Warp Pipe drives Mario Kart online

The Warp Pipe project reached another milestone this week when it successfully enabled played Mario Kart: Double Dash!! online. As previously covered on GameSpot, the group of independent developers has been tinkering tirelessly the past few months to devise a method to bring Web-based multiplayer gaming to the GameCube.

Warp Pipe's method--using PCs to create a Wide Area Network which tricks the consoles into thinking they're playing on a LAN--has only worked previously with Kirby Air Ride. Using the latest build of the Warp Pipe program, which has reached the beta phase, Warp Pipe founder Chad Paulson--whose progress has been reported extensively on fan site, GameCube Advanced--played Mario Kart with a friend at a full frame rate over a 128kbps DSL connection. The Alpha version of Warp Pipe required two university connections to play and only had frame rates of 55 to 60 fps. "This is a large step forward," said Paulson, who also announced a router was no longer required as part of Warp Pipe's PC component.