In its first week of release in the US, an impressive 45% of Mario Kart DS owners have already started their first few miles on its free Wi-Fi capabilities, a first for a handheld game of this calibre. This high usage of the Wi-Fi service is due to the easy setup and the increased access of Wi-Fi, along with the fact that it includes all the Mario Kart goodness from the previous titles.

On 14th November, Mario Kart DS became the very first game to use Nintendo Wi-Fi, and by the end of Sunday, more than 112,000 people in the US had bought the game, 52,000 of which have used the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to play people all over the country.

"From the user-end, this is the easiest way to get online in video games," writes popular video game blog Kotaku.com. "The Wi-Fi integration is seamless. It's as easy as clicking multiplayer on the menu and joining the game."

As we all should know by now, with the Wi-Fi connection, you can connect without any hassle to the service wherever you are, whether you're using a wireless home network or Wi-Fi hotspots that are compatible with the service. In addition, there is a USB Wi-Fi connector just in case you live out in the middle of no-where, and this just plugs into your PC like any other USB device.

There will be many titles to use the new service, including Animal Crossing Wild World on December 5th (USA/Canada, March 31st for Europe) and Metroid Prime Hunters on March 20th (USA/Canada, Europe TBA). As mentioned before on Club Skill, the demand for the new Animal Crossing title for the DS has already reached fever pitch, and four very strict game reviewers at Weekly Famitsu, Japan’s leading gaming mag, scored it an incredible 37 out of 40, which is a landmark achievement for this title.

As always, stick with Club Skill for more about the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, as we shall be testing it out at a major fast food chain that already gets too much publicity. Can you guess what it is yet?