Mario Kart Tour: Walkthrough, Cheats, Tips, and Strategy Guide

Mario Kart Tour is the long-awaited iOS and Android entry in the Mario Kart franchise, which is now Nintendo’s most popular game on mobile since Pokemon Go. You get to race on almost every track that’s ever been in any Mario Kart game, as well as play with far more characters than have ever been in any other Mario Kart game.

You can embark on “tours” of various four-track circuits, consisting of both new and vintage tracks, along the way unlocking new characters, new karts, and gliders. Of course, you can also earn coins and rubies, play multiplayer mode, do all kinds of challenges, and play against your friends, too.

Read on for some tips and tricks for Mario Kart Tour!

Arguably the most important aspect of the game is figuring out the controls. There are multiple control settings that you can choose from, all of which play completely differently, but resemble the control schemes in other Mario Kart games.

First up is the Manual Drift mode, which imitates the power slides and drifts that have been common throughout the series. It’s tough to master, especially in courses with tight turns, but you can use the mini-turbo boosts when you steer back and forth like in the other Mario Kart games. You have to let off of the screen to change direction, though.

Without Manual Drift, you get standard mode, which changes completely depending on if you enable Smart Steering or not. Smart Steering hits the brakes for you when you engage in a super-tight turn, which is nice in courses with hairpin corners, but if you accidentally turn too tightly, you can end up slowing yourself down more than intended.

Without Smart Steering, it’s basic Mario Kart fare. Without drift mode enabled, you can also change directions without raising your finger off of the screen, but you can’t do the small turbos from drifting.

Gyroscopic steering works alongside your screen-touch steering. Screen touch overrides gyro, so if you start fish-tailing, you can use screen steering to fix it. Gyroscopic steering is the only mode that allows you to use items without having to interrupt a turn.

For the racing itself, your goal is to earn enough points to get five stars. Points are earned for placing high, with first place obviously being worth the most points, but you can get points using other methods too.

Collecting the coins that you find on the level will earn you points. Unlike other Mario Kart games, coins won’t speed you up. Bonus points can also be earned by other methods, such as drafting behind another player, hitting someone with an item, or hitting a boost pad.

Earn stars on each race to unlock more circuits. If you earn less than five stars on a race, you can go back to it at any time in order to earn more stars if you need to in order to unlock a new circuit.

Each time you finish a race, you’ll earn experience points for your character, your kart, and your glider. If you need to grind for experience, you can play any race you want in order to do so, not just the races that you haven’t five-starred yet.

Hit the store and you can use rubies or coins to fire off the pipe in order to unlock a random character, kart, or glider. If you unlock something new, it will be added to your repertoire; if you unlock a duplicate, then it will merge into the character, kart, or glider that you already have in order to upgrade your base stats.

Challenge mode can be unlocked when you beat seven cups total. Challenges are various one-off races that you can play for bigger rewards, although they will tend to be tougher than other races, and will often come with preset, special rules of engagement for the race.

Friends mode will be able to be unlocked when ranking comes available in the game. Multiplayer mode is going to be added by developers in a near-future update. Expect to be able to play against your friends, just like old-time Mario Kart games.

After you earn a specific number of stars, you’ll be able to unlock a Tour Gift. These get sent to your gift box, and consist of free rubies, new characters, karts, and gliders, and other bonuses, such as extra coins. They’ll also give you new sets of challenges to play.

Scroll through the entire list of tours to see what’s coming up and what’s under construction. New tours and cups are constantly being added to the game, so if you play enough that you somehow make it to the end of the available tours, just wait awhile and more will come.