If you've been waiting to get your roll on with the Homies characters, please - don't.

Nintendo has had a lot of brilliant ideas people are still ripping off, like the Mario Kart series. But if Mario had any idea derivative, racially offensive games like Homie Rollerz would inadvertently be his progeny, he'd have handed the keys to Yoshi and walked the earth like a Shaolin monk.

If we've learned nothing else from this Destineer trainwreck, it's that they have officially run out of licenses to put in cart game ripoffs. The Homies? Those cheap figures from grocery stores the world over? Can Condoleeza Rice Racing be very far behind?

We can forget the horribly offensive stereotypical characters. O.K. maybe we shouldn't forget them. They include a chili pepper who wants to start a revolution, a wanna-be pimp with no money and "Alien Ese," an extraterrestrial who apparently passes for being Mexican. Yeah, I really have no idea how this license made it this far. Homies creator Dave Gonzales gets away with this because he's making fun of his own race and we pretty much allow that in comedy.

At least some of this might be forgiven if the game were any fun at all to play. The term racer is used in only the loosest sense imaginable. There is no sense of speed, the carts are impossible to steer and the tracks are cheaply designed. The turns would be ridiculously difficult in a car that turned when you asked it to. With these machines it's about as effective as bailing water out of a boat with a sieve.

While you're spinning out and crashing into things, the computer AI is racing like Mario Andretti in his prime. Considering this game is geared toward the youngest DS owners, it is highly unlikely any of them will ever beat this game.

By winning "respect," (a word that really shouldn't be used in any way where this game is concerned) players can trick out their car. This is theory makes it perform better, but hours in I haven't seen much evidence of that.