Nintendo DS - Mario Kart Review

I hadn't touched a Mario Kart title since the disappointment of Double Dash on the Gamecube.  I was an avid player of Kart 64, and was a bit off-put by how much was changed in DD, but not for the better.  The announcement of Kart DS was met with skepticism on my end, having been burned once already with the next gen adaptations of what I feel is the best Kart racing series out there.  The selling point for me was the online wireless multiplayer - I'd long been looking for a non-FPS game to play with my friends who were in college at other campuses, and this seemed to be it.

The game alone is great, even if it didn't make use of the stylus as a major interaction tool like I always complain about.  It's Kart, I don't think driving with the stylus would have worked; you don't drive a car with a joystick, you have your hands on either side of a wheel, just like your hands are positioned on the DS unit.  Needless to say, the controls are great, and the location of all the buttons gives play a very natural feel.

There's a good amount of characters to choose from at the start, and a few more to unlock, making for a good lineup for a handheld system.  There's also a nice variety of tracks and more to unlock, as well as the mirror mode of each, making for a large combination, although could have had a few more as they do get stale after a while.  One of the things DD did well that DS continued with was the option to use multiple karts with the same racer.  This allowed me to create specific racers with the stats I knew would be useful to particular tracks.  The mission mode I didn't find myself playing much, as I prefer mainly the versus wi-fi racing, but they're good time killers.

The wi-fi was executed perfectly in my opinion, especially considering this was the first DS game to go online in the USA.  There's a lobby system to pick up random players, or you can choose to just challenge your friends.  It's simple, no frills, and I think worked perfectly for a handheld console.

All in all, not much to say to improve except maybe a few more tracks and characters.  The controls were perfect, the online system great, and it brought back the original flavor of Kart with a few nice new additions that really worked well.