Mario Kart

By: Nick Gambino

3, 2, 1. Go! Are you ready for Rainbow Road? How about Coconut Mall? Nintendo has just announced that Mario Kart is coming to smartphones within the next year. Cue 11-year old Nick losing his you-know-what.

While the Japanese gaming company had largely stayed away from mobile games while everything from Street Fighter to Mortal Kombat was getting an app, they finally gave in in 2016 with the release of soon-to-be-extinct Miitomo and the popular Super Mario Run.

Nintendo tweeted out the announcement of the Mario Kart mobile app on Wednesday, “The checkered flag has been raised and the finish line is near. A new mobile application is now in development: Mario Kart Tour! #MarioKartTour Releasing in the fiscal year ending in March 2019.”

We don’t have any other news about what we can hope to see in the app. One thing’s for sure, it’s going to be developed from the ground up. This was part of Nintendo’s strategy back when they announced mobile games in 2015. They weren’t going to simply port any of their titles as that would be lazy and shunned.

As for what we might see in the popular racing game, I’m hoping to see all the classics, all the hits, plus a few new courses and features. The title has always received an upgrade of sorts on each new system from Super Nintendo to N64 to the Wii. So here’s hoping it gets a nice facelift and upgraded features.

Now as you can see, they haven’t given a specific release date but instead said it’s being released “in the fiscal year ending in March.” That means it should be released for iOS and Android between April 2018 and March 2019. That’s a wide window but I’m sure they’ll drop a more specific date in the coming months.

Well, I know what I’ll be doing for the next two years. Let me just block out my calendar…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick Gambino is a regular script writer and tech beat reporter for NewsWatch. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and daughter.

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