Following the release of Mario Kart Tour on September 25th, the buzz surrounding Nintendo’s newest mobile game has gained a wide traction. With approximately 10 million downloads on the first day, Nintendo’s release of Mario Kart Tour marked its most successful mobile game.

Players are given one character and a tutorial to begin. Of course, almost all of the usual characters are available, plus the addition of Peach (Kimono) and Mario (Hakama) which are only available during the Tokyo Tour. Afterwards, players are able to compete in races that start out at the “leisurely” speed of 50cc but increase to levels 100cc, or 150cc, which goes pretty fast. Despite the high speed of racing in 150cc, the game is almost always free of any lagging or glitches. 

 Similar to the original Mario Kart, players can pick up items, coins, and try to finish first in the race, which gives you points that determine how many stars, which range from 1 to 5,  you earn after completing the race. These stars can be used to earn gifts and move on to new levels of the game. After completing every level of a tour, the player receives a gift, which typically consists of coins or rubies. 

Rubies and coins, which are earned from races and completing challenges, can be used to buy new characters, karts, and gliders. The player is able to level all three up, which results in having a more powerful character that can earn more points in a race. The game only allows you to earn 300 coins and a certain amount of points per day, which can make it feel useless to play the game after you reach that limit. 

As the player goes through each cup of the tour, it gets harder and harder, especially towards the end. It can get quite frustrating to not be able to get five stars on some of the last levels, but it is highly possible that the difficulty of the last levels is intentional so that the player has to make in-app purchases, despite the game being free. It seems to be almost impossible to get five stars on every level of the last two cups. 

One of the features that I was most excited about was the multiplayer version of the game, but it doesn’t seem to be available yet. In the app, the icon that says “Multiplayer” only brings you to a message that says “Available in a future version update.” Even though Nintendo plans to release multiplayer in a future update, it seems like something that should have been a part of the game from the start. 

The current tour, which is the Tokyo Tour, brought along maps that were immediately recognized from previously being used in Nintendo’s other Mario Kart games, which left the mobile game up for comparison with the previous games, which are played on a console. Nintendo did a great job of making the mobile version somewhat similar to the original version but with enough difference that playing the game is a fun and new experience.  To control the cart, there is no acceleration to press, all you need to do is scroll from side to side, which makes the game easy to control without taking all of the entertainment out of it. 

The second tour finally brought the Rainbow Road map along with it, after many players were upset about it not being in the first tour. A huge difference between the mobile version of Rainbow Road and the console version is that you can’t actually fall off in the mobile version. Even though this feature can save the player from a lot of frustration, it also means that none of the challenges of Rainbow Road remains. 

A downside that many Nintendo fans are disappointed in is that the Gold Pass costs $4.99 per month. With the Gold Pass, players are able to earn more rewards, race at faster speeds, unlock more challenges, have access to more courses, and overall access more features. On the other hand, Apple Arcade charges the same price to get 50 games per month. Even though there are other options that have more games for a lower price, no other game offers the features that Mario Kart Tour does. Even though players can still have fun using the free version of the game, the fact that it costs $4.99 to access so many more features is disappointing. 

Overall, Mario Kart Tour is entertaining and fun to play but does have a few flaws. However, this is the second version of the game, and there are many updates coming in the future that offer room for improvement. 

6.5/10