Mario Kart Tour Reveals the Sydney Tour

A new tour is headed to Mario Kart Tour. The mobile Mario racer has continued to be supported since its release in 2019 and the more recent event sees Mario Kart Tour traveling to Sydney.

The Tours in Mario Kart Tour allow players to compete in a series of cups, courses, and challenges over a limited time against players all over the world. Currently, the Ninja Tour in Mario Kart Tour is live, but it will be coming to an end in just a few days. Nintendo has revealed that the Sydney Tour will replace it.

The Sydney Tour will introduce a brand-new city course, located in Sydney. In addition to having some of the best courses from the Mario Kart series, Mario Kart Tour also takes players around the world to real-life locations in places like New York, Paris, Tokyo, London, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Vancouver.

Along with the announcement, an image of Baby Mario and Rosalina are also a part of the Sydney Tour reveal. It could be that the two Super Mario characters will be spotlighted during the two weeks of the event. Baby Mario has koala ears and a backpack in the picture, which could be a new outfit/character as a part of the Australia Tour. That is speculation based solely on the image, of course.

The current Ninja Tour in Mario Kart Tour should be available until the end of April 20, and the next Tour usually starts immediately thereafter, meaning the Sydney Tour will begin on April 21. That is based on the schedule that the community has gotten used to, but official word will need to come from Nintendo to confirm it.

Few series inspire as much excitement in gamers from across every demographic as the Mario Kart games. While the games are heavily luck-based, they also have a strong skill-based component, especially on higher speeds. Even though the Mario Kart series has a huge number of entries at this point, it's succeeded in staying fresh thanks to the introduction of new gimmicks. Far from the creative stagnation and poor reception many franchises experience on their 8th entries, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the Switch's best-selling game. This is thanks in large part to the addition of gliding and diving from Mario Kart 7, and the addition of anti-gravity racing from Mario Kart 8.

Whenever Nintendo sees fit to release Mario Kart 9, it will need to find some way to give the game a fresh gameplay experience. Still, not all potential gimmicks are created equal. Gliding, diving, and anti-gravity shake up the racing experience and enable novel course designs, but how can future gimmicks build on these ideas without becoming annoying? In order to find an answer, it's probably best to look at why 7 and 8 succeed so well with implementing gimmicks - while also noting those gimmicks' shortcomings.

As obvious as it may sound, Mario Kart courses can only take place on tracks that karts can traverse. As earlier franchise entries restricted racers to ground-based movement, racetracks had to be based on the ground as well. However, thanks to the new gimmicks, the series could add new designs that were previously impossible. These include highlights like Mario Kart 7's Wario Shipyard and Piranha Plant Slide, and Mario Kart 8's Electrodrome and mobius-strip-shaped Mario Circuit. Even fairly mundane concepts, like 8's San Francisco-inspired Toad Harbor, have become top-ranked fan favorite Mario Kart courses thanks to the ability to drive up walls and explore the city in unusual ways.