Nintendo’s mobile success story Mario Kart Tour has been very slowly winding down for the better part of three years now. Despite a moment of respite last July, the game has mostly been left fallow for a long while, and we now know that come September 29 it’ll be ending for good.
“We sincerely thank the many players who have loved and supported the game since service began so long ago,” says a very brief statement on Nintendo’s website, talking about the game as if it has been around since the Middle Ages. The competitive online racing game will in fact have just turned seven years old when it’s switched off in a couple of months, one of the final games added during Nintendo’s long-since abandoned push into the mobile gaming space.
The statement then just cuts off saying, “Thank you for playing Mario Kart Tour.” There follow a couple of links to explain what will happen regarding the game’s in-app purchases, the “rubies” (they’re off sale immediately, but can still be spent) and its Gold Pass (automatic subscription renewals have been stopped, no new subs are possible, and everyone will get August and September’s Gold Pass content for free).
Gacha covered
This rather ignominious end matches its problematic launch, when the game was released packed with predatory gacha gambling. This all remained in the game for a three grim years, before finally getting improved in October 2022. The game itself was really good, a proper Nintendo Mario Kart, but it was impossible to celebrate it without also mention its incessant demand on your wallet, even going so far as to lock its 200cc speed mode behind a paywall. Earlier this year, some countries rated the game 18+ as a consequence.
New tracks were added over the years, and the roster was constantly rotated, allowing for player-attracting moments like the inclusion of the franchise’s rarest track, Piranha Plant Pipeline, for limited periods. It’ll be interesting to see if the demise of Tour might mean we finally see some of those lost tracks reappear in the woefully unadorned Mario Kart World, that’s not received a single new track since its launch over a year ago.