Ladies and gents, charge your Excitement Engines because we have some big news - Mario Kart is coming to a smartphone near you.

Before you get on your high horse, we're aware that the announcement came some time ago about Mario Kart Tour, the mobile version of the much-loved Mario Kart games, being released. But 2019 is the year it's all going down.

As of yet, Nintendo hasn't released full details of the game or its release date but it's likely that the game's release will result in commuters UK-wide replacing Candy Crush with early-morning, high-octane 2D races around Yoshi Valley, Koopa Troopa Beach (those turtles) and ultimate fucker Choco Mountain.

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Nintendo took to Twitter last February to tell fans that the game is in development and should be with us in 2019.

The checkered flag has been raised and the finish line is near. A new mobile application is now in development: Mario Kart Tour! #MarioKartTour Releasing in the fiscal year ending in March 2019. pic.twitter.com/8GIyR7ZM4z

- Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 1, 2018

When first released on the SNES in 1992, the original Super Mario Kart was so unbelievably good.

However, it was 1996's revamped and re-released N64 edition Mario Kart 64 that cemented Mario and pals' place in the pantheon of all-time classic console games, despite the sheer competitiveness it unleashed in humans destroyed friendships and families.



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Mario Kart 64 was the N64's second best-selling game (beaten only by Super Mario 64). Shifting almost 10 million copies, gave bananas a nutrition-free second wind and Bowser an uncomfortable looking 50cc means of transportation with which to race about in.

Debate has raged for aeons as to which was the best course and tournament in the Mario Kart universe. The answer was the Mushroom Cup, mostly because it looked liked the developers had been on shrooms while designing it.

Luigi Raceway, the first track in the game, was a deceptively simple thunderbastard of a track with an irritatingly open course that resulted in many crashes into water, pillars and inexplicably blocky green hills.

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Final course Kalimari Desert, meanwhile, had something extremely fishy about it (BOOM!), not least those extremely narrow wooden bridges that generally resulted in at least three pitfalls. It was glorious.