Last night I went to Phil's house and played a whole lot of Mario Kart. The game is a BLAST. We spent a lot of time playing 12 player online matches. While Nintendo's online services aren't the best, it was still a lot of fun playing against that many human players. I haven't been into Battle Mode since the Super NES version. That is no longer true. The new courses along with classic courses are great and once again all those players make for a really fun game. The only problems I have with the game is the somewhat spotty online play. We got disconnected a couple times in the middle of a game and it was extremely difficult to try and play with Phil's brother. Every time we tried to create our own room we got disconnected. We were finally able to play with him once we followed him into a race but it was still kind of a pain. Also, I don't like that you can only play with one other person on the same console online and only one person's stats are tracked. The other player is designated a "guest" for some reason. Despite these minor qualms, the gameplay itself is as great as it's ever been. I'm very tempted to buy a Wii with some of my stimulus money, if I can track one down.