Mario Kart DS

[jyoung]

R.O.B is a hidden character

We know.

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/s...postcount=41We

[Klonoa]

well then

there is a hidden chat mode

j/k

[epmode]

Hold on.. There's absolutely no way to communicate with a person you're playing against? Not even an in-game pictochat?

[Mzo]

Hold on.. There's absolutely no way to communicate with a person you're playing against? Not even an in-game pictochat?

Ventrilo

=(

[epmode]

Wow. Just wow.

[Klonoa]

I have a hard time believing nintendo would leave something like that out.

[1CCOSA]

Just called EB: "Nope not yet, we haven't got our morning shipment yet. We should have it later today or at the latest, tomorrow morning." gahhh. Wait.Is.Killing.Me.

Hopefully in a few hours when i go on break it will be there.

edit: Yessss, just found it at Gamecrazy. I asked if they could hold it and the guy said "Sorry we can't hold it but we have plenty of copies, you should be good."

edit: My sup let me go get the game, the game synched up with our lynksys station here perfetcly, I am now about to try it online.....

edit: Just finished my first online match with Mario on the Yoshi circuit level, buttery smooth, the match started right away, perfect. This is awesome. Now starting the ghost house track.

[epmode]

From some Gamefaqs poster:

This is not Halo. If you are expecting an in-depth, Xbox Live!-type experience, you are going to be sorely disappointed. In MKDS, player matching is done randomly, there is no chat or communication function, and everything is completely barebone and automatic. On top of that, only 20 of the 32 tracks are available for online play, only four players can race at once, and you’re unable to hold items behind your kart. Finally, the only mode available for wi-fi internet play is versus.

[Finch]

Didn't we already know that? In other news, you won't be able to select your class. You'll ALWAYS be a kart racer. SHIT.

[Beefy Hits]

Some reports from the field: Picked it up @ 1pm today at Target. Was gonna wait to rent it from gamefly but this is too good to pass up.

Went to a local coffee shop to test it out. Setup is as seemless as it is on PSP. Just look for a connection and the system does the rest.

Once you connect, you have the options to look for people: Friends, Rivals (those with records close to yours I think), regional, worldwide.

Once you choose this, you're taken to a screen that has three boxes with a ? block with a square at the upper left corner. You wait until other people are found. I had lots of problems with this step; people kept dropping out for whatever reason. The system spends either a 1/2 minute or longer looking; sometimes it starts the game regardless of how many are found (so long as it's at least one person). Other times it keeps searching and goes on forever.

I've also had lots of problems with losing connections for whatever reason, before and during games.

Assuming you do find one or more people to connect with, it plays good. I did mainly regional matches because I had trouble with worldwide matches, both finding people and staying connected. I didn't notice any lag while playing. You can choose the basic tiers of racers, and each person chooses what track they want. If everybody chooses a different track, the computer randomly chooses one of the 4 tracks selected by players. There are a number of tracks to choose from, encompassing several tracks from SNES, N64, GC, and GBA games along with new ones. You're only able to race; you can't battle online.

I didn't get to try any friends matches cuz I don't have codes. Also, you are not able to chat with anyone. This feature would have been nice.

Unfortunately, I only got to play about 3 races. The other times I actually got someone to play with, I got disconnected before or during the race, or someone else "pulled", like in Xband. Whenever someone "pulls", it interupts the game and you have to start over. Your record isn't reflected in this at all. I can see this being a big problem with this game. After my 3rd consecutive race, my battery lost power. This is another problem I can see with people playing at hotspots; make sure you have a full charge when you play online away from home or bring your charger with you because wifi sucks copious amounts of power.

Barring connection problems, I'm impressed. Good first effort from Nintendo.