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Picture this: you've got an exam tomorrow. You're stressed, over-knowledged, and pretending to be revising at 23:30 at night, to save your ever-insistent mum's breath (for those (if any) non-arab readers, arab mum's interfere with their children's lives until their very last breaths, even if the kids are 60 year old grand parents!).
Anyhow, what do you do? well I for one had the senses to pack my Nintendo DS (that I'm officially in love with, remember?) with me and with it I got M&L, but also Mario Kart DS.

Everyone knows Mario Kart, the fun arcade racing game from the SNES era. It's been reinvented alot (N64, GBA, Gamecube) and now NDS. The thing that makes the NDS version so special though is it's dual screen (one for the game one for the important map) but also it's the first nintendo game to be officially internet enabled!! Yes that's right, now you can play mario kart against anyone in the world.

Nintendo has always promised to go into the online console market when they deemed fit. And their NDS is the first to do so. It comes with wireless built-in, so to go online you can either use your own wireless network if you have one, or buy a cheap nintendo USB wireless dongle, or (here's the best bit), go to any of 15,000 European hotspots, and join from there for free (eg McDonald's and a ton of other public places). Amazingly, 7,500 of those are in the UK.

Anyhow, so there I was laid in bed at 23:30 with my NDS, Mario Kart, and those crappy white iPod headphones on to make sure the boss (mum) doesn't hear. I connected to Nintendo WFC (wi-fi connection) and starting searching for opponents (that's another thing, going online and starting a game couldn't be easier! there's no lobby, there's no chatting, hence there's non of that famous abuse/anti-beginner attitude in nearly all online communities). A moment later I'm with 2 other people, and the race had begun!

I got 2nd place in the first race, which earned me 5 points. Midway through the 2nd race I was lagging behind. We were racing in Wario Stadium, a track full of ups and downs and boosts. I was just approaching a hill and my 2 opponents had already crossed ahead of me. Luckily, I had one of those kick-ass Blue Turtle Shells that zooms right up to the first racer and explodes with lots of proximity damage! I released at the exact moment when he was about to be overtaken, and the Shell blew up and toppled both racers! This happened just as I was jumping over the hill, and saw the carnage happen right beneath me, as I took the first place.

And as the battery ran out. NOTHING. BLACK SCREEN. ZILCH.

I hadn't realised that, due to a marathon M&L session (I reached the mothership, whatever that is!), I had abused the battery and it was in it's last minutes! just as I had bombed 2 rivals, jumped over them and laughed my evil laugh, and just as I took first place, the damn NDS decides to run out of juice, and just SWITCH OFF. And I wasn't sensible enough to pack the charger. HMV, here I come.

But you gotta give it to the big N for releasing the best version of Mario Kart on the DS, for making playing online so fun and easy, and for being the wonderful people that they are. Oh, and soon, Animal Crossing-Wild World is coming out for NDS too. Where you can invite people from around the world to your virtual village, and it's goodbye social life and everything else forever.... I just can't wait.

Wish me luck y'all. SoB out