I’ve been looking forward to the game I’d been tentatively calling “Mario Kart 9” for years. Seriously, check out the dedicated Mario Kart page here on the website; five years ago, I was already putting together fantasy retro cups and talking about which characters could be included. I first played Super Mario Kart when I had a Super Nintendo in the early ’90s, and one of my favourite memories from my time spent working in the games industry is getting to play Mario Kart 8 in 2013 – a full year before it launched – at an official Nintendo press event. I’ve played every mainline game in the series on their original consoles (and maybe on a cheeky emulator, too) and I’ve had so much fun playing by myself and with friends. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is my most-played Switch game by quite a long way, and I still go back to it to play my favourite tracks every now and then.
So let’s re-emphasise that for the record: I am a Mario Kart fan!
Why do I feel the need to start this piece with such a big disclaimer? Well, having sat down to watch the Mario Kart World Nintendo Direct broadcast with pretty high expectations… I’m left feeling a little disappointed. Usually I don’t like to criticise a game before it’s even been released, but the way Nintendo is pitching Mario Kart World – and particularly how the corporation is pricing the game – hasn’t left a good first impression.
I knew and understood that Mario Kart World would have fewer racetracks than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has. That seemed blindingly obvious to me years ago, even before the Booster Course Pass doubled the number of tracks, so I don’t necessarily think it’s a problem or a bad thing that the new game will launch with what looks to be 32 race courses instead of 96. But… there’s no getting away from the fact that with fewer tracks comes less replayability and less diversity of environments. I can fire up Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and play a racetrack I haven’t seen in months; Mario Kart World’s roster – at one-third the size – will wear out its welcome relatively quickly in comparison.
And that comparison matters because, according to Nintendo, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (and presumably the Booster Course Pass, too) will be playable on the Switch 2. Not only that, but it’ll be slightly less expensive for way more racetracks: copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe retail for less than £40 here in the UK, with the Booster Course Pass as a downloadable add-on for an additional £22.50. The price of Mario Kart World is going to be £67 digitally or £75 for a physical copy.
Some of the new and re-imagined racetracks look good, don’t get me wrong. Boo Cinema looks especially creative, DK Spaceport looks new and retro at the same time, and I really liked the new look at Wario Stadium from the N64 – which, in its original form, was one of my least-favourite tracks from that game.
There are a couple of oddities, however, among the roster of tracks. Firstly, even if you put a gun to my head I wouldn’t have included Sky High Sundae; that bland track is one of the worst from the Booster Course Pass and when there were so many better options, I don’t know why a boring food-themed oval would be included here! DS Desert Hills was also fairly uninspired in its original form, though at least there’s a bit more room for improvement there, perhaps. I’m also a little concerned about the Crown City racetrack being part of two different cups; not sure what’s going on there or how those tracks will be different, but I guess we’ll find out.
On the character roster, my main of Dry Bones is included, which was important for me personally! And obviously the cute cow is going to be a fan favourite, as will new additions like the Hammer Bro and Monty Mole. But again… Mario Kart 8 Deluxe still comes out on top here, and there are going to be some pretty disappointed players whose favourite drivers aren’t coming back this time. The likes of Isabelle and the Villager from the Animal Crossing series, Link from Zelda, Diddy and Funky Kong, and most of the Koopalings from the Super Mario series don’t seem to be included. There are also noteworthy omissions from Mario Kart Tour – the phone game that has proven to be quite popular. King Bob-Omb, Donkey Kong Jr., and Peachette are all missing. And where oh where is Pink Gold Peach?!
There also appear to be no Mii characters or other user-created characters. Again, this could be a bit of a blow to players who liked to put themselves into the Mario Kart experience.
I’m not especially disappointed that underwater driving seems to have been removed. In most cases in Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8, underwater sections felt pretty samey, especially in tracks that weren’t really designed with that in mind. Amsterdam Drift is a case in point; its bland concrete channels filled with crystal-clear water felt nothing like the city they were supposed to represent. Having said that, removing a feature is something rare for the Mario Kart series… and Mario Kart World seems to have sacrificed several popular features and ways of racing.
In addition to underwater racing, we’re losing the glider and anti-gravity, too. This is going to be more of a limitation than you realise, as it’s going to impact which tracks can be brought into the new game in future. Courses like Mario Kart 8′s Mario Circuit, which used anti-gravity in a big way, or Piranha Plant Cove, which was almost entirely underwater, seem to be ruled out as future inclusions due to these changes.
And we’re still just getting started with removed features. Battle Mode seems to have gotten a significant downgrade, not only in terms of there being fewer battle types available, but also with a lack of dedicated battle arenas. The Direct didn’t focus on Battle Mode for long, as it’s seemingly an afterthought in Mario Kart World, but from what we did see, all of the battle mode footage seems to be taking place on regular racetracks. Some of the tracks may have areas cordoned off to turn them into makeshift arenas, but that’s hardly the same thing has creating dedicated, hand-crafted ones. Fans of Battle Mode (a category into which I do not fall) may not be thrilled with these changes.
Then we come to the vehicles themselves. Kart customisation has been entirely removed. Instead of choosing wheels, bodies, and gliders separately – as we did in Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8 – karts now come as complete units. There are different models to choose from, sure, but again the lack of customisation means there’s less choice than in previous titles. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had literally hundreds of possible combinations, but Mario Kart World is narrowing this down with pre-made karts and bikes.
200cc mode has been present in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Mario Kart Tour, but again it was noticeably absent from the Nintendo Direct. Is it possible that this mode is locked by default and needs to be unlocked through gameplay? Sure… but then why hasn’t Nintendo said so? Is it possible that this mode is locked and needs to be paid for to unlock it? That was the case in Tour, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reason for Nintendo’s radio silence. I’m gonna level with you – I’m a 150cc racer! 200cc has always been a bit too fast for my taste, but again it’s not just about what I want or what I’d miss. The fact that this mode – which is popular with some of Mario Kart’s biggest fans – is missing is significant.
So let’s recap. There are fewer battle modes with seemingly no dedicated battle areas. One-third as many racetracks as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Missing drivers, including some fan-favourites from the most recent game in the series. No vehicle customisation. No underwater or anti-gravity racing. And possibly no 200cc mode. If that’s the sum total of what’s been removed, it begs the question… what’s going to take the place of all of these missing features?
Mario Kart World’s marketing thus far has really hyped up its open world. That’s the main new feature; an inclusion so big it’s literally in the game’s title.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: an open world is not the right choice for a lot of games. Too many franchises and series that try to emulate this popular style not only don’t do a good job, but they lose what made their earlier iterations so successful and/or unique in the process. There are plenty of examples of bland open worlds that are just too empty and too devoid of meaningful gameplay to be fun… and parts of the Mario Kart World Direct and marketing material are making me feel nervous in that respect.
If the free roam mode were an entirely optional thing, I guess I’d say it wasn’t a huge deal. It would still be frustrating in some ways that Nintendo chose to add this open world area at the expense of some of the features, characters, and gameplay components we talked about above, but if it’s an optional thing that I can turn off and not engage with… that’s tolerable, right? But Mario Kart World is being built from the ground up around this open world mechanic… and I’m concerned that it’s going to have a negative impact on the main thing I want out of a Mario Kart game: fun, arcadey racing.
Driving from one racetrack to the next, either in Grand Prix mode or in one of the Knockout Rallies, could be a lot of fun, but that’ll depend on how interesting the in-between areas actually are. Some of the free roam highways and roads looked pretty straightforward, with not many twists or turns and no noticeable obstacles aside from a few cars. But what really concerns me the most is that in this mode – which is apparently the default – races are knocked down from the usual three laps to just one.
To reiterate that: instead of racing three laps of each racetrack, the default option in Mario Kart World will be to race one lap, with these in-between sections taking up the rest of your time. Even if the open world is bigger, more interesting, and laid out better than I’m expecting based on what I’ve seen so far… that can’t be right, can it? The whole point of a Mario Kart game is to race around fun, well-constructed, cleverly-designed racetracks. To cut back on the main aspect of gameplay for this open world aspect just strikes me as being wrong; it’s as if Nintendo’s own developers and producers don’t realise what people want, expect, and enjoy the most in a Mario Kart game.
There have been open world racing games before. Forza Horizon 5 is one – and that’s a game I happen to really enjoy. But games like that are designed in such a way that every road and off-road track can be raced on, and I just don’t get that impression from Nintendo’s marketing material so far. If you’ve played Forza Horizon 5, for example, you’ll know that basically every road in the game is included in at least one race, and there are all kinds of different vehicles, different races to get involved in, and different challenges out in the open world. There’s no distinction between the racetrack and the open world; every road can be driven on in free roam mode and raced on in a variety of different races. That doesn’t appear to be true of Mario Kart World, which seems to have 32 racetracks separated by open world areas.
The Nintendo Direct was the best opportunity to sell Mario Kart World and to show off how dense and full of stuff to do its open world is. Based on what was on display, I’m just not feeling very confident in this aspect of the game. And when the open world is so important to Mario Kart World that Nintendo is even willing to cut out laps of the main racetracks in Grand Prix mode, that isn’t great.
As far as I could see, there are four things to do in the open world. Firstly, you can drive from one racetrack to another in either the Rally or GP modes. Secondly, there are switches to hit which allow you to collect blue coins. What these coins do or whether there’s any point to them beyond a collect-a-thon wasn’t clear. Third, there’s a second kind of coin referred to as a “Peach Medallion” to collect. Again, what these do isn’t clear. Finally, there are question-mark panels to hit – but what these do, and what the point of hitting them is, wasn’t explained.
Mario Kart isn’t a big, deep narrative experience. I don’t care about “spoilers” in a game like this, because there really isn’t anything substantial to spoil. So to me, this feels like a pretty big marketing fail on Nintendo’s part. By not explaining these open-world features in a bit more detail, Nintendo has left me with the impression that the blue coins, medallions, and question-blocks are basically going to be akin to the pigeons in Grand Theft Auto IV insofar as they don’t do anything, add nothing of substance to the game, and just serve to pad things out with unnecessary busywork for players. They could be an attempt to compensate for the lesser number of racetracks while offering a half-hearted justification for the open world format.
I could be wrong about that – and if so, I’ll definitely make a note of that if and when I play the game for myself. But speaking as someone who used to work in video games marketing, the fact that I’m coming out of this presentation with such a poor impression of the game’s biggest new feature and key selling-point? That’s not good, and Nintendo needs to do more in the weeks before Mario Kart World launches to clarify what some of these semi-hidden collectables will actually do, and if there’s going to be more to the open world than has been revealed so far.
In theory, an open world Mario Kart game is not a bad idea. But the open world side of the game – if it’s going to be implemented in this way as a core feature around which basically the entire rest of the game is being built – needs to have more to offer than we’ve seen so far. A few random collectables doesn’t, in my view, justify sacrificing a dozen or more dedicated racetracks that could’ve been added to the game, and driving in between races doesn’t seem like it’s gonna feel all that special if all there is to drive on are straight highways or empty off-road fields and patches of dirt. This free roam mode could be a fun idea if it were just a little additional area for players to muck about in while waiting in a multiplayer lobby, or to kill time with a friend on the couch. But when the entire game is built around an open world like this… let’s just say I hope it’s better than it looks and has much more going on than we’ve seen so far.
Art styles are a subjective thing, and there’s no denying that Mario Kart World looks better than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe did. But I’ll be blunt: I don’t think it looks a lot better. The art style is basically the same as it was in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and while there’s more texture to some parts of the game – like tyres, for example, or the metal on a Bullet Bill – I’m just having a hard time seeing the graphics as being a significant upgrade given the price hike.
Mario Kart World will be, at launch, the most expensive racing game on the market. Heck, it’s technically the most expensive video game of all-time as no other Switch 2 titles are launching at £75/$80. But when you take even a cursory look around at other racing games, even in the arcade racing space, Mario Kart World looks positively last-gen. Again, this isn’t a criticism of the graphics or art style on their own, but rather how the game is priced relative to its competitors and how the price is seen in relation to the most recent entry in the series.
After more than eleven years and two entire console generations, Mario Kart World ought to be a massive step up in visual terms. But it isn’t. It’s a step up, sure, I won’t try to deny that. But it doesn’t feel like a game that can really push the Switch 2 to its limits. Even if we compare the Switch 2 to the previous-generation Xbox One and PlayStation 4, there are games on those consoles which looked better and did more with graphical fidelity than Mario Kart World is seemingly aiming for.
In this respect, I feel like Nintendo is cheaping out. The corporation knows it has a winner in the Mario Kart series (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold something like 60 million copies on the Switch) so there’s less of a need to push the boat out. Resources that could’ve been spent on improving the game’s overall visual style and graphical fidelity have been reallocated, because Nintendo feels confident that the new game will sell incredibly well no matter what.
There was a moment in the Mario Kart World direct where my favourite racer, Dry Bones, does a little spin and momentarily faces the camera. That animation seems practically unchanged from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (and trust me, I’ve spent hundreds of hours with Dry Bones in that game, so I know what his trick animations look like!) Neither the animation nor the character model itself look or feel noticeably different to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and I’m left underwhelmed by that. Nintendo has had years to work on improving the way Mario Kart looks… this new entry in the series feels like the least-impressive upgrade so far, at least in graphical terms.
Nintendo isn’t the only company to be graphically stuck, of course. I noted before the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 launched that this console generation was likely to be the least-impressive so far in terms of graphical upgrades, and I think four-and-a-bit years of cross-generational games have more than born that out! But Nintendo has been years behind Xbox and PlayStation in terms of graphical fidelity, so there was an opportunity with the Switch 2 and Mario Kart World to get closer to what current-gen (or even just last-gen) consoles were capable of. That opportunity doesn’t appear to have been taken, at least not fully.
So Mario Kart World looks better, but only iteratively so. Its deliberately cartoony style and bright colours covers some of that up, and I wouldn’t say anything about the game looks bad. But from my perspective, nothing about it blew me away, either – and again, this comes back to the price point. For $80, and as the most expensive racing game of all-time, does Mario Kart World look good enough? Is the graphical upgrade significant enough to justify a $20 price hike from a mere one generation ago?
Mario Kart World is going to add some new features that look like a lot of fun. I noted above that anti-gravity racing is gone, but replacing it will be grinding on rails and hopping on vertical surfaces. These look like they have some potential to open up different ways to race, and I’m in favour of that. Gliders may be gone, but racing in the air isn’t, with karts seemingly transforming into planes at different points. Again, this looks like it could be a lot of fun, and while it’s not exactly ground-breaking in the way the introduction of gliders was in Mario Kart 7, I’m at least pleased to see it remains a part of the Mario Kart experience.
Then we have a feature that I can already tell is gonna be controversial: re-winding gameplay! Speaking for myself, I can see this having a very specific use: practicing particularly difficult jumps or shortcuts. Think about it: how many times have you played a track with a very precise shortcut, only to fail it and have to re-start? This re-wind feature seems like it’ll help players who want to practice certain parts of racetracks, and I don’t really have an issue with that. I don’t see it being especially useful in actual races, though, but it almost feels like an accessibility feature in some respects, which if you know me you’ll know I’m keen on in games in general.
After proving to be a big hit in Mario Kart Tour (and Super Mario Odyssey, too) character costumes are coming to Mario Kart World. I like this – and I like the idea of unlockables! I just hope that Nintendo isn’t planning on selling skins like they did in Tour, trying to pretend like the most expensive racing game of all-time is a free-to-play mobile title. As I won’t be buying a Switch 2 at launch, I’ll be able to keep an eye on this from afar, and if it seems like a crappy skin marketplace is going to be added, that’ll be a huge red flag against Mario Kart World for me.
I gotta say, though, the way some of these costumes are unlocked feels a bit… weird. I mean, the way it was explained is that you visit some kind of roadside food truck, acquire a dish, and then your character is transformed. When I watched the Switch 2 Direct, I thought it was funny that Mario ate a cheeseburger then was wearing a stereotypically “American” outfit. That couldn’t be on purpose, I thought! But no, that’s literally how this mechanic works. Eat sushi and you get a Japanese costume. Eat a burger and your character turns into an American. I guess if you want to get a Spanish outfit you eat paella? Or if you eat fish and chips you turn British? It’s funny in some ways… I guess. But it also feels like it’s kind of stereotyping whole countries and cultures, boiling them down to one dish and one type of outfit. It also wasn’t made clear how many alternate outfits are present in the game – and whether characters like Dry Bones will have any. It seems like every character should have alternate appearances if this consuming food mechanic is a universal thing, but again this wasn’t explained in any of the marketing material.
There are things I like in Mario Kart World. Some of the new items look interesting, like the coin shell and the ice flower. Kamek’s magic could be interesting, too, though I suspect it’ll be somewhat limited. I like the idea of character costumes even if I’m not entirely sold on how they’re unlocked and implemented. And there are some fun looking racetracks – both brand-new ones and reimagined retro courses. If Santa Claus gave me Mario Kart World for free, I would play it, I’d enjoy at least parts of it, and it would probably end the generation among my most-played Switch 2 games.
But a game can be good and still underwhelming, delivering a fun experience while failing to live up to the expectations that have been set for it. By pricing the game so high, Nintendo has set expectations that its marketing material strongly suggests Mario Kart World will not reach. Given the corporation’s penchant for monetisation and microtransactions, I’m also concerned that things like new tracks, new drivers, new costumes, and even items might be sold separately, driving up that sky high price even further.
So that’s how I feel coming out of the Mario Kart World Direct.
Nintendo has, in my view, not handled this situation particularly well. Mario Kart World’s marketing campaign is overwhelmingly dominated by its record-setting price point, meaning everything is being viewed through that lens. The sky high price comes with sky high expectations, and Mario Kart World may struggle to meet them for some players – such as myself. Of particular concern is the open world – will there be enough to do and enough variety of driving experiences in between the racetracks to make it a worthwhile addition to Mario Kart? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
I hope this has been interesting – and not too depressing. If you’re beyond hyped for Mario Kart World, please keep in mind that all of this is just one player’s entirely subjective opinion, and I’m not trying to tell anyone how to feel or that they shouldn’t be excited for this game. In many ways, I’m still excited to play a new Mario Kart game. I’m just a little concerned that it won’t be as spectacular as it arguably should be given its price point, and as someone who used to work in games marketing, I’m left decidedly underwhelmed by the campaign Nintendo has created for its new console’s flagship launch title.
Mario Kart World will release alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 on the 5th of June 2025. Mario Kart World (and other titled mentioned above) is the copyright of Nintendo. Some promotional art courtesy of IGDB and/or the Mario Wiki. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 