Details on Mario Kart Tour, the upcoming mobile version of Nintendo’s beloved kart racer, have started to trickle onto social media. We’ve now had a good look at the game in action, as well as a confirmed roster of racers.
Footage of the game started to surface online recently, thanks to the Android beta which is currently live in North America and Japan. The main takeaways so far are that Mario Kart Tour is played in portrait mode rather than landscape, and the majority of tracks seem to be taken from previous games in the series.
Check out the footage below, which shows a race through what looks to be a remastered SNES Mario Kart course.
According to those who have been playing the beta on an impressions thread on ResetEra, each race lasts two laps (instead of the usual three) and there are items that are individual to specific characters in each race. Karts accelerate auomatically, meaning all the player needs to do is steer around the tracks.
Playable characters include Mario (obviously), Luigi, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Peach, Daisy, Walguigi, and Bowser. You can find the currently discovered roster of 30 characters here. According to one user on ResetEra, certain characters, and karts are unlocked using a randomised “gacha” mechanic.
Meanwhile, Sekantoto on Twitter has suggested that Mario Kart Tour might actually be leaning a little too heavily on monetisation right now. He notes that in addition to the gacha mechanics, the rarer characters have certain advantages during races. There’s apparently even a stamina system which limits the amount of races you can play on an hourly basis.
Of course, it’s worth noting that Mario Kart Tour is still in beta and literally everything in the game one might have an issue with is subject to change – that’s what betas are for, after all.
Looks like Mario Kart Tour beta is pretty hardcore with regards to monetization.
Multi-level gacha for drivers, karts and gliders.
Rare drivers have advantages during races.
Stamina system limits races available on an hourly basis.
(Subject to change, this is a beta.)
— Dr. Serkan Toto 🔜 E3 2019 (@serkantoto) May 22, 2019
The beta is set to run until June 4, before Mario Kart Tour officially launches in Summer. That’s the plan, at least. The game was previously planned to arrive before the end of March, before being pushed back in order to make sure the game was of a high enough standard.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.