Nintendo Wii Fanboy

New. Mario. Kart.

And it's online.

At the Nintendo press conference, Reggie hinted at the possibility of massive online races. "More racers means more fun. How many more? Stay tuned." In addition to online races, Nintendo revealed an official steering wheel accessory, not too different from the ones used by Ubisoft at the system launch. The cleverly named Wii Wheel will come packaged with the upcoming Mario Kart, to be released in the beginning of 2008.

Eurogamer recently got some more explainin' out of a Nintendo UK spokesperson, beating out of them politely asking for some more detail on the latest news that Mario Strikers: Charged would feature online play. And, the online play, it seems will be fun, for the most part. Two players, on the same console, will apparently be able to take on another pair on another console through Wi-Fi Connect, as the UK spokesperson explained to Eurogamer. This made us very excited, of course.

The bad news, though, is that the game will support game-specific Friend Codes, adding more credibility to a future online experience on the Wii that is as cumbersome and difficult as that of the DS. As said before, the game will feature ranked and unranked matches, however when jumping into a quick ranked match against random opponent, you'll be region-locked, preventing you from taking on some competition from another country. Perhaps it'll cause less lag that way, but variety is the spice of life.

Add another game to the short list of upcoming Wii titles with WiFi Connection support. Mario Strikers Charged will feature both Ranked and Unranked matches for players all over the world to compete in. Ranked games track your wins and losses, calculating your standing on leaderboards (We can already imagine the problems with early disconnecters.). The Unranked mode allows you to set up a quick round with your friends.

[Via Joystiq]