Nintendo’s friend code system: good or bad?

The system used in Mario kart is pretty poor. Shame really considering this is one of the best potential online games.
Still the system is developing, Metroid Prime Hunters for example allows you to set up a a game in a lobby were your friends can join and you can start the game with withought a third or forth player, you can also chat aswell. Only with friends though.
The match making for strangers is a lot quicker that mario karts aswell and after a match you can save them as a “rival” which allows them to join friend games although you can communicate to them.
The only thing that bugs me about the currant system is not the long numbers it self there fine BUT thefact you get a seperate 12 digit number for EACH FRIGGIN GAME! then it becomes annoying.

Ah yeah, I forgot about that! Yeah, it’d be really nice to see a centralised system for storing those numbers since dishing out multiple numbers to your friends is certifiable insanity.

I’m glad to hear that Metroid has a better system than Mario Kart’s. I guess it goes to show that the implementation is purely down to the software, since the network can evidently handle lobby type stuff going off what you’ve said.

Let’s hope Nintendo gets it right with the Wii’s inevitable Mario Kart and Smash Bros Brawl. The prospect of playing a full-blown console rendition of those online really, really excites me. To screw it up would be comparable to impaling me upon a thousand rusty fence posts.

Yeah, the DS multiplayer system is pretty dire. It puts me off even bothering to use it, to be honest. The fact you have to pre-arrange match-ups via other means more or less defeats the object of a handheld, wireless system, which should be far more ad-hoc.

It strikes me that Nintendo were very afraid of ‘omg stalkers’ adverse publicity, so they’ve deliberately made the system obscure and difficult to use. The fact that BOTH parties must feed in a 12-digit number before a friendship can be made - and also that the numbers differ from game to game - is very secure, but a pain in the *arse*.

I guess different games have different systems, though. Animal Crossing has a fairly nice system for nipping into your friends’ towns, where you leave yours through the open gates and get a list of friends who are accepting visitors. The problem of getting friends in the first place remains, though, and is actually even *more* involved because you each need to swap your town and player names, in addition to your friend codes.

It amazes me how much of a pain the system is considering how Nintendo’s mantra seems to be accessibility to all. Can you imagine a pair of people who aren’t that much into games bothering with all this friend code swapping business? *I* can barely be arsed with it, and I’m about as tolerant as you get with that type of thing.

I guess it’s fine if you’re playing anonymously with random bums, but clearly the majority are going to want to play with at least one friend. Not improving this markedly for the Wii will be catastrophic to its success I reckon.

But we’ve got James’ comment above to go on, so hopefully it’ll all turn out well and we’ll be lobbing red shells at each other on a daily basis in several months! Or whatever you use in Smash Bros.

In Smash Bros. you throw anything and everything which you can throw in other Nintendo games - including red shells ;

I like the sound of this system though, it just sounds like implementation. If the Wii acts as a sort of game ‘hub,’ where you enter the online program before choosing your game (which would I suppose be in the machine already, but not necessarily) and you could see which of your friends were already online, and what games they had available. (This would be achived by the Wii storing like a cookie of all your multiplayer games, I suppose.) This way you could all meet up, say “hey guys, who’s up for some SSBB!” and be off.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I like the exclusivity of it - but if it’s made easier to use and there become better ways to meet people, it would be perfect.

[…] Although the implementation of online play on the DS isn’t perfect as I discussed earlier, it’ll almost certainly be sorted out by the time the Wii comes around and in fact has been markedly improved for newer DS titles. So what we’ll have is an online-enabled home console with motion sensor input. I don’t know about you, but that concept gets me pretty damn wet. […]