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On September 25th, Nintendo launched the Mario Kart app causing 10.1 million people to dive nose deep into their phones to indulge in their favorite childhood video game. Growing up, I played Mario Kart on many game consoles such as Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii. The joy of playing Mario on those devices was the competition with my older brother and cousins on Christmas morning when we all unwrapped new DS’s and the Mario Kart game to boot.

My cousins, brother and I would each take a separate room in my grandparents’ house and play until Grandma called us to the table for dinner. I remember sitting on the floor of the guest bedroom and screaming “NOOOO” every time I lost my placement in the race.

I was never much good at the game, but I loved to choose Princess Peach as my character and play with my siblings. Sometimes my dad even got in on the fun, and it was a great way to spend time together as a family.

Now Nintendo has launched the Mario Kart app, causing my generation to jump back into our childhoods again, pick our favorite characters and race. Except just a few things are wrong.

Downloading the app and getting to actually play, is anything but easy. I was excited to dive back into Mario’s world and race again, but it took me an incredibly long amount of time to get to that point.

First, the game requires you to link or create a Nintendo account. Then, the app needs to download the newest data, which is recommended to be done with a Wi-Fi connection. Downloading the latest data took about 10 minutes and since I had just downloaded the app itself, I got frustrated that it this process took so long.

Once I finally got into the app to play, I was greatly disappointed when I learned that I would not be able to use this app with my friends. Growing up, playing Mario was mostly about beating my older brother and having that competition among family and friends. Now playing on the app, I wonder if I am playing others across the world, a computer or someone in the area.

I got first place almost every race, which led me to boredom. At this point, I felt like a pro and my usual reward of winning and beating my competition wasn’t there.

In an effort to see what options I had in the game I explored the app to see what settings were available. I don’t like steering by tilting my device, so I opted to turn off gyro handling. Other settings like smart steering, auto-item, manual drift, music, volume and power saving are all options for users to change when playing Mario Kart. Auto-item automatically uses that item once opened from a box while the user is playing. This is especially handy considering a finger controls the steering.

After playing for the first time, I didn’t open the app again for a few more days, and when I did, I had to do a download within the app. It seems to be that this download is really just an app upgrade, but it’s frustrating that when I might actually want to play the game, nearly every time I need to wait for a download.

While the game is still fun and allows me to reminisce about my childhood, I find it boring without competition between friends and family. The game lacks the human connection and competition that I love about Mario Kart. Overall, I would rate the app 3 out of 5 stars, because I think that Nintendo still has lots of room for improvement. However, I can see how this app might appeal to parents of younger generations as well.  Either way, the app is free entertainment, so I suggest downloading it and playing a few races to see what you think about this next generation of Mario Kart.