Talk:Mario Kart Tour

Obstacles Table
Looking at some of the obstacles, they're starting to get quite bloated just by the sheer number of courses and their variants they appear in, in particular, the cones and pipes. I was thinking instead of having a new line for each course variant, we should have a new line for each course, and then list the variants afterward, something like: And if there's a case where it's in a bonus challenge, and then in a variant, maybe something like: Would this work? MarioComix (talk) 20:34, November 9, 2020 (EST)
 * SNES Mario Circuit 1, R, T, R/T
 * 3DS Toad Circuit, T
 * 3DS Rainbow Road R, R/T
 * GCN Dino Dino Jungle (Do Jump Boosts), T, R/T
 * I was planning to do exactly this the other day. I support the change. 20:46, November 9, 2020 (EST)
 * Maybe the variants in which they appear should be listed as (normal, R, T, R/T). Just a suggestion. I otherwise support the change as well. 21:14, November 9, 2020 (EST)
 * Agreed with putting the variants in the same line to avoid bloating. The lists will only get bigger so this kind of aggregation is useful.--Mister Wu (talk) 21:57, November 9, 2020 (EST)
 * The only issue with doing something like (N, R, T, R/T) to denote variants would be in a bonus challenge case like the Dino Dino Jungle case I posted above, or more practically, the Pipe being present in 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar (Do Jump Boosts) but also in its Trick variant by default. Is the following example not too confusing?
 * 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar (T), (N) (Do Jump Boosts) MarioComix (talk) 00:45, November 10, 2020 (EST)
 * Bonus Challenges courses are stored in the separate event folder in the internal data, so there's no need to label them as N, R, T or R/T, just name the Bonus Challenge.--Mister Wu (talk) 04:26, November 10, 2020 (EST)


 * I prefer the first format you proposed.
 * 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar, R (Ring Race), T (Do Jump Boosts)
 * In this example, it's clear which challenge pertains to which variant (Ring Race to the reverse variant, Do Jump Boosts to the trick variant), whereas putting each singular part in brackets--(R) (Ring Race), (T) (Do Jump Boosts)--would be redundant. Would semicolons make the delimitations more visible instead of commas?
 * 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar; R (Ring Race); T (Do Jump Boosts)
 * 08:29, November 10, 2020 (EST)
 * I went on to see if the format worked, and it did. I’ll see if I can update the table. --

Tour-exclusiveness
I don't find the "tour-exclusive" status we attribute to certain drivers, karts and gliders to be too helpful. It can easily become obsolete, with one of the most glaring examples being the Cheermellow, a kart that was available in three tours straight starting with the Winter one, still described as "tour-exclusive" in this page's table. I would remove this term; the instances of availability of each item are listed in the item's table entry and thus already indicate whether it is exclusive to a tour or not. 17:38, November 11, 2020 (EST)
 * While we do have special availabilities listed, I think the main reason for using "tour-exclusive" is to separate the (mainly high-end) drivers, karts, and gliders that always have a chance to be pulled from pipes, regardless of tour, compared to those that are only available in, say, the Sunset Pipes of the Sunset Tour. If we have some kind of distinguisher like that, then we could remove the "tour-exclusive" status. MarioComix (talk) 18:30, November 11, 2020 (EST)
 * Yeah, the Availability column was never implemented and as such, we absolutely need to tell which items are found in every 100 items pipe, let's not forget that the High-End items found in every pipe are also available in the All-Clear pipe and are sold in the Tier Shop. So either we implement an Availability column with, for example, the base set Daily Selects, additional set Daily Selects, every pipe and restricted values or we need at least to tell what items can be found in every pipe and what items are still event-restricted instead.--Mister Wu (talk) 18:39, November 11, 2020 (EST)
 * Some kind of "General availability" column should be implemented, and the possible availabilities could probably be Daily Selects base set, Daily Selects additional set, In every pipe, or None. And, we should assume that the driver/kart/glider debuted with that general availability except when listed, such as Pauline's general availability being "In every pipe (Holiday Tour onwards)". The elephant in the room becomes the current "Availability" column which lists dates. In my opinion, it's redundant as basically every case coincides with the start date of their debut tour, with the few exceptions of "Opponent in a bonus challenge/Playable" or "Added/Obtainable". This can easily be added to the "Tour debut" column with, in the example of Hammer Bro, "Baby Rosalina Tour (bonus challenge opponent)  Hammer Bro Tour (playable)", or Black Yoshi, with something along the lines of "Yoshi Tour (obtainable starting April 15, 2020)". MarioComix (talk) 04:31, November 21, 2020 (EST)

Galleries on tour pages
Okay, so there seems to be a bit of a difference when it comes to hosting image galleries on tour pages. I repeatedly tried creating a gallery on Mario vs. Luigi Tour's article for relevant artwork, but the edit was reverted every time, the reasons given being that it would be inconsistent with the other tour pages which do not feature a gallery and that we already have a main gallery to host the images--Gallery:Mario Kart Tour artwork. I find both of these arguments to be flawed. First, images can exist on multiple pages at once and many pieces of artwork have in fact always existed on multiple relevant pages without anyone raising it as a potential issue (see Mario's running artwork from Super Mario Bros., which is simultaneously present on both Mario's article and artwork gallery). Secondly, and as I have previously stated in a revision summary, "consistency" only regards the way we present a similar type of information between different pages, not the content itself. If that would be the case, we'd be well on our way to removing anything related to Token Shops from certain tour pages because older tours didn't feature them. I think this strife for consistency is exaggerated in this case and, besides, I doubt anyone would be thrown off by the presence of a singular image gallery in sea of pages that don't usually feature that. 19:18, November 20, 2020 (EST)
 * Well, the gallery page exists as a repository for all relevant images, in this case, all Mario Kart Tour screenshots and course icons. Though, if we parallel your example with a racecourse page instead of a tour page, like Maple Treeway, I would agree that the Maple Treeway page's gallery section should contain all images of Maple Treeway uploaded to the Wiki. What's interesting is that every tour page contains its profiles from the Mario Kart Tour Twitter, but each profile is accompanied with a screenshot. I would say that including each of those accompanying screenshots on the tour page would make for a convincing argument, and by extension, any relevant artwork. (I would even go a step further and say any screenshots referencing tour-exclusive elements like pipes or spotlight racers are also relevant, since all that information is covered on the tour page.) MarioComix (talk) 04:50, November 21, 2020 (EST)
 * Yeah, Maple Treeway's page is an even better example. If galleries don't belong to tour pages because there's already a main gallery, then why is this not the case for race course articles? Talk about inconsistency. 05:26, November 21, 2020 (EST)
 * I've gone ahead and reverted the edit because the idea of not allowing something that's worth adding and related to a subject makes zero sense to me. 05:59, November 22, 2020 (EST)
 * If I can find some free time I'll dig through the Mario Kart Tour Twitter and determine which images are relevant to each particular tour according to caption, and add those in as well. MarioComix (talk) 18:01, November 22, 2020 (EST)

Paid banners section
I’ve been adding the Paid banners section on the tour pages that didn’t have them, and I’m not sure if that would be too much for the pages. However, I still think it’ll be necessary to add them for each page. --
 * The banners are fundamental for the information on the availability (some karts are still unobtainable through means other than the commemorative banners), so thanks for adding them, definitely go on with that project of yours!--Mister Wu (talk) 12:43, November 23, 2020 (EST)

R, T and R/T courses
It has been inferred that these letters stand for "Reverse", "Trick" and "Reverse/Trick", which is apparent from the nature of the courses they define, but has Nintendo themselves capitalized these words anywhere? The only one I could source in this article is "Trick" (1, 2), which seems to have been used as an umbrella term for both T and R/T course variants, making it a vague choice. The in-game FAQs don't help the matter as far as I know. Is there anything useful in the game's newsletter or internal data regarding these terms, or may we just as well use them in their de-capitalized forms? 14:58, December 12, 2020 (EST)
 * The game uses capitalization in the text of the challenges, so I think it should be kept in this wiki as well.--Mister Wu (talk) 04:30, December 14, 2020 (EST)
 * These don't appear to refer to course types by their complete names, just their initials (Earn a score of 8,000 or higher on a T course.) I'm specifically interested in knowing if the former are formatted with a capital ("Reverse") or not ("reverse"). 05:09, December 14, 2020 (EST)
 * I don't think there has ever been an explanation of these initials except for the Trick Tour which is the explanation of the T much like the Extreme Tour in Japan is the explanation of the corresponding X, I think the safest approach would be to just use the initials instead of the full words, explaining in a single place (e.g. the main page) what they refer to.--Mister Wu (talk) 15:01, December 14, 2020 (EST)
 * This Twitter post is the closest to official terminology, I think, where there are no capitals. Looking to the Japanese twitter, this post specifically mentions "extreme" before listing the concept as "X course"; similarly, this post also says "reverse" (albeit in the sense of "the course is reversed") before listing the concept as "R course". I think that since the Japanese terminology is converging onto "reverse", and that it's intuitive, we can still call R courses as "reverse variants" (namely when on that course's page). MarioComix (talk) 20:00, December 14, 2020 (EST)

New Years 2021 Glider: New or Variant
So I'm just curious about this, but is it a little bit of a stretch to call the New Years 2021 glider a new glider? Aside from the obvious "1", the glider shares the same concept and same general shape (again, save for the one number difference) with the New Years 2020 glider, but much like other variants, it's a different color scheme. Personally, I feel like it's a variant of the New Years 2020 glider, but I'd rather not make any changes, as there could be reasons for it to qualify as a new glider over a variant. 23:32, December 16, 2020 (EST)
 * I'd heard that variants are counted because they actually share in-game files and/or are grouped into the same folder together. But I don't access the in-game data so I can't confirm anything. MarioComix (talk) 00:56, December 17, 2020 (EST)
 * We don't have access to the files yet but there's no need: the 3D model is different. In general, we don't use concept to determine variants as far as karts and gliders are concerned, because the variants in these cases share the 3D model and just change the textures applied, to the point that the variants are in the same folder as the original.--Mister Wu (talk) 16:26, December 17, 2020 (EST)
 * Alright then, thanks for the explanation. 00:11, December 18, 2020 (EST)

"Not available in the Week 1 Pipe" - Special Availability and Regular Availability
I noticed the recent edits added a lot of notes about drivers, karts, and/or gliders having special availability such as "X Tour (Week 2 spotlight)" that they are "not available in the Week 1 Pipe". While I was taking this to be assumed, that these tour-exclusive items are only obtainable from their special availabilities during certain tours, i.e. if a tour-exclusive item is available for "X Tour (Week 2 spotlight)", then we'd assume it's not available at any other time in that tour. But I'm thinking that leads to a conundrum, if I'm recalling correctly, items introduced in a tour as a spotlight item for one week, can still be obtained from the other week, e.g. Pauline (Party Time) was Week 1 spotlight for Holiday Tour, but could still be obtained in Week 2 Holiday Tour Pipe.

So I'm thinking we need to delineate these availabilities more, such as by having a "Regular availability" section that lists the "any tour" availabilities of items (including Daily Selects, the main weekly Pipes) and a "Special availability" that clearly delineates if an item has "X Tour (Week 1 non-spotlight, Week 2 spotlight)" kind of availability. MarioComix (talk) 05:05, December 18, 2020 (EST)
 * Well, I proposed this many times, so I can only agree with the column regarding the type of general availability as well as adding the non-spotlight availability. In general, the tour's spotlight items can be obtained in both 100-items pipes, but only in one pipe they are certainly obtained when emptying the pipe. There are also special cases, like the Christmas-themed spotlight items from the 2020 Winter Tour that are available also in the first 100-items pipe of the Rosalina Tour, even though they aren't spotlight in the Rosalina Tour.--Mister Wu (talk) 16:50, December 20, 2020 (EST)

Expanding the favored and favorite courses page
I’m currently thinking on how I would expand the page with the items that unlock courses at level 3 and level 6. For the indicators, I’m slightly questioned if should use astericks or footnote headers. For the locked items, should I include the the favored items to the favorite selection (with their indicators) while leaving them in the original spot? --
 * I'd add LV3 and LV6 so it should clearly show the superscript, maybe try and see if it works, I think you should add in the favored courses the ones that then become favorite, maybe if the superscript works you can add another superscript to explain that the course is then upgraded. In the courses page, it is very important to follow a similar approach - tracking which items get upgraded is quite time-consuming so this can be useful information, in my opinion.--Mister Wu (talk) 14:26, December 22, 2020 (EST)
 * I did it for 3DS Rainbow Road, and a few for 3DS Toad Circuit, but not all of the items, and it worked. I may do the same for the other courses as well. --

Use of present tense
Can somebody tell me why past tense verbs keep getting changed to present tense on course pages in sections about previous tours? It makes no sense to describe the past state of something in present terms (e.g. "Choco Island appears in the Exploration Tour"--an in-game event that ran back in July) and it's starting to get annoying with how vehemently this gets reinforced. 21:00, December 27, 2020 (EST)
 * Since present tense is most commonly used on the Wiki, I think they may be defaulting to reverting to present tense. In my opinion, until Mario Kart Tour settles on some kind of set schedule of recurring, identical tours, we should treat each tour as a one-time event and therefore they should use the past tense. (Technically the concurrent tour should use present tense too, but it makes things easier to just use past tense on that as well.) MarioComix (talk) 00:48, December 28, 2020 (EST)

Split?
So this is now the second longest non-list page on the wiki, and it loads slower than molasses at this point which makes it annoying to patrol edits and it's only going to get worse. I think it's time to start thinking about splitting this off into smaller, more manageable pages. -- 11:35, January 27, 2021 (EST)
 * I feel like we could easily split tho challenges to, as there's no immediate need to have that on the main game page. Similarly, we could split off the drivers, karts, and gliders into respective lists. However, no information should be permanently removed from the wiki. In addition, I archive the first 50 messages from this talk page to prevent it from becoming too bloated, similar to what with did with the Mario talk page. 11:40, January 27, 2021 (EST)
 * I definitely feel like there's potentially too many tables and images, such as all those tables just to explain points; they probably shouldn't be on the main page. For tables, if we set them to "collapse" (i.e. we can click to "show" or "hide"), would that decrease loading times? I also feel like we could split off several pages to house these tables specifically, such as maybe "Mario Kart Tour Shop" and "List of hazards, obstacles, and course elements in Mario Kart Tour"? MarioComix (talk) 18:51, January 27, 2021 (EST)

On the naming conventions of new variants and power-up forms
Now that we had a few new power-up form and the confirmation that Peachette is considered a power-up form of Toadette as she's put in Team Daisy, we can finally have a look at the naming conventions of the new power-up forms and variants.

Please note that the variants from previous games, such as Red Yoshi or Pink Shy Guy, just bear the name they had in the original game.

New characters

Their naming convention is just

[Name of character]


 * They always get completely new emblems
 * They often become regular drivers, found in every first and second pipe of each tour
 * When regular, they are eligible for getting their own cup

New power-up forms

They follow the general naming convention established in the Mario franchise, so save for special cases like Peachette the naming convention is

[Name of power-up form] [Name of character]


 * As revealed by Peachette in the Peach vs. Daisy rally, they are considered the same as the original character as far as grouping in team rallies is concerned
 * They sometimes get new emblems or at least recolored emblems
 * When they have a new or recolored emblem and when they are regular, they are eligible for getting their own cup

New variants

They follow this naming convention

[Name of character] ([Name of variant])


 * They are considered the same as the original character as far as the grouping in team rallies is concerned
 * As revealed by the Birdos, colored members of the species are now considered variants even if they are different characters
 * The colored variants get a recolored emblems, the others very frequently feature the same emblem as the original character
 * As suggested by the naming convention, they are not supposed to get their own cup

I think this sums up what we observed so far, based on these observations I introduced the (new power-up form) term in the driver list.--Mister Wu (talk) 11:49, February 12, 2021 (EST)


 * In my opinion, the "power-up form" concept is ignoring the major basis for the variant concept, which is that the variants are using the same model/skeleton as the base character (the example being like Echo Fighters from Smash Bros.). As far as the game is concerned, variants are all separate characters (as explained in the pipes, when they say how each character is delineated by their exact name). However, the reason we didn't separate variants out (besides for keeping the pages tidier) is that there is a clear sharing of assets between variants that new characters do not exhibit. In that sense, Peachette cannot be a variant of Toadette because they do not share those assets, and I believe she should count as a new character because all her voices, animations, and emblem are unique. The clearest example of shared assets between variants is when you tap them before the race starts; they all share that animation. Notably, Captain Toad actually shares all his animations with Toad, even his winning animations, so he's more similar to Toad than Peachette is to Toadette.
 * In short, I don't believe the "power-up form" nomenclature is significant because it ignores the concept of setting variants by assets as opposed to setting variants by name. (Like how the Calico Parafoil is not a variant of the Parafoil since they do not share assets.) Also notably, all power-up forms who were previously considered variants only had recoloured emblems, not new emblems. In my opinion, an entirely unique emblem is grounds for being a wholly new character (as we can see being applied on Captain Toad). MarioComix (talk) 18:11, February 12, 2021 (EST)

I'd like to suggest a new naming convention that will take into account whether the power-up form is variant-like (shares resources, animations, voices, and other assets with the base character, e.g. Penguin Luigi and Fire Rosalina) or character-like (does not necessarily share resources, voices, or other assets, e.g. Peachette or Ice Mario): power-up variant and power-up character. This way it incorporates the classification of power-up forms (which do not necessarily match the variant naming convention) as well as the basis for classifying variants in the first place (that they share assets with a base character). Are there any dissenting opinions or other feedback? MarioComix (talk) 16:57, February 19, 2021 (EST)
 * While it would be neat to be able to use a simple criterion like we do for the karts and gliders, we simply can't do that for drivers due to how differently are drivers organized: in that sense exclusively the colored variants are actual variants, as they reside in the same folder and apply a texture swap to the character. Even the variants flagged as such in the game stay in a different folder with different assets, most animations files of variants are completely different even when the animation is supposed to be the same, and often the voice clips are different as well, an example being Wintertime Peach saying "Wintertime!" when selected. I think we should rather focus on additional aspects stemming from how the game handles them: what I wrote above tries to start from there, now that we have more power-up forms showing us how they are handled compared to the openly stated variants. In my opinion Peachette being put in Team Daisy despite the clear connection with Peach strongly suggests how she's still seen as a Toadette form, which she effectively is. Of course, there's no perfect approach, and we can revert to just putting power-up forms and variants together if there's a consensus on that, it's just that with power-up forms following different naming conventions and team rallies being character-based I thought that it might have been useful to distinguish these two types of variants in the game, while clarifying in the process the reason behind the otherwise hard to explain placement of Peachette in Team Daisy.--Mister Wu (talk) 18:57, February 19, 2021 (EST)
 * That's the thing, right, is that the game effectively treats variants as separate characters. In order to simplify that approach, we came up with the variant approach, which was originally based on the relative sharing of assets between Mario and Mario (Musician) (versus, say, Metal Mario or Dry Bowser, who do not share the same range of assets, if at all). The most consistent one I've seen (but cannot yet confirm applies to all "variants") is the animation the character performs when performing a perfect rocket start (hold down from 2, then release at "go") - from what I've seen, Rosalina shares it with Rosalina (Aurora), while characters as similar as Hammer Bro and relatives all have a unique one. This isn't to say variants can't have unique attributes, like trick animations for Mario (Chef), winning animations for Mario (Musician), and voice lines for Peach (Wintertime). But dressing down a character with wholly unique assets into a power-up form is just inconsistent when we list Captain Toad as new, despite sharing almost all of his animations with Toad. It's true that team rallies place the same character with different forms into the same team, but that applies to the baby forms as well, who aren't necessarily power-up forms. After all, a "new character" introduced to the series is based on whether they've appeared in the series before, but these variants are essentially reusing assets from existing characters, hence their newness becomes murky.
 * There's a good analogy in the Echo Fighters from Super Smash Bros. Daisy is new to the series in Ultimate, but she is not considered a fully-fledged fighter because she still shares Peach's moveset - she is built on existing assets from Peach. But that isn't to say that characters who shared assets can't be their own figher, as seen in the case of the Melee clones all being their own fighter. Essentially, the variants are based on reusing particular assets (like emblems or the rocket start animation), hence why they don't sort out as a wholly new character. MarioComix (talk) 19:29, February 19, 2021 (EST)
 * For the record, Captain Toad shouldn't be considered a variant of Toad regardless of any shared assets since Captain Toad is confirmed to be a separate character. I prefer the "new power-up form" distinction since the old system had quirks like Ice Mario being considered a new driver outright when he really shouldn't have been. The old organization system relied way too much on digging into the files to determine exactly what a "variant" is which in some cases caused conflicts with what our eyes and common sense should have told us. -- 20:37, February 21, 2021 (EST)
 * If that's the case, then Birdos and Yoshis shouldn't be considered variants? And with Penguin Yellow Toad being added, would we have called him a "new character" instead of a "new variant"? I can't stress enough that we should not be labelling variants because they are the same character in-universe, but because the "new character" (the variant) is similar enough to the existing character that they don't constitute a wholly new character. Common sense tells us that if a "character" can fit as a costume swap, they are a variant. (Similarly, Peachette cannot be a costume swap of Toadette, hence "new power-up character" terminology). There is enough wiggle room with the "power-up character/variant" terminology I'm proposing that we could still label Captain Toad as a "new power-up character". MarioComix (talk) 21:38, February 21, 2021 (EST)
 * We can't go on like that exactly because of that Captain Toad case that showed that the developers often reuse assets regardless of the status of the character introduced - let's not make the mistake of not listening Nintendo on him being a unique character and likening him to Toadette (Explorer)! -, but much more importantly because we now have different data than at the beginning: now we know that the developers use a specific labeling for variants, and so far they also showed that even if a variant is permanently in the pipes and has an emblem recolor, they still don't get their own cup. Indeed, we should first and foremost label as variant the characters that were labeled as such by the developers. However, many editors were still labeling similar forms as variants as well even though they didn't have the variant labeling, they had a unique emblem and even their own cup, and while I wanted to correct this, the Peach vs. Daisy Tour happened and showed that this "mistake" had some merit: the forms of characters are indeed grouped with the characters in groupings like the ones seen in this tour. It's not a matter of finding the groupings, but rather the discovery of the implication that forms lead to grouping, the other direction of the implication. This is why I introduced the power-up form term: on one hand it makes life easier for the other editors who can clearly see when to actually use the new variant term, on the other it acknowledges these groupings that in the case of Peachette became pretty apparent. Since she has a new emblem, Peachette can be considered a new character like Ice Mario and both get their own cups, but at the same time they aren't necesarily as independent as Nabbit can be when it comes to groupings. Lastly, a clarification on the term used: at the moment new baby forms haven't been introduced, so I used a more specific term as it's again clearer than a generic new form term, of course if new babies pop up and they are confirmed to be grouped with the main characters, the new form term will be used. We can also use it right now, or we can just remove the new form terms altogether and only go with the new variant term applied to the characters clearly labeled as such; I still think that for editors this term can come in handy.--Mister Wu (talk) 12:06, February 22, 2021 (EST)
 * Is there a way to compromise on the situation, such as having "new power-up form"/"new power-up character"? This way, we can retain the information of characters being grouped together in Team Rallies ("power-up") as well as indicating when the character is relatively a wholly new character (like Peachette) versus when they are more variant-like (like Penguin Luigi)? MarioComix (talk) 17:52, February 22, 2021 (EST)

The Comet Tail as a variant of its unreleased kart
I've been thinking about this for the longest, and it's with the Comet Tail. I noticed that the unused texture of the kart, which was first found in the files during the Vancouver Tour, but was removed in the version 2.0.0 update, may have been the original texture of the kart, since its variant was released first, similar to how the Gilded Prancer, Dasher II and Pirate Sushi Racer were released before their original counterparts. I feel like it would be better if we consider it a variant. -- 19:07, February 21, 2021 (EST)
 * I say that until the original version is released, let's leave the Comet Tail as the "new kart". The original version is not a kart from a previous game that it could be a variant of, and since they removed it there's even a chance it never gets released. But if that original kart gets released, then I say it's probably fair to change the Comet Tail to be the variant. MarioComix (talk) 21:38, February 21, 2021 (EST)