Nintendo WFC: Mario Kart

I've been eagerly awaiting the release of Mario Kart DS since E3 in May where I stood in line after line just to play a few minutes of wifi head-to-head action. The game was released on 11.15 and with moderate success I was up and running in a matter of minutes.

I've now set up my DS to work on two separate wifi networks. My office connection was cake, all I had to do was have the DS find the network, then I typed in our office WEP security key which is 325gi8... just kidding. After that I was able to play against opponents across the region via wifi.

My home network was a bit tougher. I tried to follow the same procedures as at work, but when I went to test the connection I got an error code. The process went something like this:

1. Typed in the wrong WEP security code. 2 min
   
2. Couldn't remember my WEP key for home. 3 min
   
3. Had to access my wifi router's admin page to find out WEP key. Couldn't remember the url for that. 2 min
   
4. Found the URL, couldn't remember username and password. Figured it out after 5 tries. 2 min
5. Found WEP key, still got error (invalid IP number). Thought it would be great if the DS had a "renew IP address" option like my PC. Often times it helps when the PC gets a bad IP number. 5 min
6. Scratched my head. 1 min
7. Hopped on Nintendo's wifi site to enter in the error code, which was tough to understand and didn't help me out. 2 min
8. Found the "Router Config Support" page on Nintendo Wifi and easily located my router and found that it doesn't support Dynamic IP. Bummer since it's a pretty common Netgear. 1 min
   
9. Manually configured the DS to grab a static IP address. Also added a static IP to my router table for the MAC address of the DS. 1 min
10. Still errors, "settings are not complete"... Struggled, and discovered that I also needed to include a primary DNS. Where can I find that? Struggled some more and finally found it on my PC. 10 min
11. Success!! Total time was: 29 minutes, but now I'm set.
    

Now, I'm playing Mario Kart DS way too much. It's a blast and easy to play against friends directly or against any regional opponents. This is the best Mario Kart yet!