The beta for Mario Kart Tour recently went live in Japan. If you haven't read our previous post, it includes the usual driver roster and a selection of retro tracks. Races are cut down to just two laps and the game is played vertically with touch input and swipe commands.

It all seems relatively straightforward until you enter a race against other players. Despite match-making prior to the beginning of each race, the team over at GameXplain have discovered the upcoming mobile release is simply grabbing profiles of players, which are then represented as CPU during a race. It's somewhat similar to the Toad Rally multiplayer mode in Super Mario Run, where you are matched against someone's previous run.

If you're still not convinced this is how multiplayer works in Mario Kart Tour, you can even choose to skip the cutscene at the start of a race. You are also able to exit the game and then re-enter to continue a race. If you were actively racing against others online and did this, you would likely be disconnected. So, in other words, there doesn't appear to be a proper multiplayer mode in the beta version of Mario Kart Tour. Of course, this might not necessarily mean the final version of the game is the same.

What are your thoughts about Nintendo's approach to multiplayer in the Mario Kart Tour beta? Tell us below.

