It’s been easy for fans of the Mario Kart series to hate on its new mobile entry, Mario Kart Tour, and in many ways, they’re justified in that. There are several disappointing aspects about the game, from its poor touchscreen controls, current lack of multiplayer, and, of course, the excessive microtransactions. Despite this, the game has its fans, and soon they will receive spooky new content just in time Halloween.
Via the official Mario Kart Tour Twitter account, it was announced that the game will be hosting a new Halloween-centric event this week, and bringing in new stuff for players to unlock (or buy) as well. The “Halloween Tour” as Nintendo calls it will start on Tuesday, October 22, at 11:00 PM PST and run for two weeks until November 5.
This update will include a new course to race through in the form of the Luigi’s Mansion course from 2005’s Mario Kart DS. But most importantly, it will fix one of Mario Kart Tour’s biggest mistakes: not including Luigi as a playable character at launch. This wrong will be righted when the event kicks off, and not only will Luigi finally be available in the game, he will be joined by another new character, his ghostly nemesis King Boo.
Whether players will be able to unlock these two easily is another question entirely, however. For the uninitiated, Mario Kart Tour doesn’t start players off with the full roster of playable characters. Instead, they either have to unlock them at random through a gacha-style system or pay for them as part of special character packs. Neither option is great, as the drop rates for some characters can get as low as 0.3%, and the prices for character packs can get as absurdly high as $39.99.
With all of those microtransactions to deal with, it’s not likely that Luigi and a few holiday-appropriate additions will be enough to sway many into changing their minds about Mario Kart Tour. For those who don’t mind, though, it should give them enough reason to hop back into the game for the next few weeks. At any rate, this should at least serve as a good reminder for everyone that Luigi’s Mansion 3 is coming out at the end of the month.
Mario Kart Tour is available on iOS and Android devices.
Source: mariokarttourEN/Twitter 1, 2