Say what you will about gacha mechanics, but it certainly inspires developers to introduce as many characters as possible to a game. Right now, Mario Kart Tour already has 40 characters for players to unlock, and there will be three more starting 10 p.m. Pacific Time, when the game's Halloween tour ends and its Paris tour starts.
A new trailer posted across social media shows off the new characters, which include a chef Shy Guy, a pit crew version of Toad, and a new Peach outfit that fits the setting.
The new tour also comes complete with a few new karts, including a vintage race car, a golden barrel train, and a car that is designed to look like a carrot.
And, of course, you can't have a Paris tour without a track based in Paris, with the Eiffel tower placed center-stage. That'd be like having a New York tour without the statue of Liberty, a London tour without Big Ben, or a Detroit tour without crippling poverty. So, the iconic tower has been made very much visible.
Of course, it's worth noting that none of these new characters are actually new characters so much as they are the same characters wearing different clothes—something that no shortage of Twitter users have grumbled about in response to the announcement. In fact, Princess Peach already has two other costume variations besides her default (three if you count Peachette), so the choice to give her yet another outfit as opposed to, say, putting Waluigi in that same blouse and skirt, is a bit baffling.
This all points to the downside of gacha mechanics' motivation to endlessly churn out new content: it doesn't have to be content that anyone actually wants. So long as it fills up the space between desirable gacha pulls and leaves an empty spot on the menu to annoy completionists, all content is useful to a gacha game. Mario Kart Tour could just offer new characters in the form of every different canonical color of Yoshi and it'd end up improving Nintendo's income, if not the quality of players' experiences.
Thankfully, Nintendo hasn't sunken that low, as these new designs actually show some level of thought and care. Time will tell how the game handles new characters in the future.
Source: TouchArcade