle (aren't technology names just splendid?) and you are good to go.
Mario Kart DS on Wi-Fi Review
Well aside from being MK-lite (only 20 tracks and no battle modes, some weapons not used, weapons can't be dragged, and at most 4 racers per race) it is pretty darned good. It takes some time to get paired with people but thats okay. A lobby or something would have been very nice but that's minor really.
So far it has been a lot of fun. I haven't had the problem of people disconnecting mid-race or series (each series contains 4 races) so that frustration hasn't occured. Though the slight lag at the beginning of each race (it takes about 5 extra seconds to really get to the countdown) sucks it gives you time to situate yourself though the program can lock-up and the race will never start.
In the end you can tell this is almost a beta of what is to come in the future of Nintendo Wi-Fi. I get a feeling that this and Animal Crossing are both selling (duh) and experiment games for Nintendo's Wi-Fi service. If Nintendo releases a 2nd DS Mario Kart I could bet that the Wi-Fi will be completely full featured and have easier race set-up. It would be great if you could choose lap number, weapon mix, even bots into the mix.
But as a first game for online play I'll give Nintendo an A for accessibility and performance.
