On Monday, Nintendo announced that Mario Kart Tour will finally receive a full multiplayer update on March 8. Released back in September, Mario Kart Tour was the racing game's first step into the world outside of Nintendo. For the most part, Mario Kart Tour was a way to bring the classic Mario Kart experience to mobile phones, albeit with a smartphone-friendly control scheme in a similar vein to Super Mario Run.
Mysteriously, multiplayer—a feature which the franchise is well-known for—was absent upon the game's initial release. Players were only able to race against bots for months, making for a fairly disappointing Mario Kart experience for many of the franchise's fans. This, along with an unpopular subscription model and gacha mechanics, had opened the gates for a fair amount of criticism.
According to its official Twitter account, Mario Kart Tour's multiplayer is set to include three modes, two of which are free: local, standard, and gold. Local races allow players to race with other people who are nearby with custom rules, which is ideal when groups of friends want to do a race or two. Standard races give players the chance to race against others online with rules that change daily. Gold races, however, are only available to players who are willing to pay a rather expensive monthly subscription fee of $4.99; though, it's unclear just how different gold races are from standard races.
The introduction of multiplayer might just improve Mario Kart Tour's reputation, but it's difficult for fans to be certain until it's actually released. Last month's multiplayer open beta didn't exactly inspire much confidence, with players experiencing terrible latency and long wait times. Ideally, Nintendo will have tackled these issues by the time multiplayer officially drops next week, making for a respectable Mario Kart experience on mobile. That being said, the gold pass also remains an issue for Mario Kart Tour. It locks even more content away from free players now, while still having a price tag that's difficult to justify—especially for a mobile game that also has a gacha system.
Ultimately, though, Mario Kart Tour players will have to wait and see how everything plays out. Multiplayer, however late it may be, is a welcome addition to the game; racing only against AI for months can stop being fun, after all. It might just make Mario Kart Tourthe classic Mario Kart experience that fans wanted back when it first released.
Mario Kart Tour is available now for Android and iOs.