This blog post references my design feature, 'Variations on a theme: Handheld game systems proliferate, touting varied features and price tags' in the January 19, 2006 issue of EDN.

Most of my time so far with the Sony PlayStation Portable has been spent exploring its web browsing and multimedia playback capabilities, not its gaming attributes. You can find my blog posts on these topics via a Google search. Conversely, I was very interested in exploring the Nintendo DS's game capabilities, specifically its online (Internet) mult-player capabilities with titles such as Mario Kart DS.

Compared to a PC (or for that matter, the PSP) the DS proffers relatively anemic processing capabilities, and its Wi-Fi connectivity is equally limited; only the 1- and 2- Mbps 802.11b subsets of 802.11b. Would the console's shortcomings translate to an underwhelming online experience, or had Nintendo somehow figured out how to circumvent them?

I'm happy to report that playing Mario Kart DS on the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection lives up to the hype, although at first I wasn't sure. My first experience with the game occurred when I was at the company's Redmond, WA U.S. headquarters in early November, a few weeks before the service's (and title's) public unveiling. Those of us in the demo room suffered periodic, brief 'freezing' of the console's screen and controls (with the unhappy side effect that other players' carts hadn't been equally frozen in place while ours was stalled), along with occasional spontaneous disconnects from an in-process game.

I've successfully played Mario Kart DS online via my DHCP-connected DS, both through my home office's multiple Belkin F5D7130 802.11g access points (tethered to the Internet via a ~1.1 Mbps downstream/~320 Kbps upstream DSL connection and a Netopia R9100 router) and at the local McDonalds. No matter how good artificial intelligence gets, there's nothing quite like the unpredictability of playing against other real people. Nintendo was forced to make a few shortcuts to ensure a solid online experience; a maximum of four players can race at one time, and not all of the 'offline' tracks are also available 'online'. Still, it's a great experience.

My wife and I spent part of our Christmas holidays at the home of Chicago-area friends who have 6- and 8-year old boys. They both also really enjoyed Mario Kart DS, and drained the battery several times in the two nights we inhabited their home! Their parent's first-generation Linksys 802.11g router refused, for some reason, to DHCP-assign my DS an IP address, but I was able to get online after giving the DS a static IP assignment.

Interestingly, the 8-year old told me he preferred playing against the computer to playing against others; when I pressed him for details, though, he admitted that it was because 'online was harder'. I suspect that after a few more days' worth of mastering the offline experience, his loyalty would transition to the more challenging online mode. Equally interesting, while the kids preferred the DS to the PSP, their father spent several hours engrossed in the showcase PSP title Lumines. Many reviewers have suggested that the PSP generally appeals to an older audience than does the DS, and both this experience and my own gut feel jive with that opinion.

I must confess, though, that my enthusiasm for Mario Kart DS does not extend to another of the console's tier 1 titles, Nintendogs. Maybe the four real dogs that my wife and I own have something to do with this diagnosis, or maybe I just feel self-conscious about making doggie talk into the console's microphone. Statistics would tend to bolster the belief that my opinion is in the minority; Nintendo recently announced that Nintendogs has crossed the 1-million-sold threshold. However, I can't help but wonder: for how many of those consumers did the game's initial novelty quickly evaporate?