Nintendo officially ending a Mario Kart is a terrible sign for millions of gamers

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There’s no Switch compatibility for the series’ mid-period games, Mario Kart DS, Mario Kart Wii, and Mario Kart 7. But used copies of these games are plentiful and cheap, if you have the hardware to play them on.

It’s a little harder to explain why you would want to. Racing games have an accelerated rate of obsolescence compared to action-adventures, role-playing games, and other story-forward titles. In this genre, shinier and more technically adept games are usually interpreted as better. You might have a specific nostalgia for Super Mario Kart‘s exacting handling or Mario Kart 64‘s riotous multiplayer, but it’s hard to seriously claim you would rather play them in the here and now than 8 Deluxe or World — especially since 8 Deluxe features recreations of so many tracks from the classic games.

But the point is that you can if you want to. The complete history of this massively popular and influential franchise is easily accessible to all. And so it will remain until Sept. 29, when Mario Kart Tour goes offline for good and becomes completely unplayable.

I’d venture to say that the mobile-only Tour, which was first released in 2019, is not many people’s favorite Mario Kart game, and few will mourn it — even if its unique design makes it a historical point of interest within the series, if nothing else. It’s far from uncommon for free-to-play live-service games to be deactivated like this, especially in the relentlessly ephemeral and disposable world of mobile gaming. So it goes.

But this fate befalling a Mario Kart game made in-house by Nintendo feels odd. We’re used to Nintendo games having an outsized sense of permanence as cultural objects. This is partly a sense-memory of the chunky and tangible cartridges they used to ship on, partly because of Nintendo’s careful brand maintenance, and partly because the company has never been shy of exploiting and re-marketing its back catalog.

Nintendo games don’t just go away. When the company wrapped up another of its live-service mobile titles, 2017’s Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, in 2024, it went to the trouble of making a new, paid version of the game available that players could use to enjoy their save files in perpetuity. It was a generous gesture to a fanbase that invests a lot emotionally (and time-wise) in the life-sim games, but it also just made sense as something Nintendo would do. This company abhors waste, and loves any opportunity to sell you something twice.

I doubt even Nintendo will find a way to salvage Mario Kart Tour, though. It seems the unlikeliest game company to find itself in the crosshairs of Stop Killing Games and the other game preservation movements, but here we are. For what it’s worth, I suspect many at Nintendo are unhappy about it, too; the company never seemed comfortable with free-to-play live-service gaming and has been loath to go back to it, even as it cautiously returns to mobile development.

It’s a black mark against Nintendo all the same, coming just as the company’s competitors were making it look like a saint. You can fairly criticize Nintendo for resting on its laurels with its ceaseless remakes and rereleases. But this is so much worse. —Oli Welsh

eShop game of the week: Arcade Archives 2 Tekken

Let’s turn our attention from a villain of game preservation to a hero, Hamster Corporation, which toils away in the code mines producing note-perfect emulated versions of classic arcade games. After gracing the Switch 2 with an excellent version of Ridge Racer, Hamster has now turned its attention to Namco’s iconic 1995 fighting game. This is the original arcade version, not the PlayStation release, so it lacks a few characters, but the mid-’90s vibes are immaculate.

Nintendo Classics game of the week: Super Mario Kart

It’s probably true that everyone’s favorite Mario Kart is their first, and this was mine. (In fact, I think it was my first Nintendo game — I grew up with the UK home computer gaming scene in the 1980s, and the sheer verve, invention, and technical quality of the SNES titles belatedly blew my mind.) It still has something unique to offer, though, with its heavy sense of inertia, tight layouts, and much more technical approach that’s less reliant on the game-changing items. The most influential racing game of all time, and one of the very best.

Nintendo Music track of the week: “Ground BGM (Country) (Super Mario World)” from Mario Kart World

Apologies for double-dipping on the Mario Kart World soundtrack, but the torrent of wonderfully arranged and performed versions of classic Nintendo music just won’t stop; the full soundtrack currently stands at almost nine hours and 230 tracks, and the weekly drops are still coming. I could have picked anything from the tribute to Super Mario World, but chose this one of four versions of “Ground BGM” as a nod to Shigeru Miyamoto’s deep love of bluegrass music. (There’s a playlist of all of Switchboard’s music picks here.)

This week’s most interesting releases

Granblue Fantasy: Relink — Endless Ragnarok

• July 9
• Switch 2
• Action RPG, quietly building a rep as one of the best out there, arrives on Switch 2

Digimon Story: Time Stranger

D-topia

• July 14
• Switch, Switch 2
• Gentle puzzle adventure with an appealing look from Annapurna

Denshattack!

• July 15
• Switch 2
• Trick-flipping extreme sports train adventure launches after a short delay

Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit

• July 15
• Switch, Switch 2
• Lo-fi life sim about ghost bears from Spry Fox. Previously a Netflix mobile exclusive