Mobile titles published or approved by Nintendo have had a surprisingly good track record in a saturated market. Titles like Fire Emblem Heroes or Pokémon Masters offer experiences that are above the average expectation of a mobile game. They may still be borderline gambling with their Gacha mechanics, but at least they're still solid video games.
One of these titles, Mario Kart Tour, brought the wildly successful Mario Kart series to the largest gaming platform. It outdid expectations despite somewhat shallow gameplay and aggressive monetization. It isn't a true Mario Kart game, but fans will still get something out of it. The bigger question is: what will Nintendo get out of it for a hypothetical Mario Kart 9?
10 Variety of Control Options
Because of its simple control scheme and ways to make the game easier, Mario Kart Tour ends up being one of the most accessible Mario Kart games. Of course, the series isn't traditionally that difficult, but, with such a wide audience, it's always better to add these features rather than take them away.
Previous Mario Kart games have offered things like Smart Steering in the past, but seeing more control schemes and a more finely tuned Smart Steering would be neat to see. In fact, just let people sync up their phones and use that as a controller for the next title. That would be cool to see.
9 Regular Tournaments And Ranking
Mario Kart Tour ranks players based on the number of points received through playing and winning races. It isn't a traditional ranking system, but it's more than previous Mario Kart titles have had. Now, this is far from a game where skill-based matchmaking would matter, but making a number go up by winning does feel good. Regular events like Coin Rush would also be worthwhile inclusions.
Regular event tournaments would also be nice to see. Smash Bros. Ultimate does this on a semi-regular basis, and Splatoon made great use of it. Seeing regular tournaments to easily compete in for a high ranking would be a feature that brings people back.
8 Maps Inspired By Real Places
One of the cooler aspects of Mario Kart Tour is that, along with traditional tracks, it has special tracks inspired by places in the real world. While it may be weird to see Mario and Toad drag racing in New York City, it's a unique setting for the series. The tracks are required to be somewhat simplistic for mobile, so they're stifled somewhat.
In a new game, there's plenty of room to just go crazy. Having full tracks in real-world locales, complete with underwater and glider sections, would be quite a thrill. While we're at it, have the next Forza game contain fantastical tracks to race on, so everything can be evenly balanced.
7 Limited-Time Cups and Tours
In an effort to keep players engaged and playing regularly, Mario Kart Tour cycles through events and special tours that offer new prizes, unlockable costumes and parts, and other features. It's a cynical practice to create a fear-of-missing-out, but it works. By bundling different maps together in a Tour, it keeps the game fresh.
While it would be terrible to lock individual courses behind timed events, there are other ways to do it. Bundling different courses together into a cup, complete with special rulesets, creates an event that brings players back and playing regularly. As long as it isn't too gimmicky, people will enjoy it.
6 Regular Challenges
The special Tours have a number of elements tied to them. This includes various levels of challenges that also last for a limited time and offer rewards. These rewards are pretty uniquely tied to the economy of Mario Kart Tour, but the system of challenges and rewards is still something players enjoy completing.
Regular challenges requiring specific placements or kart/character combinations would help add some incentive to try new characters and karts. There are varied enough playstyles with these changes that it would make things interesting. If the implementation is good, it would be a great addition.
5 Badges and Achievements
In the same realm as completing challenges, who doesn't like achievements? They're often arbitrary tasks that get rewarded through little pop-ups, and it feels good to receive them. In Mario Kart Tour, completing individual challenges will award the player with a badge. There are also badges for being a high-ranked player.
While Nintendo doesn't offer blanket achievements like other consoles, built-in achievements and badges for Mario Kart 9 would be cool. It's always fun to flex on your friends with an exclusive achievement, and the badge collections could serve that purpose.
4 Specialty Character Items
The racers in Mario Kart Tour have access to the same items as other players, obviously. However, each racer also has a special skill that gives them an edge over other racers. This mechanic was originally introduced Mario Kart: Double Dash, but it hasn't made a reappearance aside from Tour.
Special items do create balance issues in terms of which racers are the best, but playing around a meta in Mario Kart is lame—aside from speedruns, of course. In practice, it will just add more individual flavor for characters and help differentiate them more. Stats can only do so much, but items could make a world of difference.
3 Cool Unlockable Variants
Mario Kart Tour is a Gacha game. Characters, skins, karts, and parts are all locked behind Pipes that can be blasted to receive exclusive rewards of varying rarities. There's a lot of debate around whether Gacha is exploitative or not, but the end result in a vacuum is the introduction of dozens of variants and costumes for existing characters.
Similar to skins in a competitive game, unlockable variants would help add customization options to even a limited roster. Instead of Pink Gold Peach taking up a character slot, she could simply be an alternate for regular Peach. This helps keep the roster cleaner and prevents repeats.
2 Easy Kart Customization
Once again tied into the Gacha mechanic, there are a ton of kart parts to choose from in Mario Kart Tour. It's mostly cosmetic, but, compared to even Mario Kart 8, there are a ridiculous amount of options. Most aren't too complex, but some descend into uncharted territory.
Kart customization was underwhelming in Mario Kart 8, as it was a lot of options that had enough stat differences that it made hopping into a game take way longer than it needed to. Making more cosmetic kart changes would allow for a variety of weird kart designs that can be cycled between without impacting the racing experience that much.
1 The Full Roster of Mario Characters
Previous Mario Kart rosters have dropped and added characters seemingly at random. While all of the fan-favorite characters stay, other popular characters get shafted in favor of things like retextured versions of already overused characters. Mario Kart Tour, on the other hand, offers an absurd amount of Mario characters and enemies to choose from.
Characters in a Mario Kart game shouldn't be as complex as a Smash Bros. character. There's obviously a lot of effort that does into designing the look and animations of these characters, but all players would appreciate variety in terms of character selection. Some people just want to play as Wiggler, and they should be allowed to do that.