Mario Kart World is going to be the flagship Nintendo Switch 2 designed to entice us into adopting the console and highlight what sets it apart from the original system. Now, I didn’t get to try every element of the game, like the free driving across the world to see courses, the ways in which multiplayer can work with a smaller group, or the full-fledged, four course Grand Prix experiences we’re used to. However, I did get to be a Cow riding on a Cute Scoot and almost made it into the top 12 of a Knockout Tour, and that’s pretty great.
My first experience with Mario Kart World involved going through one track in Grand Prix against another person before heading into a single race on my own. In the case of the former, it was a slice of the game that was essentially predetermined. I could pick from a wide roster of already unlocked characters. Rather than skins, each version of a character is a different variant, so you would see standard Daisy and Swimsuit Daisy, and so on. I went with the Cow from Moo Moo Meadows, because of course I did, and initially picked a standard kart.
The good news is, all of your muscle memory from Mario Kart 8 and its Deluxe release will kick in again. The controls are all the same, and the general “feel” of racing is as well. So you’ll lean into turns, drift to boost, and need to time your item attacks to send things careening forward and back.
The change is that now each course feels like it is actually a road taking you on a journey. You aren’t looping around in circles. In one situation, I was going through an area that eventually turned forested, with dinosaurs roaming around. With the right timing, I went right up one’s head and back. We’ll go along roads. We’ll travel. We’ll see things change. This also means the weather will shift since we’re actually journeying around the world as we drive. In particular, the rain storm really struck me, as it meant a different in lighting, the rain was pouring down, and I can’t be certain, but it also almost felt like the road conditions maybe changed a bit?
The progression also means we’ll see a bit more types of roads, which also means different approaches to these elements. In the April 2025 Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, we saw characters grinding on rails. Well, that’s definitely present here! If you happen to get the new feather power-up, reminiscent of the Super Mario World item, you get a higher jump that makes it easier to get on top of these or reach different areas. However, I also ended up grinding after other situations that didn’t involve a standard jump. It offers a degree of safety, a little speed, and the ability to do the jump effect after for a quick boost.
The feather isn’t the only new type of power-up I found. Another vastly increased the size of my character and kart when I was playing as an especially dapper King Boo (complete with monocle) riding a Cute Scoot scooter in a single-player Grand Prix race. This allows you to just roll over everything, including enemies or NPC cars heading from the other direction. It’s so powerful. The other is that you can happen upon food trucks or stops that offer a regenerating bag of food. Snag one, and you get a power boost from the item that’s now trailing behind you.
But it was the Knockout Tour that most impressed me during my Switch 2 demo sessions. Part of this is because during that session, I got to sample free roaming. As you wait for everyone to show up, you can explore the course and area you’re in. This is fantastic for finding secrets you can exploit during the race, as well as just explore elements that you might never see during a race. I discovered one of those food truck options, a shortcut to another area, and realized that just dropping off the side of this area wouldn’t bring up a Lakitu to save me! Instead, I’d plummet to the bottom of the area and get to explore there too.
Once everyone showed up, we voted for the areas we wanted to race through. This works like multiplayer in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, in that everyone gets a vote, and randomly one person’s selection is chosen. From there, you ride! As you reach what would normally be the indicator of the next lap, you’ll see a number showing the cut-off for elimination. So initially it goes from 24 to 20. That number keeps dropping. I ended up being cut out of the top 12 in true Mario Kart fashion. That is, there were about five of us right there, it seemed like I was in ninth place, but someone had saved up some red shells and knocked me into 13th. Alas.
During my preview session, Mario Kart World felt like a reinvention of a game and series we love that only adds to the experience without detracting any of what we appreciate. The Grand Prix mode feels more traditional, even as the tracks instead send us traveling around the world. The Knockout Tour feels like a new way of helping us potentially be our best. We can be the Moo Moo from Moo Moo Meadow. What I saw left me wanting to see more, and I hope for the best for the final version of the game.
Mario Kart World will come to the Nintendo Switch 2 on June 5, 2025.
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