Losing to Japanese gamers has never been so much fun.

This past holiday season, Nintendo launched the much-anticipated Nintendo WiFi Connection service. It allows gamers from all around the world to challenge each other via the Internet on their DS systems.

Two of the flagship titles for the new service, ‘Mario Kart DS’ and ‘Animal Crossing: Wild World,’ take full advantage of the Nintendo DS’ WiFi capabilities to add a whole new dynamic to wireless gaming.

‘Mario Kart DS’

In addition to outstanding gameplay, graphics and level design, the addition of Mario Kart’s online mode makes this title the best Kart racer available.

After connecting to Nintendo WFC, players are grouped with four others from either around the world or a specified region, depending on what is chosen. After choosing a character, each member of the party selects a course to race in and one of these are chosen at random by the computer.

The players race in a four-part tournament. Nintendo WFC automatically keeps track of your win and loss record and displays them for your opponents to see, adding to the fierceness of the competition.

The online play is smooth and rarely lags, even when playing someone on the other side of the globe. Despite the excellent performance, ‘Mario Kart DS’ does not have an online chat feature to let you talk smack to your opponents or even organize future races. The only way you are allowed to choose who you play with online is if you already input their friend code, which is unique to every gamer. This makes the online experience extremely impersonal, but for a launch title for the WFC service it’s understandable.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

‘Animal Crossing’ is what Nintendo calls the ‘game for non-gamers,’ much in the same fashion as ‘The Sims.’ Players spend the majority of their time buying and trading items, decorating their homes and delivering packages for the in-game characters. But with Nintendo WFC, a whole new level of gameplay is added to this fan favorite.

Those familiar with the Gamecube version of ‘Animal Crossing’ know the game is all about the items. Nintendo WFC allows players to visit the towns of other gamers in real time through the Internet. Once in a friends’ town, players can visit their stores, speak with their characters and, if they feel like pissing them off, chop down all their trees. The online feature also makes it easier for players to find new items that may only be unique to a friends’ town. (And therefore worth a lot more cash when sold.)

But unlike ‘Mario Kart DS,’ there is no random pairing. The only way one can visit another town is if they have another player’s friend code. This is obviously to prevent strangers from entering other players’ towns and wreaking havoc, but still seems to make the online play totally unnecessary.

With ‘Mario Kart DS’ and ‘Animal Crossing’ as Nintendo WFC’s flagship titles, the DS already seems to be well ahead of the curve in online wireless gaming, considering there aren’t many titles on the Sony PSP worth even looking at right now. Expect to see vast improvements on Nintendo’s future titles.

Top 5 most wanted wireless online games for the Nintendo DS:

1. ‘Madden NFL 2005’2. ‘Mario Party’3. ‘Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles’ 4. Any Capcom fighter5. ‘Metroid Prime’

Published on January 29, 2006 at 12:00 pm