It feels like it was more recently but in fact it was over a year ago in January of 2018 that Nintendo very casually announced Mario Kart Tour for mobile devices. It was originally set to launch before the end of March this year, but at the beginning of the year Nintendo announced a slight delay saying that Mario Kart Tour would be arriving in the summer instead. Just over a month ago, they opened up sign-ups for a closed beta test for Android players which kicked off today in both Japan and the US and will run through June 4th. While this is supposed to be a “closed" beta test, these early testers haven’t been shy about sharing their experiences with Mario Kart Tour thus far.
Back in February of last year shortly after the game’s announcement the CEO of DeNA, who are partners with Nintendo in creating Mario Kart Tour, said that the game would be “free to start" which many had taken to mean would be something more along the lines of Super Mario Run where it’s a free demo with a one-time IAP to unlock the full game, rather than a typical free to play game with timers and gachas. That is apparently not the case at all. Mario Kart Tour is as free to play as they get based on the beta, with gacha pulls used to unlock characters and kart parts. Even worse is that the various Nintendo characters in the game have different levels of rarity and some appear to have special advantages over others, meaning certain players could have gameplay ad...