Trivia / Mario Kart Tour

• Content Leak:
  • Several image assets such as Spotlight/Gold Pipe banners (before it was removed), Spotlight Shop banners, and Paid banners are revealed on day 1 of a tour.
  • Datamines for unreleased courses frequently appear, which ends up clueing people in to both upcoming Retro tracks but also upcoming Nitros as well (which was the way people were able to predict Yoshi’s Island, Piranha Plant Cove and Athens Dash).
  • Before a Tour releases, dataminers are often able to figure out what it’ll be based on the tracks datamined to be coming around that time.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • The game hosted the Super Mario Kart Tour to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros.
  • The game celebrated its 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th with special anniversary-themed tours. The 1st Anniversary Tour featured five cities all in one tour (New York Minute, Tokyo Blur, Paris Promenade, London Loop, and Vancouver Velocity). The 2nd Anniversary Tour featured eight city courses (the five courses above, Los Angeles Laps, Berlin Byways, and Sydney Sprint), and lacks retro courses. The Anniversary Tour of late September of 2022 also lacked retro courses and featured the cities in the 2nd Anniversary (except Vancouver and New York, which would get their next appearance in the 2022 Autumn Tour with the return of Los Angeles Laps) along with Amsterdam Drift and Singapore Speedway, The Anniversary Tour of 2023 lacked retro courses as well and included every city in the game.
  • The 1.5 anniversary celebration spanned for three tours (Mario Tour, Yoshi Tour, and Ninja Tour). Special challenges were active in these three tours.
  • The 2.5 anniversary celebration spanned for two tours (Samurai Tour, and the 2022 Yoshi Tour). There was a special challenge where the player can get 45 rubies for completing.
  • The 2022 Mario Vs. Luigi Tour coincidentally goes through the 37th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., in which featured Mario-themed karts and gliders, as well as Mii suits based on a Goomba and Hammer Bro.
• Out of Order: Berlin Byways 2 debuted first before Berlin Byways (1). Likewise, Los Angeles Laps 3 debuted before Los Angeles Laps 2.
• Prop Recycling: The redesigned Peach's Castle model used in 3DS Mario Circuit is reused in DS Mario Circuit, while the one from N64 Royal Raceway was repurposed for GBA Peach Circuit, which also incorporates mushrooms taken from 3DS Toad Circuit and N64 Mario Raceway. N64 Mario Raceway itself heavily reuses assets from N64 Luigi Raceway as well; notably, all of the tracks with notable asset reuse were created late into the game's development, based on the dates their in-game images were rendered.
• Refitted for Sequel: Kamek was initially meant to debut in Mario Kart 64, but he was replaced in the final version with Donkey Kong. It wouldn't be until Tour, 23 years later, that he would make his playable debut in Mario Kart.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There are a number of features in the closed beta that were removed or changed in the release version.
    • Stamina was implemented, represented by hearts.
    • Rosalina was a High-End driver, but later changed to a Super driver. The same also applies for King Boo.
    • Some of the characters Special Items were different.
    • Rubies were originally emeralds.
  • After the system Tour uses when adding new courses was deciphered (essentially, gaps between numerical course IDs appear when a course alphabetically between 2 other tracks is gearing up for release, typically starting at 5 and growing until it's ready to be added at around a size ranging from 17-20), it was retroactively found that in mid-2020, a gap was added indicating that either N64 Banshee Boardwalk or N64 Bowser's Castle was planned (it was more likely the former course, as it may have been planned for the Halloween Tour that year). However, this gap started out at a size of 2, only grew to a size of 4, and then vanished entirely, unlike every other instance of gaps. It is unclear if the course in question was entirely scrapped, with no plans to eventually bring it into the game, but it is possible.
  • With new content for the game being discontinued following the 2023 Anniversary Tour, several tracks that were datamined to some extent never released. These include 2 brand new courses, codenamed "mobmu" and "mobnu," as well as Paris Promenade 4 (which has a small ID gap), SNES Ghost Valley 3 (which had an environment file show up in the data during a few tours), Wii Grumble Volcano, 3DS Wuhu Loop, 3DS Maka Wuhu, and 3DS DK Jungle (all of which had assets concretely pointing towards them). Leftovers from Mario Kart 8 tied to GBA Cheese Land and 3DS Music Park also existed, though it is unknown if they were intended to be used in Tour at some point. It is also speculated that some colored block test objects were intended for Wii Block Plaza, though it's not clear if they actually were or not.
• Working Title: This game was known as "Booster" internally. The name would later be brought back for the Booster Course Pass DLC of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

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