The bikes are back!
The first one played decently. I guess it was mediocre as a racing game, but had nice graphics, pretty good tracks, and a great sense of speed. AI ranged from a decent challenge to insanely incompetent. I had a lot of fun with it. In retrospect, it was possibly the best US DS launch title.
The two major flaws were third-person views of the car after you jumped (making a crash an expected conclusion to a jump) and crash physics that defied belief (head-on collisions often increased speed, slight bumps to the rear of other cars cause dead stops). If those were fixed, it would be a lot more normal.