Mario Kart DS Races to Victory

All I can say about Mario Kart DS is: Get ready for some red-hot racing action.

And I mean it.

Mario Kart DS is the most fun you will ever have on virtual wheels this side of the Mushroom Kingdom any day of the week. My experiences so far have been plentiful enough to give anyone fair game. Well, almost. So here's my impressions of what has turned out to be a stellar title, starting below.

Mario Kart DS has enough tricks, traps and pratfalls to keep the fun going, with classic Mario-themed obstacles like lava pits, cheep-cheeps and thwomps. There are fun items to grab and use on your opponents from mushrooms to speed you up temporarily and angry-faced ammunition that can turn you into a Bullet Bill to really sneak up on the opposition, to shells that either riccochet, home in on the next Kart in the line or literally dive-bomb whoever is leading the pack and squid that call in Blooper the Octopod to spray ink on everyone in your way. And in a nod to other fast-paced video games, there are traps such as boost pads and ramps to hurtle you forward - and two tracks, Waluigi Pinball and Rainbow Road, contain elements that could fit in with the Sonic the Hedgehog series, such as loop-de-loops and pinball flippers. Crazy tricks like drifting and power boosts can move you ahead, or leave you biting everyone else's dust. And the introduction of Nintendo Wi-Fl Connection (Nintendo's first serious Internet gameplay system ever, no less - and Nintendo originally viewed Internet gameplay support as little more than a waste of development time) makes this even more a great game.