| Mario Kart World | |||
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| Gameplay & Story | Release Date | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Mario Kart World has officially hit the tracks as the newest installment in the iconic Mario Kart series. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
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Mario Kart World Review Overview
What is Mario Kart World?
Mario Kart World is a racing game developed and published by Nintendo, released on June 5, 2025, as a launch title for the Nintendo Switch 2. It serves as the ninth main installment in the Mario Kart series and the first original console entry since Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U in 2014. This title introduced several innovations, including an open-world structure and a more expanded multiplayer capability.
As an open-world game, Mario Kart World lets players traverse a fully interconnected map that links various race tracks and environments, such as the Mushroom Kingdom, Crown City, and Starview Peak, without any loading screens in between. The game also features dynamic weather and time-of-day systems that affect track conditions and visibility. The primary objective here, though, remains consistent with the series: compete against other characters from the Mario universe to reach the finish line first.
This title also expands multiplayer races to accommodate up to 24 participants, the largest number in the series to date. New gameplay mechanics include the Charge Jump, which allows players to leap over obstacles and perform wall-riding maneuvers, and the Rewind feature, which enables drivers to reset their position after errors. The game also introduces new items like the Coin Shell and Ice Flower, as well as new characters such as Goomba and Cow. Multiplayer modes support both local split-screen and online play, with features like GameChat enhancing communication among players.
Mario Kart World features:
⚫︎ Open World and Free Roam Mode
⚫︎ 24-Player Races
⚫︎ Knockout Tour and Grand Prix Modes
⚫︎ Dynamic Weather and Day/Night Cycle
⚫︎ New Movement Mechanics
⚫︎ GameChat Integration
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Mario Kart World’s gameplay and story.
 Nintendo Switch 2 |
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| Price | $79.99 | ||||
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Mario Kart World Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Knockout Tour is Insanely Fun Gorgeous Visuals with Stable 60fps Performance Amazing Soundtrack Massive Replay Value, Especially With Friends |
Sample 1 Open World is Underwhelming Solo, and Almost NonExistent in Multiplayer Character Select Screen is Cluttered and Hard to Navigate Outfits are Hard to Obtain Without a Guide |
Mario Kart World Overall Score - 86/100
Mario Kart World is a bold evolution of the Mario Kart formula, one that experiments yet still comes out ahead, mostly on sheer fun factor. The open-world structure stumbles in places, the proccess of unlocking costumes is odd, and the character choices are… quirky, but when you’re screaming down a highway with 23 other maniacs, none of that really matters. Whether you’re chasing ghosts in Time Trial or just trying to survive Knockout Tour with your dignity intact, there’s an incredibly infectious energy to it all. It’s not the cleanest kart in the garage, but it might be the most entertaining ride Nintendo’s ever rolled out.
Mario Kart World Story - 7/10
There's no real story in Mario Kart World, but I love how its open world lets players create their own. It's a bummer you can't cruise around with friends in multiplayer—no photo ops or missions together—but it's still expansive and a blast. You'll get to roam as a bunch of quirky racers like Dolphin, Penguin, and Cow, which is cool since they've finally graduated from just being stage hazards. I wish they had a better starting roster, but it is what it is. Still holding out for Link and the Koopalings to make a comeback, though.
Mario Kart World Gameplay - 9/10
Racing in Mario Kart World still feels as tight and chaotic as ever, but now with extra layers of mayhem thanks to new movement tricks like rail grinding and wall riding that are as flashy as they are tricky to master. There are now 24 drivers, items flying in every direction, and just enough depth to reward the daring. Knockout Tour is an absolute madhouse in the best way possible, while Grand Prix still delivers those classic white-knuckle sprints, even if the pacing sometimes gets weird. Time Trials remain a rabbit hole obsession for speedrunners, and Battle Mode is sort of underwhelming. Maybe the last one's just not for me, but the whole package is souped up with enough new tricks to keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the next corner.
Mario Kart World Visuals - 10/10
Mario Kart World isn’t the flashiest game on the Switch 2 (Cyberpunk 2077 takes that cake, personally), but it’s easily one of the best looking. The slightly punchier, more cartoonish art direction pops beautifully on a 4K display, and the game’s crisp resolution and smooth 60fps even in handheld mode make everything, from drifting through lava caverns to wiping out in a pileup, look clean and sharp. It’s especially impressive how seamless the visuals are across the entire map, with little to no loading screens in sight. Also, minor note, but the water in this game is gorgeous.
Mario Kart World Audio - 10/10
The soundtrack in Mario Kart World absolutely goes for gold. With over 200 new tracks that riff on everything from Yoshi’s Island to Donkey Kong Country, it’s like a playable mixtape of nostalgia with a modern flair. Every course feels elevated by its own personality-filled theme, whether you’re tearing through a volcano or cruising under a neon-lit overpass. It's a surprisingly joyful listen, even if you’re too busy dodging blue shells to notice it in the moment.
Mario Kart World Value for Money - 7/10
$80 is no small ask, and I totally understand why some folks might balk at that price, especially if they’re not the type to chase 1st place in each Grand Prix cup or grind every last costume. But the game presents a really good time, packed with enough charm and replayability to justify the cost if you’re planning to stick with it for years to come. It might not be worth full price for folks who just want to breeze through the cups and call it a day, but for anyone who gets it bundled with a Switch 2, you’re effectively paying closer to $50—and at that rate, it’s a much easier sell.
Mario Kart World Review: It’s-A-Mazing, Mario
It usually starts with someone pulling out their Switch and asking if we want to play a few races. We all collectively say, "sure" and immediately hear the rustle of Joy-Cons being passed around. That’s how Mario Kart entered my life: intermittently, almost ceremoniously, whenever a group of friends gather around a TV or sprawls across couches during game nights.
I’ve never actually owned Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, despite the years of good press and the fact that it’s become the de facto party game of its generation. It always felt like something that would simply be there for me, floating around in the social ether, easy to access without needing to personally commit. Almost everyone had the game with a Switch had the game. And now, with Mario Kart World debuting as the next mainline title on the Nintendo Switch 2, things are different. Not just because I got the game bundled with my console, but because this feels like the future of the franchise in a way no other entry has since Double Dash!! shook things up.
Mario Kart’s been a staple of Nintendo’s library since 1992, when Super Mario Kart launched on the SNES and set the groundwork for every mascot racer that followed. Over the decades, it's become so popular that one look at a red shell or blue shell will bring the series to mind. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a souped-up version of the Wii U original, became the best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch, and for years, it felt like that momentum would carry indefinitely. But Mario Kart World is finally here—eight years after 8 Deluxe’s debut—and with it comes a new era for the series.
I did, at first, find it weird that Mario Kart World ended up being the Switch 2’s marquee launch title. Not because it’s a bad game (far from it), but because I expected Nintendo to open the floodgates to something seismic, something that could rival Breath of the Wild on the original Switch. A new 3D Mario, perhaps. A surprise release of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. Anything that had the pressure of carrying a whole console generation on its shoulders.
And yet, after spending over a week playing it in my spare time, I started to get it. Whether it was tearing through open-world hub areas just to find shortcuts or racing my ass off in Grand Prix and Knockout Tour trying (and failing) to get those three-stars, World managed to burrow into my routine. It didn’t demand my attention the way a massive story-driven game might, but it earned it anyway, bit by bit, race by race.
A Grand Tour of a Familiar Shell
Booting up Mario Kart World, you’re greeted not by an opening cinematic or a pan across its new landscapes, but by something far more familiar: a plain, almost underwhelming set of menus, with Mario driving in the background. If you’ve played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, you might get a sense of déjà vu—Single Player, Multiplayer, Online, Wireless Play, all lined up like it’s still 2017. There’s no prompt to announce the game’s biggest new feature. No fireworks going off to show that, yes, this is the new entry that finally brings open world to the series. In true Nintendo fashion, it tells you very little.
The game doesn’t bother to hold your hand either. Sure, there’s a help menu that explains nearly every system and mechanic, like slipstreaming and kart stats—but let’s be honest, who actually clicks into that unless they’re stuck at writing a review? Like many Nintendo games, World expects you to stumble your way into discovering new things, figuring out its quirks and features through experimentation, or, more likely, accidental button presses.
As embarassing as it may be, that’s exactly how I found Free Roam. Sitting quietly in the lower corner of the main menu, a small prompt tells you to press the "+" button. Do so, and without any fanfare or load screen, the game plops you into its open world; wherever your racer happened to be on the menu screen, that’s where you now are. It’s fast and fluid. Just a transition, and you’re in, driving. It sets the tone for what Mario Kart World appears to be trying to do: make something big and interconnected without making a big deal out of it.
And make no mistake, the open world is big. It links together all but one of the game’s 30 race tracks. These tracks are nestled into a map made up of highways and mountain passes and urban intersections packed with traffic. In nearly every mode—Grand Prix, Time Trial, Knockout Tour—you’ll find yourself using these roadways to get from one race to the next, and while they’re rarely the highlight, they add a sense of place to the whole experience, as though you’re actually moving through a "world."
The Free Roam mode builds on that by letting you explore this interconnected map at your leisure. There’s no timer for you to think of, no princess in the castle that needs immediate saving; there’s just you, your kart, and a ridiculous number of Peach Medallions, P Switch Challenges, and Question Panels scattered across the map.
P Switch missions are timed challenges. Some of them are pretty basic, almost like they're teaching you a game mechanic. Others genuinely test your ability to exploit Mario Kart's new movement mechanics (wall-riding and rail-grinding). A few of them, though, like the one in Shy Guy Bazaar, are genuinely tough and forced me to retry more times than I'd like to admit before even seeing the goal. And then there are the Peach Medallions and Question Panels, which are often tucked into devilish little corners that make you stop and actually think about your momentum, your jump angle, or how far your glider can carry you if you boost just before takeoff. All these interactables reward you with Stickers, which you can use to design your kart. You can only stick 'em on one at a time, which, yeah, is a bit of a bummer, but I guess the real fun is in conquering the challenge itself, not just grabbing the reward.
But some of the fun in Mario Kart World can come from the dumbest of things. I’ve spent entire sessions doing nothing of value; just launching myself off overpasses, gliding as far as possible into canyons, or trying to hijack a semi-truck and cause a six-car pile-up on the freeway. For younger players, or just people who like to mess around with game systems, this is a fun sandbox. There’s no pressing need to do anything, and that freedom is nice to have in a Mario Kart game.
A Half-Baked Horizon
However, I can’t shake the feeling that Free Roam was pitched as something a little bigger than what we got. I remember Nintendo marketing it as a big social feature which you can explore, take photos in, and find secrets with friends. And while that’s still technically possible, the execution feels half-baked. Local multiplayer in Free roam is, in a word, nonexistent. There are workarounds, sure. If you’re waiting in a local or online match lobby, you and one other player can drive around the open world. But even then, it’s a stripped-down version of it. All the aforementioned challenges are disabled, which completely guts the point. Sure, you can still play around with it and take a few screenshots, but between the setup and the limited ways to interact, it's too much trouble for too little payoff.
And it’s frustrating, because when Free Roam works, it really works. There’s joy in the wandering, in finding those medallions tucked just out of reach, or mastering a challenge you discovered by accident. But then you realize there’s no real way to track your progress. You don’t know which zones you’ve cleared, which challenges you’ve completed, or even where half of the collectibles are hiding unless you employ the help of guides.
The Core of Four
Once you’ve poked around Mario Kart World’s Free Roam for long enough, it’s only a matter of time before the real action calls: the actual races. This is where the game’s more structured modes live: Grand Prix, Knockout Tour, Time Trials, and Battle Mode. All of them take place within the same interconnected world, but they approach it in vastly different ways.
Grand Prix is the most traditional. Here, four tracks are chained together in themed cups, though now reimagined through World’s new open format. Knockout Tour is an endurance run where you fight to avoid elimination during a multi-part gauntlet. Time Trials is for the speed freaks who want to practice their fastest clears and race against other ghosts. And Battle Mode, as always, is where the items fly freely and the goal mostly is just to survive.
Of the bunch, Knockout Tour is easily my favorite. This mode is basically one long race, broken up by elimination checkpoints. Every lap, the bottom four racers get the boot, and you just keep going until only a few are left to duke it out in a proper course finale. It’s a format that makes full use of the open world in an exciting way. You’re almost always racing not to lose, and that shift gives the whole mode this adrenaline-spiked energy. I’ve had moments where I was stuck in 21st place (out of 24!), only to hit a mushroom shortcut, dodge two red shells and catapult into the top 5 just before elimination. Sure, you can chalk that up to rubber-banding, the sheer anarchy of 24 racers throwing items, and the AI adapting to player skill (I'm not that good at the game most of the time), but it’s all just pure fun.
That said, Grand Prix is still a close second to me. It’s familiar comfort food, yes, but the way World threads the races together through highway segments gives it a different rhythm. You start with a full-length lap on a classic-style course, then it’s out onto the roads—dodging traffic, cutting through shortcuts, tricking every chance you get—until you arrive at the next checkpoint. The twist is that the actual "track" portions after the first race are shorter now, sometimes even just a straight road, which I was skeptical about at first. However, what saves it for me is how good the tracks themselves are. World’s Rainbow Road in particular is right up there with Mario Kart 7’s as one of my all-time favorites: stunning visuals, clever layout, just the right balance of fun and terror of not falling off the road.
Time Trials, admittedly, is the mode I’ve touched the least so far, but even from the sidelines, I’ve seen what this game’s high-level play looks like, and it’s bonkers. The rail-grinding, wall riding, and charge jumps turn almost everything in a course into a shortcut. I’ve even watched Time Trial ghosts blaze through tracks by launching off rails I didn’t even know were usable to cut across terrain. There’s clearly a lot of depth here, and even if I’m not personally chasing world records, watching what’s possible has made me want to dip back in and push these new movement tools to their limits. This might be the most "techy" Mario Kart has ever felt.
Then there’s Battle Mode, which is… fine. Serviceable. Fun in the right group, but not exactly the crown jewel here for me. There are only two modes, Balloon Battle and Coin Runners, and they’re mostly hosted on small sections repurposed from the main tracks. I did, though, still had a great time here. Hurling shells at your friends while screaming across the room remains a core tenet of the Mario Kart experience, and World doesn’t mess that up.
What I do wish, though, is that Battle Mode had just a little more bite. Something new. It gets the job done—especially if you're playing with friends—but the AI opponents just don’t bring the same unpredictability or personality that your friends do. With no real rewards or long-term progression tied to it either, it’s the kind of mode I dip into every now and then, but never really linger in.
Where Are My Koopalings?!
It’s hard to complain about Mario Kart World shipping with a staggering 50 playable characters right out the gate, but the quality of the roster feels a bit mediocre. Sure, the number is impressive on paper, especially if you’re counting costumed characters, but I’d argue that the wow factor just isn’t quite there this time around. I agree that it’s cute I can now race as a Snowman or a Penguin, and Goomba finally gets its moment in the driver’s seat, but at what cost? Where’s Link? Where are the Inklings? Where are my damn Koopalings? I don’t even main them, but it’s a little sad to see such characters that helped make Mario Kart 8 Deluxe feel like the franchise’s own Smash Bros. moment completely absent in favor of literal stage hazards as characters.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not above the charm of choosing Cow or Dolphin once in a while, but when I look at this roster, it’s hard not to feel like some of the personality and crossover appeal from the last generation has been traded in for novelty. Adding Mario Sunshine’s Cataquack is kind of genius, but I can’t help but wonder if a few of these picks were added just because they were technically modeled already. A part of me respects the weirdness, but another part just misses the satisfaction of unlocking a fan favorite like Cranky kong or Metal Mario and actually feeling like it mattered. Granted, we might get more racers in future updates, so I’m holding out hope.
What makes this weirder is how Mario Kart World handles the character select screen, which might be one of the least user-friendly UIs Nintendo has ever designed. Instead of letting you pick a base character and then choose from a variety of costumes via a submenu (like with color variants in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe), World treats every single costume as a separate character slot. That means Cowboy Mario, Happi Mario, and Sightseeing Mario all occupy their own spots, somewhere across multiple pages of an ever-growing roster.
What’s even more frustrating is how you unlock these outfits. Instead of handing them to you if you win X amount of races, you earn costumes by eating the right Dash Foods mid-race or during Free Roam at Yoshi’s restaurant, but there’s no in-game logic or tracker that tells you which food does what. And as if that wasn’t hard enough, most characters can only be unlocked via complete randomness: by getting hit with the new Kamek item and hoping you morph into someone you didn’t already have.
To be fair, though, most of these alternate outfits are great. The Supercharged Bowser and Aristocrat King Boo, for instance, look unreasonably dapper. There’s even a Waluigi vampire costume literally called "Wampire," and if that’s not the kind of energy this series needs more of, I don’t know what is. I love that Mario Kart has leaned into having fun with cosmetics.
I get that World is going for a big, experimental energy, and that includes some wild swings when it comes to the character lineup. But next time, I’d like those swings to feel a little more balanced. Let me keep my Inklings and my snowmen, you know?
Is Mario Kart World Worth It?
Yes, But Maybe Get It Through the Bundle
Despite everything I’ve said above, I can’t pretend I didn’t have an enormous amount of fun with Mario Kart World. A ridiculous amount, actually. My friends and I played it for the first time during one of our casual game nights, and within hours of wrapping up, we were already planning the next one. There’s something incredibly infectious about the game’s energy, and even with all its quirks, it absolutely nails that "just one more race" feeling. Before you know it, it’s 2 A.M. you've argued over the morality of blue shells, and someone’s shouting because Cow just beat them at the finish line.
The game is, at its core, still Mario Kart, and that’s pretty hard to mess up, even when the edges are a little jagged. What’s new here adds novelty, and what’s familiar still works, especially in group settings. Knockout Tour alone kept me busy for whole afternoons, and I had one particularly unhinged weekend where I did nothing but play Grand Prix cups back-to-back while watching YouTubers pull off rail-grind shortcuts that I still, somehow, cannot reproduce no matter how hard I try. And even when I was goofing around in Free Roam, I was still having a genuinely good time.
I wouldn’t exactly say that it’s instantly worth $80, though. That still depends entirely on how you play your Mario Kart. If you’re the type to squeeze hundreds of hours out of chasing ghosts in Time Trial, dominating online races, unlocking every costume, and arguing over tier lists for items, then yes, the game will more than pay for itself. On the other hand, if you're just looking to breeze through the cups once or twice, tick a box, and move on to the next game, Mario Kart World might not be the most cost-efficient use of your $80. It’s just that a good chunk of its value comes from replayability, the joy of figuring out new routes, landing perfect shortcuts, and beating your friend by a millisecond after a last-second mushroom boost.
However, some Switch 2 consoles come bundled with Mario Kart World, and that changes things dramatically. In that context—getting the game for just $50 instead of full price—it’s a much easier sell. It’s not perfect, and it’s definitely not as good as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was after years of updates, but it’s pretty darn close. Who knows, maybe in the coming years, after an update or two, it could even become the Switch 2's top seller, just like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe did for the original Switch.
| Nintendo Switch 2 |
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| Price | $79.99 | ||||
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Mario Kart World FAQ
How to Unlock Mirror Mode in Mario Kart World?
To unlock Mirror Mode, you need ten Question Panels, Peach Medallions, and successful P Switch missions. You also need to do clear each Grand Prix cup a
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Mario Kart World Product Information
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| Title | MARIO KART WORLD |
|---|---|
| Release Date | June 5, 2025 |
| Developer | Nintendo |
| Publisher | Nintendo |
| Supported Platforms | Nintendo Switch 2 |
| Genre | Kart Racing |
| Number of Players | 4 Players (Local Co-Op) 24 Players (Online Co-Op) |
| ESRB Rating | ESRB E |
| Official Website | Official Website for Mario Kart World |
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