“Mario Kart Tour” (ture)

MISHAWAKA--Nin­ten­do’s mo­bile ver­sion of its clas­sic kart rac­ing fran­chise, Mario Kart, drifted into the App Store on Sept. 25, and has kept many a player en­rap­tured by its iconic game­play. How­ever, not every­one is ready to head off to the races with Nin­ten­do’s flag­ship char­ac­ter. 

I will de­fend the ti­tle by say­ing I am an avid Mario Kart fan. I have ex­ten­sively played six of the Mario Kart games: “Dou­ble Dash!!”, “Mario Kart DS”, “Mario Kart Wii”, “Mario Kart 7”, “Mario Kart 8” and “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe”. I con­sider my­self well-versed in the ways of throw­ing ba­nana peels, phys­i­cally ques­tion­able drift­ing and leav­ing many Nin­tendo con­trollers in tat­ters on my friends’ floors. I was in­trigued to hear about the re­lease of a Mario Kart mo­bile game. Hope­ful but skep­ti­cal summed up my thoughts suc­cinctly.  

Flash for­ward to the re­lease of “Mario Kart Tour”, and I saw the game be­ing played by quite a few of my friends. I saw screen­shots of it on var­i­ous so­cial me­dia sites, watched its YouTube ad­ver­tise­ments, and heard glow­ing re­views mixed in with the oc­ca­sional dis­senter. So, with my Mario Kart hat on and my home­work tossed hap­haz­ardly in the cor­ner, I de­cided to down­load “Mario Kart Tour”. Af­ter fif­teen min­utes, six races and a lot of set­tings ad­just­ments later, I reached my con­clu­sion on the game. The con­clu­sion of clos­ing the app, turn­ing on my Nin­tendo Switch and play­ing “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe”. 

My biggest gripe with the game is the con­trols. Try­ing to con­trol that game, as a fa­natic of the tra­di­tional kart­ing sim­u­la­tor, re­sem­bles bowl­ing with my arms on back­wards. Now, I’m be­ing a lit­tle hy­per­bolic, yes, but con­trol of the ve­hi­cle should be para­mount in a rac­ing game. In the pre­vi­ous ver­sions of Mario Kart, play­ers would have an ana­logue stick or di­rec­tional but­tons to turn, and a sep­a­rate but­ton to press to ini­ti­ate a drift. “Mario Kart Tour” takes a dif­fer­ent ap­proach. All-or-noth­ing de­scribes their phi­los­o­phy quite well. To turn, rac­ers must slide their fin­gers in the di­rec­tion they want to go. De­pend­ing on the player set­ting, the kart might im­me­di­ately be­gin to drift sharply or con­sider the idea of tak­ing a turn wider than the Pa­cific Ocean. I be­lieve they could have given peo­ple a hap­tic in­ter­face of di­rec­tional but­tons, like sev­eral em­u­la­tors, but far be it from me to ques­tion the wis­dom of the de­vel­op­ers. There is a rea­son why they are mak­ing games, and why I am sit­ting in my dorm room wrapped in a blan­ket cri­tiquing an app for a col­lege news­pa­per.  

One more tiny fea­ture that bugs me about the game is that the most ex­cit­ing game mode, 200cc, is locked be­hind a pay­wall. For play­ers to ex­pe­ri­ence what many fans con­sider to be the most ac­tion-packed way to play, they must shell out five dol­lars a month. This was the last nail in the cof­fin of this game for me; the rea­son I laughed, tossed my phone onto my bed and sent an email to Nin­tendo ask­ing them why they thought they needed more of my money. 

Sum­mar­ily, “Mario Kart Tour” is not a bad game. I can eas­ily see why peo­ple would be drawn to it: Mario Kart fun that is on the go, in the palm of your hand and at an ac­ces­si­ble level. Though fans of the se­ries have their is­sues with it, it is a great way to pass the time for those with smart­phones and an in­ter­net con­nec­tion. If the play­ers are hav­ing fun, that’s what mat­ters. That is why “Mario Kart Tour” will never again grace the screen of my phone.