Mario Kart Tour

Update (25th Sep, 09:20 BST): As promised, Mario Kart Tour is now up and running, but you might have a pretty tough time getting to play.

Loading up the game at the time of writing presents the following screen, indicating that the game's servers are struggling to handle the launch at demand. We've been trying to get through to the game itself since it went live at 9am BST and haven't had any luck so far.

Mario Kart Tour
Image: Nintendo Life

The app has revealed that Mario Kart Tour features an optional paid subscription service. More details on that can be found here.

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Update (10:30 BST): We've now managed to get into the app relatively consistently, so that early server pressure appears to be easing off. Try for yourself!


Original Article (24th Sep, 10:30 BST): A new era for Mario Kart is almost upon us with the release of Mario Kart Tour, and Nintendo has been celebrating the upcoming launch with a cute little countdown.

For the first time, Mario and friends will be racing onto the track on smartphone devices in a free-to-start game. We're intrigued to get our hands on the full build, partly just to see how Nintendo and DeNA have handled its microtransactions and general structure, but also because this could well be our next little addiction akin to Pokémon GO.

If you haven't already, you can go ahead and pre-register for the game on the App Store and Google Play. It's scheduled to become playable at around 1am PT / 4am ET on 25th September (9am UK / 10am CEST).

We recently shared some adorable 'real-life' trailers for the game; make sure to check those out if you missed them.

Will you be giving it a go tomorrow? Tell us below.