We’ve got as far as the first castle in world two, but have died there more times than I care to remember. We did get to the boss once, but we both managed to get ourselves killed. We’ll get him next time, though. (Possibly.)

I was Mario, she was a blue Toad. We certainly had a lot of fun with it, but I’m just slightly worried that it might be a bit to difficult for us. It seems to be easier when there’s only one of you playing, which seems wrong. Still, that’s only a minor worry for now and we didn’t stop playing until it was time for Doctor Who.

It’s really nice to have another game where we can both play cooperatively at the same time, too. We don’t do enough of that. Competitive games don’t work too well in our house.

Current favourite track is Rainbow Road, but it’s often my least favourite track. Depends on whether I’m in a big heavy kart or on a tiny bike.

This game is brilliant.

The wheel is a great accessory and really adds to the experience, after five or six races of falling off things, bashing into walls and failing to do tricks. I thoroughly enjoyed my time paying through the first couple of 50cc cups.

But where it got the italics was online. Just playing random people was amazing. No visible lag at all, which is incredible. Whether Nintendo have written amazing net code or amazing lag-hiding code I don’t know, but it was just as smooth as playing offline. Except, you know, instead of playing cheating AI characters I was playing real people in the UK, Germany and France. I just thought I’d try out a race or two and ended up playing for an hour. I only stopped because I had to get some potatoes out of the oven.

I wonder if anyone plays online still? And, if so, do any of them not snake all the way around each course?