Dread it, run from it – Luigi and his blue shell still arrives. Yes, the long awaited Mario Kart Tour is finally coming to mobile next month by way of an Android-only closed beta.
As with any closed beta, you’ll need to sign up first. You can do so right here, and registration is open till May 7. I should point out that the test is designed for players in North America and Japan, but I can’t imagine it’d take much work for Android owners outside of these territories to get the beta running on their devices.
Nintendo explained:
The closed beta test is a test of an application under development and is held for customers in order to improve the quality of the game. Furthermore, the number of customers who may participate in this test is limited. If the number of applications exceeds the number of possible participants, we will randomly select the participants.
Despite being announced over a year ago now, we still haven’t seen a single shred of gameplay from Mario Kart Tour. I’d imagine/hope that if the beta is kicking off next month, then a trailer of some kind will drop in the next few weeks.
The beta will run between May 22 and June 4, and is set to officially launch in summer. The game was previously planned to arrive before the end of March, but I guess sometimes life comes at you fast and unexpectedly – like a green shell to the face.
The last game to feature Mario and his kart racing cohorts was the excellent Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for Nintendo Switch. Given the immense popularity of Nintendo’s premiere kart racing franchise, I’d imagine a mobile version will be a licence to print even more money.
Not that the iconic video game publisher needs it of course, as it’s just reported its best financial year since 2009.
Apply for the beat testing at the Mario Kart Tour website here.
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via stories@unilad.co.uk
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.