Nintendo reveal testing in progress for Mario Kart on smartphones

In a move set to dash all your dreams of using your free time more productively, Nintendo has announced that it is the final stages of bringing Mario Kart to our smartphones.

The long-delayed mobile spin-off is now in ‘beta testing’ according to the Japanese tech giants, with the game itself set to be available this coming northern hemisphere summer.

It’s 27 years since the much-loved racing game hit the screens of youngsters around the world, with the release in the series on the Super Nintendo Entertainment Series (SNES) in 1992.

There have been as many as seven more reincarnations of the multi-player favourite with punters playing as Mario, Bowser, Toad and the rest on Nintendo 64, Game Boy, GameCube, Wii and most recently the Switch.

The franchise has seen the sale of as many as 140 million copies worldwide and the latest addition is set to attract just as much fanfare.

Nintendo originally announced they would release a phone version of the game in January last year but it has subsequently missed a number of deadlines.

But on Thursday it announced testing for the game, exclusively for Android users in the US and Japan.

Testing is scheduled to run through until early June, before its release, which expected to be available on both Android and iOS.