why is there no MARIO KART thread?

is there snaking in the multiplayer? That's what really ruined the DS online experience for me. The only thing worse than getting trounced over and over by what you suspect to be a bunch of 14-year-olds is when they're SNAKING as well.

I'm planning on picking the new one up when finals are over, so a few weeks from now. I have no idea what my friend code is but I'll post it here then.

This game really came out at the wrong time. Also, I already have mario kart 64 and I've yet to hear a compelling reason to pick this new one up

no, they redid the whole drifting system so snaking is no longer possible. there might be other exploits you can use, but as far as i know no one's discovered any yet.

I actually mastered DS snaking, but once I had I found the whole online racing thing even more soulless, and stopped playing after a day or two.

No interest in the wii version though. I can't believe a driving game which ships with 3 different functional control schemes is in any way balanced, really.

after the initial disappointment i really got into this game. the single player is kinda useless (and annoying that you have to play through it to unlock some stuff eg mii racers), but the online works really well. you can download ghost data that other people have posted to race against. theres also a "competition" mode which doesnt seem to work - anyone know what this is? is it a friends code only thing?
i think the biggest change is the addition of trick jumps and ledges which you can get a boost from if you time it righ - some are worth it and some aren't, so you really start thinking about different routes around the track.
oh and fuck a blue shell (the new thundercloud item is genius though)

About the trick jumps -

I was watching a video review of this the other day (I think at gamespot) and they highlighted a problem with the trick jumps/boosts, which was that with the additional weapons added, too many of them wipe you out in the middle of your jump. A few days I watched some footage of people playing live (again, on gamespot I think) and it was like a neverending series of people spinning out and getting knocked out, over and over. I know this is sorta what Mario Kart is all about, but from what I've seen the series looks like it's gone a bit too far in the weapons direction.

sometimes you can get wiped out in the middle of a trick jump, its an additional risk i guess, although you can escape the effects of the new POW block item by trick jumping off anything nearby. there are too many powerup blocks in the courses though. oh yeh and if you choose a motorbike you get knocked over by other peoples cars all the time, its no fun.

Enlighten me please, what is snaking (apart from being that one thing that makes me lose all the time on DS online play)?

You know that turbo boost you can get if you drift round corners in a certain way? Snaking is driving in such a way as to make those little boosts available on straights too. It basically requires constant "snaking" from left to right, but once you get the hang of it you can drive at almost constant turbo speeds.

im buying this tonight

these levels are kinda too gimmicky no?

webber, i added you!

mine is: 4940 5877 2269

and i'm over the moon about this game - and it could never get too gimmicky to me, that's part of what it's all about! gimme more weird shit to bounce off of and swing through!

that said i was all up in arms about what i percieved to be a complete lack of head-to-head racing or battle with out any AI's until i learned to turn the AI's off. duh. now it's the BEST GAME EVER!!!

add me & let's race!!

actually the one complaint i *do* have concerning Battle mode (which has always been my favorite mariokart mode of all time - N64MK Battle was me & my GF's crack rock) is the timed battles - you mean after 3 minutes that's it? BULLSHIT!

0044 3215 6455

Man this game is fun.

i played battle mode a little bit, but i wasnt too impressed. they seemed to take the shit levels from mk64 but not the good (multi-level) ones. i'll add people when i next play

my GF & i played online last night against a friend who lives across town and we rarely saw him on the screen, he would fade in and out, one second the map would say he was a half-lap behind, the next second he would just appear 100 feet away. we were chatting online after each match and i kept asking him 'where were you' but apparently for him it seemed perfect. ??

first competition is now up on the Kart Channel - fastest round a slightly modified Mario Circuit by May 10th. i can't get under 2mins, i suck.

i generally have a lot of lag in most multiplayer games, but mario kart online seemed fine to me. even playing with a bunch of europeans and japanese people was seamless (i'm in australia)

could be different now that americans have their hands on it though? are there central servers?

I get the fading out intermittantly. It's been better this week than it was when the game first came out.

hey add me you guys! let's do diss!

I gave in and pickid this up today. It's fun! So far. I'll add everybody's codes next time I log on. Mine is 3995-7260-3325

Some questions...

In the single player grand prix, what determines your rank? I've got everything from a C to a star, but can't really figure out what makes the difference.

In the online stuff - how does the game determine how many points you get or lose? I won a race last night and only got 51 points, while I've seen others get well over 100.

Having a hard time judging when to hit the gas at the start to get a speed boost. Any hints on how to do this better? I know it's sometime after they call 2 and before 1...

Is there any consensus on the best character / vehicle to use to win races. Or is the differences between characters and vehicles pretty much just cosmetic. It's hard to get a feel for it, since there are so many random factors involved in each race

i'm assuming it's how far you are ahead of the opposition plus whether you get the maximum points. sometimes i come first in every race but only get an a or one star, but if i beat everyone by 5-10 seconds in every race i get two stars.

the online points thing might take into account how many points you vs everyone else in the game has? winning a race against people with 3,000 points isnt as hard as winning a race against people with 10,000.

oh and the speed boost: start accelerating when lakitu's hand is the highest after 2

A few days I watched some footage of people playing live (again, on gamespot I think) and it was like a neverending series of people spinning out and getting knocked out, over and over

yea, that is basically all this game is :/

exaggerating of course, but damn
too bad there isn't a mode where all the items are green shells or banana peels xD

How is this game STILL sold out?

http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2007/12/mario_kart_slot.jpg

I saw dozens of copies at the local future shop :|

Played a bunch of this online today for some weird reason. It's still fun, also no problem finding a game and still lag free. But I'm still kind of horrible at it... dropped all the way under 4500 points for a while, but managed to climb back up to over 4800, but that's not so good. Coming in 4th place still feels like a miracle. You see some people doing consistently good - so it's obviously not all luck, but sometimes it feels like it. I'm glad there's no voice chat trash talk. Is there a place to look up your overall online stats in there anywhere and I'm just missing it?

woo, back over 5000.

Tried out some of the battle stuff after re-reading thins thread. I don't really understand the balloon battles - anybody care to explain?

I don't know what I'm doing different, but after playing this a bunch over the weekend I'm definitely doing better - usually finishing around 3-5th place, though I did finally even win a race.

I did notice one driver purposely ranking down today (by stopping right before the finish line). Not exactly sure why somebody would do that, especially somebody who was obviously good enough to place high / win.