Introduced in 2019, Mario Kart Tour is a mobile cart racing game developed by DeNA and published by Japanese giant game maker Nintendo. As one of the most successful game series, the Mario Kart series had published thirteen games before the installment of the Mario Kart Tour. Mario Kart Tour reuses some elements and mechanics from previous installments such as Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8 while developing many new assets and challenges. For me, the game offers the nostalgia of old Mario kart games and also unlocks news surprises, which is one of the highlights of the game.

Just like other racing games, the goal of Mario Kart Tour is to hold first place in each racing round and achieve as high a score as possible. You can obtain items by driving through item boxes. The Item function is no obvious difference from previous installments. You can expect bananas (as well as triple bananas and giant bananas), shells, mushrooms, bullet bill, blooper, and so on to pop up on the road. Each of the items has a unique boost function or can be a trap. If you hit bananas on the road, it will spin your carts out the road. The green shells will also hit your cart out so be sure to always keep it behind your cart. Good items such as mushrooms can offer your cart a speed boost or even increase your cart’s size (mega gold mushroom). In some cases where a character gets three of the same items at once, the new Frenzy mode will be activated, in which the Super Str power will be immediately activated to charge all the mini-turbo stages in a more quickly manner with unlimited supplies of the item which was collected to activate frenzy mode.

The game features multiple tours, each of which consists of a series of cups. One of my favorite designs of the game is that many of the tours are designed as city-based and move the landscape of real cities from all over the world into the game. You will see the Time Square in the New Your Tour, and the menu’s background features the One Time Square as its landmark. You will also use the yellow taxis as racing carts, which is one of the symbols of New York City.

Another element for customization is that there are hundreds of drivers that you can choose from. You will be given the basic character (either Toad or Toadette) at the beginning, as you unlock more tours, more characters will become available to choose from. Depending on the rarity of each character, they will have different advantages for boosting your gaming experience. Normal characters are easier to unlock while rarer characters will start with a greater number of starting points and have more favored and favorite courses and other benefits. The game design is quite fair that better things are always harder to obtain, but they will also bring you greater benefits. As I can recall, the majority of characters are being kept in this new installment. So if you particularly like one of the old drivers you will be able to find it in this game too. Such a blessing!

The game is also a good platform for networking. People can become in-game friends with others nearby or those scattered around the world. You can see how many points your friends earned on the different cups, and you can also invite your friends to the multiplayer room.

One thing I wanted to point out is the gold pass and other items (such as cosmetics) that you need to pay to unlock. It’s a bit expensive compared to other racing games. But you don’t have to spend a dime if you are patient enough to unlock characters one by one. It’s also a load of fun for just playing the racing part of the game without collecting all the characters.

By Billy | Copyright © Character100 - All Rights Reserved