r/lostmedia • u/CaptFalconFTW • 17h ago
Video Games [talk] Soon to be lost media: Mario Kart Tour
You may have less than 4 hours to play Piranha Plant Pipeline legally today. Mario Kart Tour for mobile shuts down September 29, 2026. Piranha Plant Pipeline is available by 11pm western time, then the courses change again.
This game is very controversial with its use of monetization/mobile bs structure. But the tracks and gameplay are still very well made. A majority of its tracks can be found on the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass, however Piranha Plant Pipeline is EXCLUSIVE to Mario Kart Tour.
There are also several past tracks that seem to only be "remastered" on Tour including:
- Bowser’s Castle 1/2/4 (SNES/GBA/3DS)
- Cheep-Cheep Island (GBA)
- Cheep Cheep Lagoon (3DS)
- Choco Island 1-2 (SNES)
- Daisy Hills (3DS)
- Donut Plains 1-2 (SNES)
- Ghost Valley 1-2 (SNES)
- Koopa Troopa Beach (N64)
- Lakeside Park (GBA)
- Luigi Circuit (GBA)
- Luigi’s Mansion (3DS)
- Luigi Raceway (N64)
- Mario Circuit (3DS)
- Peach Circuit (GBA)
- Vanilla Lake 1 (SNES)
While older courses may not sound too noteworthy, I believe these are the only iterations that appear in crisp HD or whatever resolution your phone is.
What's probably more noteworthy is all of Mario Kart Tour's courses also contain an R (Reverse), T (Trick), and r/T (Reverse/Trick) variations which completely change the way you race with ramps and other obstacles throughout the course. There are also Christmas, New Years, and Halloween variations of tracks.
In addition to all that, there are exclusive remix tracks including:
- RMX Choco Island 1-2
- RMX Donut Plains 1
- RMX Ghost Valley 1
- RMX Mario Circuit 1
- RMX Rainbow Road 1-2
- RMX Vanilla Lake 1
The good news is, I've already seen some mods out there that added these tracks to Mario Kart 8. But a 100% preservation effort, I haven't seen anything like that, especially on mobile.
I want to bring attention to the community because Dr. Mario World disappeared without preservation and is now lost media. Even if you don't think something is special, doesn't mean it's not worth preserving, especially in the right hands. Fans have made bad games good, and Mario Kart Tour is really just a case of greedy store front/random availability. The tracks are all mixed up for no reason, but hackers could probably fix this.
Some noteworthy exclusive characters include:
- Ice Bro
- Fire Bro
- Dixie Kong
- King Bob-omb
- Poochy
And there's countless costume variations, karts, and gliders you can't find anywhere else. The game went hard with monetization.
I honestly have no idea how any preservation works or if it even can work with Mario Kart Tour's random track availability. But I'm doing my part know getting the word for the off chance game preservationists will do something Nintendo doesn't seem willing to do. Even though each new entry in the franchise brings back old tracks, the amount of exclusive variations Tour has means this version of the game is very endangered.