I remember when the words "Nintendo" and "online" wouldn't even appear in the same sentence. But did you ever think a sentence like this would be constructed: "Nintendo has the leading online service in the world."

Neither did I. And while I'm not ready to utter that sentence just yet, the notion behind Nintendo's free worldwide WiFi arrangement is pretty novel. From the user-end, this is the easiest way to get online in video games. Worldwide Mario Kart battles? We played against Canadians and Germans over the Wi-Fi network and aside from a few network hiccups due to the zerging of 30 DSes with Mario Kart connecting to the same Wi-Fi access point at once, performance was excellent.

It's not all roses, though. As reported yesterday, the Wi-Fi connection won't automatically hook up everywhere, and for some connections you'll need a laptop and a USB cable (priced at $34.99) to connect your DS to your laptop and then get the connection from there.

The catch? The USB cable is going to be available in limited quantities in the United States and it should just be a pack-in item on the Mario Kart DS bundle and a mail-away to get one for free item from Nintendo for DS users. The limited availability of the USB cable, a critical peripheral, seems to be an oversight in an otherwise extremely sound online strategy.