Maria de Guadalupe discovers: The Joys of Multiplayer Disconnects

The wireless router (Ativa) that's gotten our Wii online also let Maria and I try out Mario Kart DS via WiFi. We both choose "Worldwide" and eventually came up with different opponents - sadly, it seems you can't game with friends and worldwide opponents, which is gay.

She's played the game extensively and claims to know every track. I sat there configuring her NDS while she played on my black one and after a while she said "He left."

"Who left?" I asked.

She looked puzzled. "The fourth player."

"The losing one?" I asked rhetorically.

Later still, she said "Now the third place person left! It's just me and the other guy."

I told her "They leave because they are tired of losing."

Before she won the cup, the 2nd place person quit too. She was not amused.

I figured she had a bad game - she'd won two cups before this, but then she kept winning and I realized "You're really good at this."

"Thank you, Papa."

"No, really. Anyone still playing Mario Kart DS should be good."

So we called up Billy's house and I thought Sarah answered, but the voice replied "No, I'm Zach."

Doh. Way to make a boy feel manly. Mistake him for his mother. I fall over myself by quickly saying "Hey I was trying to reach you anyway, what's your Friend Code? Maria and I have a wireless router and want to try out Mario Kart DS with you." Actually I wanted to chat with Billy but this worked.

Zach helped me find out where to find what our Friend Codes were, and I discovered that if Zach was my friend and I was Maria's friend but Maria wasn't Zach's friend - we can't connect. No error message, you just time out after 5 minutes of tedium. We rectified this. I let him and Maria chat on the phone a bit before we switched off again.

Zach then did merrily trounce upon our bodies, karts and all, winning three cups in a row. Partway into cup 1 I heard his mother call him and he whispered on the phone "I can't talk." I hanged up and hoped I wasn't supporting child delinquency and called Billy after the games.

I tried to tell Billy that Zach's achievement (the summary trouncing of Maria and I) was no small deal given that Maria had won nearly every online cup she'd played in "Worldwide" opponent mode, but of course Billy just chuckled.

I don't know. *whispers loudly* I think he knows.