Nintendo continues its foray into the mobile market with Mario Kart Tour, a phone-friendly version of the company’s premier racing series. One of the draws of Mario Kart, however, is being able to play online with friends. Our Mario Kart Tour multiplayer guide will show you how to add friends to your list and what to expect in the multiplayer!
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Can I add friends in Mario Kart Tour?
Like many of Nintendo’s mobile titles, you can add friends to your Friends List in Mario Kart Tour. However, this feature isn’t available from the start, and you need to play the game a bit in order to access the Friends List.
You can’t add Friends until you unlock rankings in Mario Kart Tour, although people can still add you while you’re working to that point. During the New York Tour, rankings will be unlocked after you finish the Yoshi Cup and unlock the Koopa Cup. The Yoshi Cup is the third cup in the tour, so it doesn’t take long to get to. If you start playing in a later tour, you’ll probably unlock rankings after the third cup.
With that, you can start adding friends in Mario Kart Tour! But how do you do that?
Adding Friends in Mario Kart Tour
After unlocking the ability to add friends in Mario Kart Tour, it’s pretty easy to add whoever you want to your Friend’s List. On the main screen, head to the menu, and then click on the Friends Icon. The first screen you’ll see if your score ranking with your friends (more on that later). Near the top is the ‘+ Add Friend’ button. Tap that button and you’ll be able to get your Friend Code, send friend requests, and accept friend requests.
Like most Nintendo mobile titles, there are multiple ways to add friends in Mario Kart Tour:
Enter a Friend Code. The easiest way to add people that you haven’t played a Nintendo game with before is to get their 12-digit Friend Code and enter it in. This works for when you’re in a new Mario Kart centric community and want to play with people within that community. Granted, Friend Codes are not the ideal method of linking up in Mario Kart Tour if you have your friends on your Switch Friends List or on some social media accounts. If you want to link up with your actual friends there are a few easier ways to do so.
Add friends via your Nintendo Account. You are required to link up your Nintendo Account before even starting Mario Kart Tour. One advantage of this is that you can easily add anyone you’ve linked up within a Nintendo mobile title or on a console in the past with a quick tap of the button. When adding a friend, underneath the area to type in the Friend Codes are users that you can send requests to without codes. These are your Nintendo Account friends, and you can click on their names and send a friend request for Mario Kart Tour that way.
Link your Twitter and/or Facebook accounts. Finally, you can link your Twitter and Facebook accounts, and link up with friends and followers that are also playing Mario Kart Tour. On the Add Friends screen, just hit the Link button for Twitter or Facebook and sign in. Twitter and Facebook users will then show up in the same area as Nintendo Account players.
Playing with friends in Mario Kart Tour multiplayer
Unfortunately, multiplayer is not currently available in Mario Kart Tour, with Nintendo stating it’ll be available in a future update. Some rumors state that multiplayer will be out September 28th, but there’s no official word on the release date yet.
At this time, no one really knows what the multiplayer will entail. While there are currently Friend Rankings that you can view on ranked cups to see how you stack up against friends, there’s no way to use this information yet. The best option would seem to be Ghost races and making the Friends Rankings into something more substantial, but right now we can only speculate on what Nintendo might do.
Can I add the people I race against in Mario Kart Tour as friends?
As it turns out, you’re not actually racing against other people in Mario Kart Tour, you’re only racing against bots. The usernames of the racers create an illusion of a real-time race, but it’s just you versus 7 AIs. That said, Nintendo has to source those usernames from somewhere–some of the usernames you’ll see are definitely not something that would pass a Nintendo quality assurance test. Whether the usernames are taken from the Mario Kart Tour beta or just sourced from the main game at random aren’t known.
Either way, you cannot add these people as friends in Mario Kart Tour. With all due respect, they probably wouldn’t know who you are, anyway.
