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It's been too long, so much so that we may need to renew our licenses, but it's time to take to the track for some Nintendo Life community races in Mario Kart 7. We all like to think we're the next Sebastian Vettel with a red shell in hand, so now we have to prove it.

Yesterday we asked you which rules you want in both our both Grand Prix and Battle matches, and you chose to use all items in both. And so we'll annoy each other with lots of weapons, though maybe in future we'll force you into more creative choices!

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As was the case last year we'll start at the following times — though we can't stop anyone starting early! — and we expect there to be players around for at least a couple of hours: 9pm UK time, 10pm Central European, 4pm Eastern US, 3pm Central US and 1pm Pacific US. As for the community room details, we're using the same Grand Prix and Battle rooms as last time; check out the all-important codes and names below, so you know how to find us.

Grand Prix: NLife All Items — 00-2104-5343-9763

Balloon Battle: NLife Battles — 63-1489-1510-4932

As always there'll be some dedicated members of staff there to join in, who'll also be posting in the comments and tweeting various types of trash talk. We'd also like to provide our official guide, below, telling you how to connect, and general tips to avoid annoying fellow members of the community.

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 Grand Prix races 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. If you'd prefer to get into some heated Balloon Battles instead you may already have the 'NLife Battles' room in your list, if not select Enter Code and input 63-1489-1510-4932.

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 closely 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.

Finally, and we cannot emphasize this enough, DO NOT start the race until the room has filled up or there's agreement with the other players. If there are less than four people in the room, wait for a couple of minutes and the game will automatically start with bots taking the session to four players. If you start races early and against the will of other players, you'll not only become extremely unpopular, but also accumulate bad karma and go in community administrator Desiree Turner's black book. Nobody wants that.

There will be multiple rooms running at once, so some new rooms will need time to fill up with new players, please be patient.

Have Fun!

We're really looking forward to renewing Mario Kart hostilities with you all tonight; we'll be checking the comments below, tweeting extensively on our Twitter page and generally being mischievous in the game itself. Get ready to fear the blue shell.