YMMV / Mario Kart Tour

• Base-Breaking Character: Mario and Peach, while well-liked on their own merits, are contentious in this game due to having over half a dozen variants each, whereas other popular characters don't even have half as many (such as Bowser, Pauline, and Waluigi) or have none at all (the Kongs minus DK and all the Koopalings except Larry). Some don't take issue with it and are understanding of it, given that Mario and Peach are the leading male and female of the franchise, respectively, while others found it excessive and a clear sign of favoritism, often wishing the other characters got more love.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Ninja Hideaway stands out amongst the other original tracks for its surprising depth alone. In contrast to the game's other original courses thus far, Ninja Hideaway is a multi-level track with multiple shortcuts and pathways throughout the track, all to a traditional Japanese aesthetic, leading to what is perhaps the most interesting and complex track in the game thus far. It's very telling that when the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Booster Course Pass was announced, Ninja Hideaway was one of the courses included in the first wave of the DLC, alongside other fan-favorites like Coconut Mall, Choco Mountain, and Sky Garden.
  • Of all the courses set on real-world cities, Vancouver Velocity was the first one to truly stand out among them for being one of the most well-received for its track layout (especially the first variant featuring the Capilano Suspension Bridge), its stunning visuals by Tour's standards, and its techno-inspired theme that fits the track very well, to the point where some people have even said that it's the best track in the game based off of a real-world location.
  • Singapore Speedway is also quite beloved for similar reasons to Vancouver, being another nighttime city with pretty visuals, a neat track layout by city track standards and great music that sounds like you'd hear in a rave party, not to mention the variant you hear in the brief Chinatown segment in the third variant. It's actually a very close competitor for the spot of fan-favorite city track. Its transition to the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Booster Course Pass was also very warmly received, being the most consistently beloved of all the Tour cities added to it.
  • Bangkok Rush has a good reputation as well, due to its layout being relatively complex compared to most of the other cities thanks to its split paths, each of its three routes being relatively distinct from each other, its beautiful sunset skybox, and fun and unique segments such as the BTS Skytrain railways with Inky Piranha Plants underneath them and the Train Night Market with its bouncy tents.
  • The remake of N64 Choco Mountain, unlike most other remakes in the game, actually feels like a modernization of the original course, adding in new elements such as a mineshaft and a gliding section over a broken bridge while keeping the layout faithful to the original. Most people consider it to be on-par with Mario Kart 8's course remakes, and were very excited to see it return as part of the Booster Course Pass.
  • GBA Boo Lake was received very favorably for overhauling the course in a manner closer to how Mario Kart 8 remade its GBA retros. With the original layout being largely respected despite numerous changes to proportions, shortcuts, and the like (unlike other GBA remakes in the game aside from GBA Snow Land and the more limited GBA Bowser's Castle remakes), much of the track now being set underwater with Fish Bones added as obstacles, new drastic shifts in elevation, and the fact that it's arguably the track where the underwater physics flow the best, it's been heralded as a great remake.
  • Athens Dash ended up becoming a fast fan-favorite due to having players race through and around the Acropolis, rather than limiting it to only the city areas. The result is a much more varied layout and obstacles compared to the other city tracks that distinguishes it from them, with the main focus being on driving through landmarks such as the Parthenon, the Theatre of Dionysus, and Hadrian's Arch, rather than relegating them to background objects only the way landmarks are in the other city courses.
  • The Bowser Tour of 2023 brought back both SNES Bowser Castle 3 and GBA Bowser's Castle 4, and both of these courses ended up becoming well-regarded due to how drastic their changes were. SNES Bowser Castle 3 is made to feel more like a modern Mario Kart track in comparison to the other SNES tracks, with slopes and new obstacles that offer a new interpretation of the course than just a simple recreation. Meanwhile, GBA Bowser's Castle 4 was positively-received for not just reusing the background its three predecessors did, but instead changing it up to make it look more like it's set in the ruins of Bowser's Castle, while also adding new obstacles and slopes that make it feel more in-like with remakes of Super Circuit tracks like Boo Lake and Riverside Park.
  • Madrid Drive has been very warmly received for its strong use of various set pieces (particularly the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium and the Shoe Goombas inside), its great music (which has 2 variants, one for the stadium and one for the Prado Museum segment), its variety, and its strong aesthetic, feeling less condensed in size and more properly scaled compared to the other cities. With the end of new content for Tour, many consider Madrid to be a great sendoff to the city course concept.
• Bragging Rights Reward: If you finish the Extreme Challenges, you’ll receive some exclusive badges you can’t get anywhere else. 6 of these are retro-style, 3 of them are in the style of advertisements found in Dry Dry Ruins, and after obtaining all 9, you will get the Gold Tier 99 badge. It's not as exciting as the other Tier Challenge rewards, but at least you can show them off to other players.
• Breather Level: The fourth course of each cup, which usually gives you an objective like clearing Goombas from the course, squishing small Dry Bones, getting the highest combo you can, and the like. Many of these objectives can be cleared easily, with little thinking from the player.
• Broken Base:
  • The matter of the game relying on Microtransactions and a Freemium model for players to acquire additional content is one that's not taken lightly, to say the least.
  • SNES Rainbow Road. Many like it because it's one of the more colorful tracks and from the original Super Mario Kart, but many others are tired of the track, its variants included, appearing in almost every Tour, particularly any that involve a celebration of some kind, since the only other Rainbow Road track in the game (3DS Rainbow Road) isn't as "colorful."
  • The addition of Gold King Boo in Tour, based on his incarnation outside of the Luigi's Mansion series. Some fans consider that much-deserved attention for an overlooked character, while others see it as shameless bolstering of Metal/Gold variants ala Mario and Peach, making it seem as if they learned nothing from their use in the controversial New Super Mario Bros. 2.
  • While opinions on each city track can vary, many can agree that it's a little disappointing that the final three city tracks prior to the end of the new content stream were all set in European cities, upping the final count to 7, corresponding to half of all the city tracks. While this is slightly mitigated by the fact said city tracks, in particular Athens Dash and Madrid Drive are among the more well-liked ones, players couldn't help but feel a little miffed that the game ended with continents like South America and Africa^note which is definitely not helped by the possibility that a track set in Egypt could have happened. See Epileptic Trees below unrepresented, especially if they happen to live there.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: While mostly averted for the characters and karts due to the tiering being dependent on the course, there are specific skills that players seek out when working on the Weekly Ranked cup:
  • Coin Box: Its ability to spew out coins everywhere gives a ton of combo points, which is very helpful for rising to the weekly leaderboard, and even maintains your combo. As a bonus, if the event tokens for the tour are found around the track, the box can also spew them as well.
  • Giant Banana: The giant banana splitting into three bananas^note five when upgraded is helpful for keeping the computer-controlled drivers in check. If the event tokens for the tour are to make other players crash, this can also farm a lot of points. You can even reach the cap if you happen to get a Frenzy.
  • Boomerang: The boomerang's ability to pick up coins for you is helpful for massive combos. Some strategies even use the Coin Box mentioned above.
• Contested Sequel: To put it lightly. While the game maintains a sizable playerbase and many enjoy it, it has turned a significant amount of fans away from it; in that it is Mario Kart running under your typical mobile gacha gameplay, complete with Microtransactions and a Freemium model that can be used to Bribe Your Way To Victory (which have been increasingly frowned upon in the gaming industry, and caused a lawsuit in 2023). The lootboxes were somewhat more toned down over time, with the shop now using coins more often to buy duplicates of characters, karts and gliders.
• Crosses the Line Twice: One of the Berlin Byways variants has you passing the Berlin Wall, a melancholic monument to when Germany was divided... with Whomps filling in the gaps as obstacles to avoid alongside with Mario themed graffiti.
• Discredited Meme: The infamous "$40 dollars for Diddy Kong" has been talked about when in a topic on microtransactions in Tour. This pack was only a limited-time offer for the duration of the Tokyo Tour (October 9, 2019 - October 22, 2019) due to the fact that the value comes from the high amount of 90 rubies (since they are premium currency), with Diddy Kong and tickets as a bonus^note in comparison to $50 for 93 rubies by itself. Diddy Kong has also been available for 3000 coins in the Daily Selects shop, and available in the regular gacha pipe pool (before it was removed), though the game continues to sell similar packs with different characters for similar prices.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gold characters in general are seen as annoying, but Gold Dry Bowser surprised a lot of people by looking legitimately cool.
  • Many of the Peach, Daisy, and Rosalina variants, due to Fanservice.
  • Mario (SNES) and Donkey Kong Jr. (SNES), for being literally their sprites from the original game as opposed to 3D models like the rest of the cast. Bonus points for this being the first appearance of DK Jr. in 20 years.
  • Bowser and Yoshi already have sizable fanbases, but their Santa and Reindeer variants are especially beloved.
  • Any driver that has the Coin Box ability is sought after by the fanbase.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Due to the oddly common Wario-esque theming throughout Ninja Hideaway despite the course apparently being entirely unaffiliated with him (such as the use of garlic and Wario's W emblem), fans speculate that the racetrack was originally intended to be a Wario-themed course until it was retooled to be an entirely unrelated track at the last minute. At the moment, nothing has officially been said about it.
  • A promotional artwork◊ for the game features Earth surrounded by many of the world's landmarks, representing real life cities represented in Tour as race tracks. Earlier versions of this artwork notably included an Egyptian pyramid, leading several people to believe that a city track set in Cairo could be coming. However, starting on the Mii Tour, this detail was phased out◊ from the artwork, possibly pointing it to not be the case. And true enough, as of the end of the game's content, none of the 14 city tracks are set in Egypt. It is unknown if this means that a Cairo track was planned, or even developed before being cut, or if it was merely a minor detail to get the "world tour" concept of the game across that wasn't really meant to signify anything. It's worth noting that there are tracks in the game that feature Egyptian pyramids such as GBA Yoshi Desert and Wii Dry Dry Ruins, but as the artwork doesn't represent any other retro track like that, it's unlikely that it might've been meant for them.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Dapper Mario" for Mario (Musician), "Hakamario" for Mario (Hakama), "Rosaweena" for Rosalina (Halloween), "Chef Guy" for Shy Guy (Pastry Chef), "Holidaisy" for Daisy (Holiday Cheer), "Goopa" for Gold Koopa (Freeruning), "Winchertime" for Peach (Wintertime), "Penguigi" for Penguin Luigi, "Rosaurora" / "Aurosalina" / "Auroralina" for Rosalina (Aurora), "Wiker" for Wario (Hiker), "Faisy" / "Dairy" for Daisy (Fairy), "Pringles" for King Bob-omb, "Bowsanta" / "Banta" / "Koopa Klaus" for Bowser (Santa), "Luweenie" for Luigi (Lederhosen), "Ninja Guy" for Shy Guy (Ninja).
  • A player using a Boomerang while a CPU activating a Coin Box is called a "Boombox" (from Boomerang and Coin Box), when the player's Boomerang attracts the coins spewing out from a CPU's Coin Box, thus the player collecting lots of coins.
  • Because of the abundance of Mario Kart 7 content in Tour, especially at the game's launch, some people have took to calling the game "Mario Kart 7 Deluxe".
• Fanon Discontinuity: Like with Super Mario Run, many fans refuse to see this game as a mainline entry (despite Nintendo considering it as such) and prefer to see it as a disconnected side game similar to the Mario Kart Arcade GP games and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit instead, due to the different mechanics, monetization model, not having a proper set of cups, and the game not being on a Nintendo console. Despite this, the Booster Course Pass in 8 Deluxe features Tour tracks alongside tracks from the other mainline entries, while lacking tracks from the Arcade GP games, most likely due to being developed by Namco Bandai instead of Nintendo. There's also still a distinction in that, while officially a mainline game, it's not a numbered entry like console games have been since Mario Kart 7.
• Game-Breaker: If the Event Token is earned through coins, any driver with a Coin Box item will be able to clean up, all but ensuring double digit Event Tokens for that race. Likewise, Morton, Donkey Kong, and Rosalina (Chef) with their Giant Bananas, can absolutely clean up if the Event Tokens are earned from Banana Peel hits or spinouts in general. If they get a Frenzy Giant Banana, it's extremely likely they'll reach the limit of 99 Event Coins.
• I Knew It!:
  • Before the game's global launch, many people expected Pauline to make her Mario Kart series debut here thanks to her newfound Breakout Character status from Super Mario Odyssey. She debuted in the first tour in the game, the New York Tour.
  • Many expected high-requested newcomers who didn't made it to Mario Kart 8 and its Deluxe version, like Hammer Bro, Nabbit, and Kamek. They made their series debuts in the Hammer Bro Tour, the Wild West Tour, and the Kamek Tour respectively.
  • When filenames for upcoming nitro tracks ended up being leaked, just about everyone was able to accurately predict what they were. Like mobYI being Yoshi’s Island, mobBR being a bathroom track, or mobMD being a track based on Madrid.
• Junk Rare: The Blue Biddybuddy, Pink Mushmellow, Birthday Girl Rosalina, Bull's-Eye Banzai, Warship, and Green Cheep Charger Karts. All of them are Standard Karts and are just Palette Swaps of other Standard Karts (Biddybuggy, Mushmellow, Birthday Girl, Bullet Blaster, Landship, and Cheep Charger respectively), but they are only available as Gold Pass presents, or very rarely as Token Shop purchases during big celebrations. If they're so hard to get, they must be worth something, right? Nope! All of them have standard effects, with some even having the same effect as their original base, require more Point Level Tickets to power up, and require significantly more Level Cap tickets to upgrade. As if that was bad enough, they don't get a Rank 3 course unlock at Level 3, only Level 6, and even then, the Karts only ever max out at four tracks, with the Pink Mushmellow only having a Rank 3 in two tracks!
• Just Here for Godzilla: A good number of Mario Kart fans only played it due to it being the only brand new installment after Mario Kart 8 in 2014 (the spin-off Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit would come out afterwards to accompany it, though still not a mainline game). Therefore, a good number of said fans have moved on from it following the release of the Booster Course Pass DLC for its Updated Re-release, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in 2022, which adds the City and original courses from Tour, though not the many characters still unique to its roaster nor Special Items/Frenzies.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Baby Peach, Baby Daisy, Baby Rosalina, Lemmy, and the Cheep Cheep Mii racing outfit, largely due to their specialty item. The Bubble causes them to float and protects them from many of the dangers on the track while also giving out points over time, but you move slower than your top speed and can't use any items while in the bubble, while the powered up version moves faster but you have to get a lot of duplicates. And it's almost guaranteed that you'll run into another set of item boxes before the Bubble pops, meaning you'll likely get only one new item, if any, though this was eventually changed. Any time one of those five Drivers are the best option for a course, players groan.
  • Diddy and Funky can be this for some due to their specialty item, the Banana Barrels. They dump a ton of regular bananas along the course, which cause a lot of trouble for the opponents and gives a good amount of points, especially when powered up, but they can also affect you, causing you to spin out and allowing others to pass you if you aren't careful.
  • Koopa Troopa, Dry Bones, Iggy, and Lakitu have a minor hatedom, since their Triple Green Shells work differently in this game. Unlike prior games, you can't launch the shells one at a time, instead firing all of them at once. Because they have almost the same trajectory and since Drivers have Mercy Invincibility after getting hit, it's very likely the other Shells won't do anything at all, making easy to waste them, Making the Triple Green Shells one of the worst special items.
  • Any driver that has a cannon for their special item also kinda suffers from this, since they either differ greatly in usefulness depending or can be used against the player. The Mushroom version (Used by characters such as Peachette and the default Red and Moo Moo Mii racing outfits) gives more points than regular Mushrooms if you get one, but it fires straight, meaning you'll likely miss most of the Mushrooms due to turning and drifting if you move too sharply, leaving your opponents to get free speed boosts, making it best when there's enough room between turns. The powered-up version throws three mushrooms at a time, so you can get them more easily, but it may also advantage your opponents anyway. The Bob-omb variant (Used by characters such as Black Birdo, Happi Mario or Pirate Bowser Jr.) fires in a large arc and is very useful when you're far away from the first positions, but it's useless if you are too close to your opponents or are in first place. This one gets double the hate because any AI character that has it may stay in 4th-7th place most of the race, meaning they'll get this item eventually, and have much better aiming skills than the player.
• Memetic Mutation: During the summer of 2021, it became quite popular to set gameplay footage to fan remixes of Cupcak Ke songs on TikTok.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Mario Kart Arcade GP is the game that introduced Reverse track variants to the series, not Tour.
  • Mario Kart 8 had a track, Excitebike Arena, that had different variants differing in the position of the trick ramps. Just like the Trick track variants in this game.
  • This isn't Dixie Kong's first outing in a kart racer. She had appeared in the DS version of Diddy Kong Racing.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: It is all but impossible to discuss the game without bringing up its infamous gacha, Microtransactions, and Freemium mechanics. The backlash against its monetization mechanics is so great that in 2023 Nintendo faced a lawsuit due to their use to Bribe Your Way To Victory that incentivized many minors to purchase them.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Prior to being bought back, Boo Lake from Mario Kart: Super Circuit always tended to be overlooked by fans, due to its simplistic layout and fans generally preferring Broken Pier from that same game instead. The remake in Tour, which went onto appear in 8 Deluxe via the Booster Course Pass DLC, resulted in newfound appreciation for the course - being freed from the Game Boy Advance's limitations allowed for it to actually be set on top of a lake, which also now has an underwater section to give the course some variety.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Gold Pass, being the way the game handles Freemium mechanics. For $5 a month, you get more rewards for completing tours, special badges through gold challenges, special pipes, and most egregiously, access to 200cc. To say nothing of the fact that it costs more per year than Nintendo Switch Online, it also costs the same price as Apple Arcade, which gives you multiple games.
  • The Bubble is nothing more than an inferior Bullet Bill, having an extremely unnoticeable speed boost and can be bursted by simply touching any other Kart or hazard. However, while in the Bubble, it disables item usage for the duration of when it is active, so if this is the first item that pops up in the item stash, you have to hope another Kart is willing to pop it for you (especially painful if you happen to get Red Shells or Spiny Shells as your items after the Bubble, as you cannot throw those until something is willing to pop your Bubble, which is very unlikely to happen if you are behind). While it might help protect you from a Green or Red Shell, the Heart does a better job and the Bubble can easily ruin your Frenzy, making it harder to protect yourself afterwards. The Bubble Frenzy is one of the worst Frenzies in the game, if not the absolute worst. However, as of version 3.0.0, the Bubble became much more tolerable. Not only could you obtain items again while it's in use, but you can also tap the screen a few times to pop the Bubble whenever you want and it gives points when it's active, making it a bit more viable.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The return of SNES Bowser Castle 3 wasn’t entirely shocking, as most people predicted that a Bowser Castle from that game would get added thanks to an ID gap, but what truly made it shocking was just how drastically changed it was, especially when not even Mario Kart 8 did much to overhaul its SNES tracks. Most SNES tracks in Tour are entirely flat like in their home game, but Bowser Castle 3 received massive elevation changes, other new additions like Bone Piranha Plants, and an entirely new background with tons of details littered throughout. Not only is this far more in line with how Tour has remade GBA courses, but it also has many thinking it's destined for the Booster Course Pass, especially with some slopes being so steep they appear to be shoe-ins for antigravity.
  • Mario Kart Tour’s files included a large ID gap for a city track between Paris and Singapore for a while; most people, however, had predicted it'd be a Rio course, so almost nobody was expecting it to be Rome instead, especially since Athens Dash, which has fairly similar architecture to Rome, had just released two months beforehand.
  • Among the other nitro tracks in Tour’s files was a track labelled “mobDK”. There were many theories based on what the course could be, ranging from the fairly obvious - a DK track - to more distinct concepts, like a Sarasaland themed track codenamed Daisy Kingdom or a course based on the Ruined Kingdom from Super Mario Odyssey. However, when it turned out to be Piranha Plant Pipeline (mobDokan), the fanbase was shocked, particularly because it was the first course codename to be just one word, as well as the first to be a Japanese term.
• So Okay, It's Average: If you look past the Microtransactions and the Freemium model it's a playable, serviceable, and fairly decent mobile racer with no intrusive third party advertisements that can be fun, though those with more budget (or, as it may be the case, those that only want to deal with a one-time payment) would want to afford Mario Kart 7 or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, both of which are more feature complete and are also portable, even more so with Deluxe after the release of the Booster Course Pass DLC, which adds the City and original courses that Tour introduced, which were widely liked and were seen as its saving graces alongside its huge character roster with different special abilities from those who have issues with its Microtransactions and Freemium mechanics.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • A lot of people seem to think Ninja Hideaway's music sounds a lot like Splatoon music, Calamari Inkantation in particular. Another song with the same vibe is Singapore Speedway's music, most notably with the vocals.
  • Athens Dash's music sounds like something coming from a Kirby game.
• That One Achievement: Getting to Tier 40, especially as a free player. Most of the selected ranking tracks include whatever the newest course is, which has almost exclusively High-End equipment in the Rank 2 and 3 positions, and only a handful of them are available in whatever spotlight pipe is going on at the moment. Even if you have a Rank 3 Driver, Kart, and Glider, you'll still need to get them all at Level 2 or above in order to maximize boosts, AND you have to be lucky enough to get multiple Frenzies during the race. Worse, if you end up in 6th place or lower, you get knocked down a Tier and need to build yourself up again.
• That One Level:
  • Any of the SNES Donut Plains courses are hated by many due to the dirt patches sapping speed and killing any boosts.
  • The SNES Vanilla Lakes are despised since it's very easy to accidentally drive into the snow, causing you to slow down greatly.
  • N64 Royal Raceway has some particularly aggressive AI at 150cc. It's especially problematic if you use Auto Drift rather than Manual.
  • In general, any track that doesn't have any Standard or Super Drivers or equipment in Rank 3 are hated. Ones that don't have them in Rank 2 either are especially loathed. However, this is dependent on what drivers, karts, and gliders the player has.
  • During 2022, 3DS Bowser's Castle and especially 3DS Wario Shipyard became notorious for repeatedly appearing in tours after their debuts. The former appeared a whopping 12 times, and the latter 11 times, 4 of which were consecutive appearances beginning in the Bangkok Tour and concluding with the Sundae Tour. The latter drew more ire from fans due to many feeling like the underwater physics of Tour made the track relatively unenjoyable.
  • GCN DK Mountain has become notorious for being extremely difficult to fully combo, with the bumpy mountain road and winding jungle turns not flowing well with the game's limited controls. These issues are only magnified in the reverse variant, where the height of the mountain also becomes more of a problem.
• That One Sidequest: The game features daily and weekly sidequests (in a form of tour challenges) to get extra Grand Stars, in addition to the ones earned for hitting point plateaus in races, which unlock bonus gifts (rubies, coins, drivers, karts, and gliders) for the biweekly tour. While some are straightforward, there are a few that can be frustrating. However in later tours, these kind of quests found in early tours were replaced with easier ones (like get an item from Daily Selects, or use a point-boost ticket).
  • Early on, any of the weekly quests that specify a type of driver with a specific thing about their physical appeareance or what they are wearing (e.g. a driver with only three hairs or a driver wearing gloves, or with a shell). While some of the qualities in question are common (gloves and shells, for example), others are found only on a couple of characters (ties, for example, are found only on few drivers, most which were limited-time-only draws, and they are mostly Musician Mario, Dr. Mario, Dr. Luigi and Dr. Bowser, with Donkey Kong being the easier to get). If a player hasn't obtained a driver that fits those qualifications, those quests are impossible.
  • Any quest that requires hitting an opponent with a Super Horn. For one thing, they're not common draws regardless of what place you're in, so even having the chance at it is difficult. It doesn't help that, while there are gliders that can boost the chance of getting a Super Horn, there are few of these, and most are limited-time-draws. For another, they're very close-range in their attack radius, so if nobody is within about two kart lengths from you, you can't do it. Finally, they're of very limited duration - about two seconds before the damage radius wears off. If timed poorly, an opponent may be weaving out of the way as you're about to set it off, wasting the move. Somewhat mitigated if you use any of the drivers with the Lucky 7 special item, since they technically have two chances in each item draw to get a Super Horn, but the other issues still stand.
  • Any quest that requires a particular score on a single race or a single cup. Not only can they fall afoul of the "don't have the right driver" issue noted above, but even if you do have a driver that qualifies (or one isn't specified), it can be impossible to reach certain score plateaus on the courses where they (and your karts) get the best bonuses. Some also basically require at least one Frenzy to pull off, which not only requires having the right driver/course combination but also hoping the Random Number God feels like giving you three of the same item in a given item pull. Also, since some races make your final placement a significant factor in how many points you get for the race, you have to hope that the computer doesn't feel like throwing Lightning or Spiny Shells at you right before the finish. It's even worse with the Tier Challenges 2 sidequest that requires a total of 80,000 points in a ranked cup. The fact that it can be any ranked cup (there's a different one each week) is of cold comfort with that high of a score requirement. In order to get over 25,000 on a course, you generally require having at least level 5 with each component (and most likely, higher), plus land a few frenzies, win the race, and have a long enough race that you have lots of opportunities to run up the score. Now need to have that land in all three races in a cup. What's worse is that it's the only way to get the Silver Mii racing outfit, which is not merely a Cosmetic Award (it's got the second-largest list of favored courses of all the Mii suits, only beat out by the Gold Mii racing suit... which you can't unlock until you get the Silver suit).
  • The Gold Mii racing outfit is much more straightforward, as all of the requirements for its challenge card are just reaching various racing ranks. That said, the final challenge of Tier Challenges 3 is Rank 80 (the highest rank as of its release). Version 3.0.0 also adds in Tier 99 and another page to the Tier Challenges. While the reward is 300 Rubies, this is arguably even more difficult than reaching Tier 80. Good luck.
  • The Expert Challenge that requires you to get a Fantastic Combo a total of 3,500 Times. Expert Challenges lasts for six or seven tours^note 12-14 Weeks, or 84-98 Days, and some of them can be a challenge, but grinding for this one feels more like a chore. Fantastic Combos are achieved when you get a 9x Chain, and it only increases once per chain, meaning you need to lose your combo just to increase the Fantastic Combo counter again. It requires a lot of grinding, since you need to average out 42 Fantastic Combos per day to get to 3,500 (It is recommended you grind out a lot of courses, only biting the bullet). So far, there have been fifteen Expert Challenge panels, this particular challenge appeared ten times. It's no wonder why the community hates this challenge.
  • The Kart Pro event, linked to multiplayer mode. Oh, boy. Where do we begin? It appears every few tours, and to obtain the title of Kart Pro, which also allows you to get a few rubies once the event ends, you must win three races in a row. If you won one race or two in a row, second or third place will allow you to save your winning streak^note The first tour this happened, you'd lose your streak if you placed anywhere but first, but you end up 4th or below, you lose your winning streak. On itself, it wouldn't be so bad, if not for the fact that the connection is rather inconsistent in multiplayer mode, with the tendency to fail when you start a race or battle, which considers it a loss and will also cause you to lose your winning streak as a result. It also doesn't help that due to lag and connection issues, the opposing players in multiplayer mode is very aggravating in a way that often seems either buggy or like it's cheating a lot of the time: teleporting on another part when you see them, darting in a point so far from you that you'll likely be too far to make a comeback, recovering from hits and accelerating much faster than you, constantly hammering you with items more frequently than hitting other opponents, always seeming to get Frenzies, hitting you in inconvenient times (for example, items can now follow you even if you have the glider activated and cause you to fall, which will result in you losing a lot of precious time) or out of nowhere when you can't react and items that on lower placings tend to screw you over because they don't help you enough. To make matters worse, the players are not divided by ranking, meaning that with all the people that have the Gold Pass, which allows them to go the S grade and way higher, you end up with people that are way more experienced than you, a problem if you're a new player. The poor acceleration for the karts is also notable because the characters are split into categories depending on their rarity instead of their weight class like in previous games, but outside of the points you get when you start the race, they don't have a stats distribution with it and their karts also don't have distinct stats outside of which action gives more points than other karts, which prevents them from being specialized in something like most original counterparts. It's especially problematic more with races than battles, which don't have the Kart Pro event, but even here, there are times when the hits don't seem to cause the opponents to lose their balloons if the hit is too off-centered and the items can hit you when you less expect it. Overall, it makes races in multiplayer tedious and frustrating by itself, let alone the 3-win streak in the Kart Pro events.
  • The Extreme Challenges. Once you get to Tier 99 and have obtained the metallic Mii Suits and the 300 Rubies for clearing all the other Tier Challenges, the final Tier Challenges page opens up. Here, you have to get 1st place a number of times in Tier 99. Fortunately, it’s not consecutive. However, you’ll need to score very high in the Ranked Cups to make sure you get 1st, which is a lot harder than it looks. The final challenge in the Extreme Challenges requires you getting 1st Place in Tier 99 a total of 30 times, which will take you over 7 months at the minimum. If you can get this and the badges associated with this panel, then you can say you’ve truly mastered Mario Kart Tour.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Replacing the Daily Challenge with a full card of challenges was not well received, mostly because it was blocked by a paywall. As if that wasn't enough, the paywall is completely separate from the already loathed Gold Pass.
  • The background for GBA Bowser's Castle 2 and GBA Bowser's Castle 3 reuses the one from GBA Bowser's Castle 1, which removes the uniqueness of the three tracks from Super Circuit (GBA Bowser's Castle 2 features a giant Bowser statue, and GBA Bowser's Castle 3 is set in the castle exterior). GBA Bowser's Castle 4 zigzags this, as while it replicates the aesthetic of GBA Bowser's Castle 1 instead of being based on its original appearance, it's been given a ruined makeover, and the course itself is also set apart from the others by featuring elevation and being split into sections instead of laps.
  • The non-Bowser's Castle GBA remakes have also come under fire from many for often shortening or simplifying course layouts, with only GBA Boo Lake, GBA Snow Land, and GBA Peach Circuit getting a pass for largely following the original general layout and taking advantage of elevation to further reinvent the tracks. The most dramatic case of this is GBA Sky Garden, which essentially has an entirely different layout, when most of the other GBA remakes at least have the decency to remake at least certain segments of the course fairly accurately. Not helping matters is the fact that Sky Garden is arguably the most popular of the tracks to receive this treatment, and yet very little of what made the track a fan favorite was translated into its remake.
  • Replacing the spotlight/special pipes with a daily changing shop of drivers, karts, and gliders was not well received at all, since the currency is 150 rubies for a driver and 100 rubies for karts and gliders. Many fans pointed out a single driver was now worth $70, if you would buy the rubies directly. To top it all off, winning first place in a ranked cup is now rewarded with 25 rubies instead of 40, making it way harder to play the game for free.
  • Much of the excitement regarding the announcement that Wii Rainbow Road would be coming to the game dissipated upon its release, as the track was converted into a 2-section course, with lap 2 beginning at the Launch Star cannon. Not even a starting line banner was added to signify the change. Fans generally agreed that this makes the track feel far too short, despite one lap being slightly longer than the Mario Kart Wii version of the course. It also doesn't help that some were concerned the change would be carried over into 8 Deluxe or that it'd still be shortened in lap count compared to the original track - fortunately, the Booster Course Pass version of Wii Rainbow Road averts this while restoring other elements of the track removed in Tour.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Battle Mode, in a sense. When the mode was first launched, it came with just two tracks, with some hopes that a large number of old favorites would be added like the race courses. Unfortunately, by the end of the new content, this number only increased to five battle courses total, limiting the mode’s replay value. Not helping is the three retro courses all having been remade before, while the two new courses are merely battle-oriented reroutes of the city tracks.^note Paris Promenade and New York Minute. Both of which already rarely show up in tours, so you will often be fighting on either combination of the three retro battle courses. As a result, while playable, the Battle Mode is more repetitive and underbaked than it was in most other Mario Kart games.
• Unexpected Character:
  • The inclusion of King Boo in spin-offs is generally a given. The inclusion of his Luigi's Mansion incarnation during the Halloween Tour though, that's a different story.
  • The inclusion of King Bob-Omb in the Wild West Tour definitely caught many fans off-guard.
  • The introduction of Monty Mole in Flower Tour has surprised many.
  • While it's just a 3D model of his sprite from Super Mario Kart, many fans were shocked to see Donkey Kong Jr. as a playable character during the Super Mario Kart Tour event, marking his first playable appearance in any non-port/remake game since 2000's Mario Tennis.
  • To say the return of Petey Piranha in the Piranha Plant Tour was a pleasant surprise would be an understatement, as he hadn't been seen in the series since his sole appearance in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! nearly two decades prior. He even got his own gold variant later on!
  • Few could've anticipated that Poochy, of all characters, would debut as a playable character in Tour, even with a track based on Yoshi's Island being datamined well in advance of its debut (both in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, where it was first included, and Tour, which the track was first made for).
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Tour has the return of Funky Kong and the introduction of Dixie Kong, for those who lost all hope of any new major, non-clone characters outside of the regular Marioverse being added to the roster. Ditto for Poochy, who is typically a side character exclusive to Yoshi's own series and had one mainline Mario appearance to date thus far. Unfortunately, these three would be the only notable examples of this as of the game ceasing adding new content.
  • An update for Tour introduced a landscape mode, which veteran players who dropped out from the game already gained interest. Followed by the introduction of Nabbit, who was a heavily requested character during the Wii U era.

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