Mario Kart Tour Review Written By: Brian (Zyndae) Backus of 89 Bit Productions on 10/1/19 and Published on 10/2/19

Nintendo seems to be busy lately cashing in on their promise they made to fans by creating mobile versions of their highly respectable franchises. Super Mario Run, Dr. Mario World, : Pocket Camp, and even Heroes, just to name a few. So when they announced that their flagship racing franchise was coming to all Mobile Devices I was not surprised.

Mario Kart Tour starts you off by giving you a free character to begin with. I was lucky and began with my personal favorite racer in Toad. I was excited by the get-go. Needlesstosay, that excitement turned into annoyance when I found out that in order to get the best score in some races is to play as the right racers, with the right vehicle, and correct glider to be able to obtain the most amount of points. I felt cheated when I was pulling in first place every time and not getting top reward due to the fact that I prefer to play as Toad and no one else.

This is when I discovered the hard truth to swallow in this game. In order to get another character, vehicle, or glider, one must spend 5 rubies to have one pull at the warp tube. This doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is when real money plays a serious aspect in this game. As of this writing, and I say that now because the prices of things is what will kill this game, three rubies is $1.99. Doesn’t seem like a lot but the fact that you have to buy it twice to get enough for just one pull and then the percentage of the character you need being so low is going to simply put people in poverty. They have a Pull 10 option for 45 rubies, but that package is $26.99. Besides the over-priced rubies there is a monthly fee you can subscribe to of $4.99 which will get you more rubies, faster, and opens up the 200cc difficulty. This is absurd given the fact that the main subscription fee for their console (Switch) is only $20 a year.

The controls are amazingly wonky as well. is so persistent on making games that require only one finger to play. This takes skill out of the core Mario Kart experience but also hinders players in many ways. In console Mario Kart games, pressing the “jump” button at the right times over bumps and small ramps will provide a slight speed boost. This game does it for you taking that aspect out. In addition to that, because it is easy to just slide off of the track, Mario Kart Tour has barriers that stops players from doing just that. Controlling your kart is hard. You simply move your finger from left to right to obviously move in those directions and tap the screen to use the item you have, which is an easy concept, but because of the controls, drifting feels like you are sliding on slime instead of a perfect road. If I had a controller to play this game it would not be this hard to get around a corner without slamming into the wall.

Not like any of this matters however, because even though all the opponents have real names, they are all fake AI characters “playing” as your opponents. These opponents are easy to beat in a race and quite honestly has me winning first place often in the myriad of cups they have offered. The graphics are fun to watch and having some of the tracks on a mobile device can be fun from time to time but I cannot find myself sticking any money into this game at these prices only to not get what I needed in the first place to obtain the perfect score.

Nintendo needs to find a better formula for this game. Pokémon Masters runs good for what it offers, Super Mario Run has a buy price of $4.99, Animal Crossing, Fire Emblem, Dragalia Lost all have a cool-down meter to balance the playing. Mario Kart Tour has seemed to literally take all of the bad of every one of their IPs and brought it together in this heap of mess hoping to once again cash in on the idea that it is Mario Kart. If you are a celebrity on the go and want to game then I can see you buying your way through this game, but otherwise to the basic average consumer, there are better games elsewhere for the money spent. The game is beautiful and the tracks are fun and quick, but money, controls, and the fact that things are locked away behind a subscription fee that is not needed is why this game gets a 2.75 out of 5.