Can you handle NL speed?

Once upon a time Nintendo Life set up Communities in Mario Kart 7, and these rooms were full of happy 3DS owners enjoying some online races. The passage of time was cruel, however, and the official community room became almost empty, with just a few stalwarts keeping it going and some keen racers meeting up via the forums.

We've decided, however, that playing together is fun and that the NL community should indulge in activities such as throwing shells at each other, howling in frustration at blue shells and turning the air blue when spinning off a well-placed banana. We want to bring the NL Mario Kart 7 community rooms back to life, starting today.

Today at 9pm UK time, 10pm Central European, 4pm Eastern US, 3pm Central US and 1pm Pacific US, the 'NLife All Items' community room will be back in action. Quite a few of the Nintendo Life staff will be in attendance at various times to race, and we're hoping you'll join us. If you want to know how to get to the Community room, check out our official and oh-so-serious guidelines below.

In order to get started with some Mario Kart 7 awesomeness with fellow Nintendo Lifers, simply open the game, select Online Multiplayer and then Communities. If you've played with us before you may have 'NLife All Items' in your list of favourites. If not, select Enter Code and input 00-2104-5343-9763. This is a 150cc all items room, so it may get chaotic.

Now, it's common to experience connection problems with Mario Kart 7 communities, and if you don't then we can only imagine that you're hard-wired directly into Nintendo's servers. If you do have problems connecting or receive an error message, make sure your wireless is on and position yourself as close as possible to your internet router. Please be patient and keep trying, because more often than not you will eventually get in.

There may be more than one room open at once, so remember the basic rules. Play nice, and if someone annoys you settle it like grown-ups... out on the track. Please be considerate to others in the lobby area, and only start the race when there are enough racers and everyone's ready.

We hope you'll join us for some Mario Kart mayhem tonight; we'll be checking the comments below, tweeting extensively on our Twitter page and getting up to all sorts of shenanigans in the game itself. See you on the track.