Mario Kart Tour Now In Closed Beta

Were you aware there’s an official Mario Kart game in development for mobile devices? The bigger question is….will it be any good?

Ordinarily you don’t have to ask that question when dealing with Nintendo games, but the mechanics of the mobile market have a way of taking the fun out of gaming, purely due to necessity. Games above $0 in price typically don’t sell, so developers are forced to give away the basic functions for free and charge for everything else. Nintendo tried doing things their traditional way with Super Mario Run, but no one was willing to spend $15 on a mobile game. They had far better success with their mobile Fire Emblem, which uses a typical pay-as-you-go scheme.

Since Mario Kart Tour will be free, it will also be a lesser version of its console cousins. In a paid TV-screen Mario Kart, for example, there isn’t a time limit on how many races you can compete in. Mario Kart Tour has such a thing, an “energy meter” that can only be recharged over time or with cash. The roster of characters is also locked behind a paywall, and can only be unlocked one at a time, at random, by cashing in Green Gems (which, as you might guess, can only be earned through a lot of playthroughs or just feeding the game money).

Play controls are pretty simple, but Mario Kart was never complicated to begin with. By dragging an arrow onscreen you can move your kart left and right, and fire pick-ups and projectiles by tapping the kart itself. Though most mobile devices these days have motion sensing abilities, this Mario Kart does not use motion controls.

Keep in mind this description is based on the closed beta, and Mario Kart Tour could change between now and the official release. The date of that release has yet to be announced, but is believed to be sometime within this year.