I was big into Mario Kart DS back in its heyday, and used to race A LOT online. I never got into online clans/clubs, but I remember racing a bunch of really good racers. And I mean good-good. While I could hold my own with anybody, I soon had to master snaking in order to get a better chance of getting on top since every time I was paired against other players, a good majority of them snaked and were really good at it. After a good while, I started to get paired against people who were clearly using an Action Replay, and after about a week, I had had enough and bought myself the cheating device. I would constantly play with specific cheats turned on, but would only recur to using them whenever I spotted a cheater. Like hackers in real life, there were good cheaters in this game, and there was this unspoken rule, or at least I thought of it that way, that whenever a cheater started messing around you'd let the good cheater drive him/her out (pun intended). I used to be this type of cheater, and this is the ONLY time I would use cheats. Sadly, as time went on, the cheats got worse and even more complicated to the point where, if you didn't have an Action Replay you had no chance of winning...and even then, that wasn't enough because most cheats by this time were specifically for trolling around, like freezing the game for everyone for example.
Playing Mario Kart DS online got incredibly stale during its later years, especially during the time Nintendo announced the termination of their Wi-Fi servers, so much to the point that all you would see were cheaters online. Most of the time it was a show of force - cheaters going against each other to see who was the better one. I reckon I participated in a number of these dick measuring contests, but I got so bored out of my mind after seeing the same people over an over again that I bailed. The last day before the servers were shut down was quite the show to behold...
With that said, I don't consider myself a cheater. Sure, I will use cheats whenever the game allows you to use them, as in they're already built-in/programmed and can be unlocked, but I don't go out of my way to cheat in a game for the sake of cheating, trolling, and what-have-you. Mario Kart DS was a one-time thing where "desperate times called for desperate measures". In fact, I remember two of my emblems were the word "FAIRPLAY" and "U CHEAT I CHEAT" as a way to both warn and appease other players.
Overall, all things considered, it being my very first experience, I had a blast playing the game online. Good times were had and great memories were made.
