New 'Super Mario Run' Update Lets You Train for Toad Rally

If you keep getting your butt kicked at Toad Rally in Super Mario Run, there’s some good news: Nintendo just released an update that will let you practice the perfect run before putting your precious Toads on the line.

Mixed reviews for Super Mario Run ranged from enthusiastically positive to quickly frustrated, but developer and publisher Nintendo is already unleashing tweaks and updates to the pseudo-endless runner to make the experience on iOS a bit more pleasant for players. The new Friendly Run feature allows some free in-game practice for Toad Rally, which might just be the best part of the game, or it might be a frustrating mess. Regardless, we all need the practice.

After shelling out $9.99 for the full game and completing 24 standard Mario-styled levels in its World Tour, players can hunt down the pink, purple, and black coin runs on each stage, but by far the best experiences in Super Mario Run come from Toad Rally, a PvP game type that allows players to race against other gamers to recruit multicolored Toads to their kingdom to grow their empire and eventually access new playable characters.

What Friendly Run amounts to is virtually identical to Toad Rally, except it’s a no-risk, no-reward practice run specifically against people on your Friend’s List. Sure, it’s just practice, but it allows you to get some legit, IRL street cred when you beat your friends.

Booting up the game will require you to update to the latest version if you haven’t already, and you’ll receive some very direct information about the new feature straightaway.

For many, this will be a much appreciated opportunity to hone their skills without having to fork over a Toad Rally ticket and some high-value Toads in the event that they probably, definitely, inevitably lose horribly.

Select the Friends menu in the top-left of your Kingdom, and you’re off to the races. Unfortunately for the loners out there, you need actual friends to be able to do the Friendly Run, you can only do up to five daily, and you can’t race against the same friend twice.

If you don’t beat the first world, you only get to do one Friendly Run a day. Beating it gives you three of these runs, and beating the second world unlocks the full five daily runs. What this translates to is another facet of the game locked behind that $9.99 price tag. You can technically race your friends even without paying for the full game, but only one at a time per day.

Super Mario Run is out now on iOS and due out on Android sometime in 2017.