10 years after its last patch, Mario Kart 7 just got a new update

Best 3DS games - Mario Kart 7 — (Image credit: Nintendo)

Mario Kart 7 has just received a new patch, its first in just over 10 years.

As spotted by Kotaku, Nintendo recently rolled out the Version 1.2 update for Mario Kart 7. Prior to this, the last time the game was updated was way back in May 2012 - a little over 10 years ago. Unfortunately, this update didn't give us much to get excited about. The patch note for this update simply reads: "Several issues have been addressed to improve the gameplay experience."

For comparison, the last update (Ver. 1.1) implemented a number of fixes including changes to courses such as Wuhu Loop, Maka Wuhu, and Bowser's Castle 1. We shouldn't be too surprised though considering most players have moved onto Mario Kart 8 for Nintendo Switch these days. Speaking of which, we recently got a new set of Mario Kart 8 booster courses which included Peach Gardens, Maple Treeway, and another Rainbow Road.

A few weeks ago, a few other older Nintendo titles also received random updates that didn't really do much to the games. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, ARMS, Splatoon 2, and Super Mario Maker 2 all received patches that mostly went under the radar. The only patch note given here was: "Adjustments have been made to make the game more comfortable to play," which isn't too dissimilar from the Mario Kart 7 patch mentioned above.

Nintendo dataminer @OatmealDome on Twitter - who was the one to dissect all of the updates featured above - has a theory though. Replying to their own tweet about the Mario Kart 7 patch, the dataminer said: "There is even a possibility that this patch fixes the same security bugs as the other games since Mario Kart 7 is a first-party Nintendo game and could use a lot of the same common netcode that was found to be vulnerable."

This minor update doesn't really affect players much these days but if you are still playing Mario Kart 7 on your Nintendo 3DS, the racing game might play a little better now.

Looking for a Mario Kart alternative? Take a look at our best racing games list.

CATEGORIES

PRODUCTS

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.