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'Mario Kart Tour' Has Me in a Frenzy

Nintendo's Newest Take on an Old Favorite

By Nicole "ChaseThePen" SanchezPublished 4 years ago 9 min read
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So, I’m old school. I started playing Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo. Back then, Rainbow Road hurt your eyes, but you just pushed past it to secure that win. Nintendo’s newest mobile game, Mario Kart Tour, has some of those great courses, and a bunch of new ones as well. This game is my newest obsession, and for good reason—Nintendo did a great job.

The game play is easy to learn, but fun to master. Driving off the road isn’t an issue like in standard console versions because you can only drive into the grass if you have a boost of some kind, which primarily reserves it for finding shortcuts. Difficulty varies between 50cc and 200cc with 50cc being fairly leisurely and 200cc being bonkers.

When playing, you soon learn that getting first in a race is just the beginning. There are drivers, karts, and gliders that can be leveled up. Each of them have favorite courses, so having a variety is a must. Having the right combination greatly increases the amount of points that are possible to gain per course. The number of points you receive dictate how many gold stars you receive from a course. Those stars allow you open up new courses and unlock gifts.

Why I love it!

The Tours

Every two weeks Nintendo releases new tours for people to compete in. There are sixteen different cups. Each cup has three courses and one challenge. Some of these courses are repeats or variations of the original, and each cup has different combinations of these with brand new courses included as well. Each tour takes you to a different city. The first was New York. I really enjoyed the New York Minute courses. Plus, I got Musician Mario and the Blue Badwagon from the pipe, both of which are super cool and fun to play.

The current tour takes us to Tokyo, and while the new loot seems cool, the Tokyo Blur courses just aren’t as fun as the New York ones. Lucky for me though, the SNES Rainbow Road is one of the new courses and it doesn’t induce seizures! Neo Bowser City looks pretty cool with its futuristic cityscape and they introduced the 3DS Mario Circuit, which is particularly pretty and delightful to drive. Overall, the courses are beautiful and you can find genuine enjoyment driving around the tracks in addition to crushing your opponents.

The Pipe

I enjoy collecting, and this game allows us to do just that. There is a shop where you can purchase up to twelve items that are randomly generated. It updates daily, so it’s always interesting to see what the options are. I recommend purchasing tickets when they appear because they’re cheap and a good way to level your base points for your items, which have a daily cap. Also, you are sometimes awarded driver, karts, and gliders from gifts, but primarily, the pipe is the source of new items. The pipe can be fired with five or forty-five rubies, but saving for the forty-five is the way to go. You save five rubies (and they are expensive, as I will discuss later) and I find it much more satisfying to shoot it off ten times in a row rather than just once. Each time the pipe is shot, a driver, kart, or glider is randomly selected. If you receive a duplicate item, its level increases.

Firing the pipe immensely satisfying. I’ve had good luck with it, but really the anticipation and subsequent reward make it fun, even if you end up with low end loot. There are different tiers of items and luckily, if you receive bottom tier doubles, they’re leveling and getting better. I can’t deny enjoying that little dopamine rush I get from getting loot.

The Drivers

The standards are there (except Luigi. He has yet to make an appearance, but he’s on the load screen…), but there are also new options to be excited for. There are Koopalings. While these have been released on the Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U, I never got that one, so this is exciting for me. I’m hoping to get Wendy in my next pipe! I’m also pining away for Lakitu. Since they’re using the real world for inspiration, we also see some awesomely cool drivers, like my aforementioned Musician Mario. The Tokyo Tour also features Peach (Kimono) and Mario (Hakama). Yes, I want them all, and I’m slowly getting there...

The Leaderboard Cup

Each week, a specific cup is chosen for everyone to compete for the highest score. Some of the competition gets pretty steep. Tier one was fairly easy, as you might suspect, but securing that first place position allowed me move up three more tiers. I had much more trouble in tier four and only got tenth place, but it was enough to get me to tier five. So far, I’m in first place with only one day left. You can also compare your results to those on your friends list. Winning gets you rubies, gold, and tickets depending on where you rank.

Frenzies

Say goodbye to standard star power and hello to frenzies. When you play a driver on their favored course, you get three items per mystery box. If all three of these items match, you get a frenzy. Your driver is not only invincible, but can now rain down that item onto the competition. Banana frenzies may actually be my favorite. While I usually scoff at the lowly banana, in Mario Kart Tour, they significantly help maintain your combo bonus, especially if you’ve just left a wide trail behind you. Bob-omb frenzies are also pretty cool, but harder to aim. You drive safely as the world around you is blowing up. Not only do all frenzies have merit, they’re all a lot of fun as well.

The Challenges

In addition to enjoying collecting things, I also like completing things. The challenges allow you to get stars, rubies, and gold. They have some regular ones like fifty hits with Bob-ombs, but also some stranger ones like getting seven thousand points using a driver with three hairs. The stars, rubies, and gold are highly important to improving your characters, which leads me to...

What I Don’t Like

The Paywall

Man, this game, if you hate grinding, is expensive. Rubies, which are needed to fire the pipe, are three for two dollars at the low end and one hundred and thirty-five for seventy dollars at the high end. Sure, they have deals, but they’re still pretty expensive compared to other games that I’ve played. Of course, you can earn rubies and gold by completing challenges, but grinding to that forty-five ruby pipe can take a while and the pipe resets each week.

Then there’s the Gold Pass… For five dollars a month, you can purchase a Gold Pass. This pass allows you to have access to the 200cc level of racing, gold challenges, and more gifts. Those gold challenges let you get more stars so that you can more easily get gifts.

In my opinion, the gifts are the part that really stand out for the gold pass. Usually, a gift will have a total of four items, two regular and two Gold Pass, but sometimes you’ll only get one of the three. Plus, you get some top tier items in your gifts if you have Gold Pass. Worst of all though, to increase the level of your highest tier items, you need one of two things: to get doubles from the pipe or to use tickets. Thus far, to get those tickets, you need to have Gold Pass and unlock the highest gifts in each tour. I understand that leveling up your highest items should not be easy, but the absence of Gold Pass makes it nearly impossible. Firing the pipe is rather expensive and you will have less rubies to work with since you aren’t receiving those extra rubies from the Gold Pass gifts. In theory, you could also buy the tickets from the store, but I haven't seen higher tier ones available and they will most likely cost a lot of gold.

Below: The gliders, karts, and drivers available for regular and Gold Pass in the Tokyo Tour. Gold pass receives all six.

Five dollars a month isn’t too crazy for a game that is free to play otherwise, and, of course, you can always discontinue it if you decide to stop playing. As someone who has spent some money on free-to-play games, this one is a little too pricey for me, especially when it comes to the outright ruby buying. I’m taking advantage of the two week free trial of Gold Pass and love it, but I also don’t mind the grind. I plan to switch back to a regular membership when it’s up. If you plan to do this, I recommend doing it near the end of a tour. You can retroactively get all the tour gifts that you missed out on and have the opportunity to get the gifts on the new tour until the pass runs out. Just remember to leave yourself enough time to complete the Gold challenges to get those extra stars. They really help unlock those gifts.

Game Play

For the most part, I have no issue with the interface. It works well, but everything has some issues. Sometimes, since you are steering with your fingers on a screen, it fires your item when you didn’t want it to or in the wrong direction. Sometimes you turn the wrong way. These are all fairly minor issues though.

Multiplayer

You can add friends and see their high scores on the current leaderboard cup, but that’s kinda it… The multiplayer button on the screen says “inbound.” Whether it will be racing your friends, battles, or something new entirely, we have no idea. I, like many others, anxiously await the release.

Bottom Line

I very much enjoy this game and plan to continue playing, even without the Gold Pass. I love the variation of the tracks and how much there is to do. I cap out my points everyday. Maybe I play too much, but there’s a group of us and it’s enjoyable to compete for high scores and get jealous over what the others got from the pipe. Hopefully, one day we will see an actual multiplayer. I know I’m excited about it. If the rest of the game is any indication, it will be worth the wait.

Give it a go. If you like Mario Kart, in any of its incarnations, this is a fun game with lots of convenience.

nintendo
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Nicole "ChaseThePen" Sanchez

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