Damn you Nintendo. Stop making us want to buy things!
By Matt

A friend and fellow rodent last week asked me if Mario Kart was any good? I couldn't and wouldn't answer him. My mind was racing and I didn't know where to start. This game is everything and nothing at the same time and then again, it's so much more.

It’s new but old all at once.

Mario Kart is: the marioverse, catchy music that doesn't get too repetitive, multiple game modes, multiple characters, varied handling, easy to pick up, the most perfect of learning curves, tricks and skills to master - such as the turbo start, power ups galore, lots of tracks to learn, shortcuts to take, drifting to maintain, boosts to control, jumps to master. Progression. Improvement. Harder, better, faster, stronger. Quite simply Mario Kart DS has every great element of every great racing game - including all its previous incarnations - all combined into one perfect package. But that's not all there is to it.

As with any game, the issue of longevity will eventually raise its head. Tracks will be mirrored, times will be improved, characters and karts will be combined in new and potentially useless ways, but when you've mastered Mario Kart that's simply not enough. You need more - however good computer controlled players are, they're never going to change. Donkey Kong will race with the same characteristics in the first and last races you ever compete in - you need the human touch. Adding another human into the mix adds uncertainty, which breeds new tactics and skills. It's evolution, or something.

The online gaming troll.

Nintendo know this - in fact I doubt there's anything they don't know when it comes to making a game that plays well with others. So, with Mario Kart DS, they've put one arm around the troll that is online gaming and invited it out to dinner with a promise of something ‘extra’ later. Mario Kart DS online is a thing of beauty, allowing you to play against anybody you like, anywhere in the world you like, any time you like. There's no voice or text chat – the theory being that after all we don't want to make new friends (or enemies) online - we just want to play a great game against more interesting adversaries. But the genius touch is simply this – there are no subscription charges and, assuming you have wireless broadband or live near one of the numerous public access points, it won't cost you a penny to play. Massively multi-player gaming has never been this seamless, this lag-free and this much fun.

So now, your tactics have to change. Computer players see everything, humans don't. Half-remembered tactics, last employed while clustered around a SNES in the early nineties, will be instinctively employed - camouflage dropping a banana on a zoom pad, holding onto that third mushroom just in case you need to gain a last zip of speed on the home straight, dropping a fake box near some real item boxes to fool your puny human foes, more fun with bananas as you litter them over the racing line - a wry smile will crack across your old, worn face as years of mediocre gaming fall away in moments. This is the original spirit expertly distilled into an area the size of a postage stamp.

Peach bringing up the rear. Filth.

The lack of chat leads to other, more instinctive, ways of communicating with your too-human playmates. You dance around the player select screen trying to fool your adversaries into picking a weak character. Or there is the very real sense of camaraderie on the track select screen, whether you’re taking it in turns to pick a track,, picking the track the guy in last position has picked to give him a fighting chance or picking a different track so that the track two other people have picked won't automatically come up. All of this without a word being spoken or anything being typed - just four people living the same dream.

The single player game is great, but it’s the online multiplayer that makes this an instant classic. It just works and it feels fantastic whilst doing so. If coming late to the online party was a gamble by Nintendo, then it has surely paid off. I don't mind them taking so long over a game when they get it this right.

It was worth the wait.

December 2005

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