[TheFirstDragon]

that's what lag is, Deidara, it's just you're not the one lagging, the others probably have dialup (56k) internet connections.

tis is the way lag, and a server based game works.

your PC (or console in this case) sends data to the server several times a second, this is deterined by your Ping (MS) the MS is the ammount of time (in miliseconds) it takes for your console to send data to the server and for the server to send data back. the lower the ping the better. most people have a ping of around 20~50 depending on the game.

but there are two kinds of servers, I do not know which kind any of ninty's wifi games use. there are Listen [L] servers and Dedicated [D] servers. Listen servers are being run on someone's console while that person is playing the game, dedicated servers are servers that are being run on a computer that does nothing but host games, noone is playing the game from this. Dedicated servers are allways better because the machine running them only has to deal with keeping track of items, charecter positions, and level events (like the statues falling down in Block Plaza) a Listen server has to do all that while rendering the graphics and calculating controller imput.

Lag happens when someone's connection isn't that good to the server. sometimes people's ping or MS can get into the 300s that is when people lag. their computer (or console) is sending data twice or three times a second while most connections are going at upwards of 15 times a second. so the server has to guess where the person is imbetween those transfers. so if you see someone "jumping", "twitching", or "dissappearing" it means the server is guessing for the person alot. it would look like this

Player Console [PC]: server, I'm here [122, 211] moving at an agle of [130] at a speed of [2]
Server [S]: your ping is 300, so by the time I get more data from you, using the numbers you last transmitted you should be here, [132, 200]
[PC]: during the time I wasn't sending data I stopped and am now at [125, 205]

so the server guesses wrong and has to correct itself, you can see how bad it CAN get, especially if someone's ping is closer to 1000, I've seen it happen.