Mario Kart World (Switch 2, 2025)

 

Mario Kart 9 is finally here. It's basically the one major game on the Switch 2. Is it good enough to carry the system launch? Is it worth $80? Is it good enough to replace current best Kart game, Mario Kart 8, which has been holding down the Kart universe for the past decade? I'm going to find out. And have lots of fun in the process, because you literally can't go wrong with a Mario Kart.

Featuring Cow.

We've got a bunch of options here, but I'm going to focus on Grand Prix like I've done with the rest of the series. Knockout Tour is the most noteworthy new addition, and basically doubles the amount of single-player content.

Also, props to Princess Toadstool for discovering the wonder that is jean shorts, and more importantly, not being too much of a princess to go ahead and rock said jean shorts.

Knockout Tour has eight cups of its own, except they're called rallies: Golden Rally, Ice Rally, Moon Rally, Spiny Rally, Cherry Rally, Acorn Rally, Cloud Rally, Heart Rally. All of these are composed of levels taken from the various cups in Grand Prix, which makes it difficult to call these new cups. The main difference is that each rally is six courses in a row without stopping, and lower-ranked racers fall out of the race each time you pass a checkpoint into a new area. It's a pretty cool idea and a bit more challenging than the normal Grand Prix.

I don't think it's intended to replace the Grand Prix, though. If anything, it's a way to kinda pseudo-add 8 more cups. Continuous races that don't stop for a minute between tracks is both a good thing and a bad thing. The action is nonstop and keeps you engaged, but at the same time these can be tiresome in a way the Grand Prix cups aren't.

Here we've got our normal set of cups (everything except Special which has to be unlocked). It's worth noting that there aren't any "retro cups" in this game, not really anyway. All seven of these are composed of new levels. However, some of the levels are definitely inspired by tracks from previous games.

There's 50cc, 100cc, 150cc here. No Mirror or 200cc options like the previous game, at least not at the get-go. 100cc is pretty much what the old 50cc was in the first few games, a fun/engaging challenge that isn't that hard to get the gold in, while 150cc is fast and furious and will take practice. 50cc on the other hand is full-on baby mode and you pretty much have to sit at the starting line for 30 seconds at the beginning of a level to actually have a chance of not coming in first (and even then you might luck out). Might as well just play the tracks on Free Mode. It's fine that it exists I guess, but 100cc is the way to go if you want to have fun and not short-change the experience.

We've got Battle Mode, which was my favorite when I was a kid. Five HP (balloons) instead of three like back in the day. There are some sprawling battle maps, and a ton of characters can be in the battle at the same time. This is a fantastic mode and a lot of fun, at least for a little while. I do wish this were elimination-style (i.e. win by being the last survivor) rather than timed (i.e. have the most hits on other people by the end of three minutes) as that'd be more intense and make for longer battles. I understand why they didn't go that route, but it'd be cool if it was an option.

The character select is huge. However, the vast majority of the unlockable "characters" are actually outfits for other characters. For whatever reason, outfits are counted as additional characters, which makes the character select look about 3x bigger than it actually is.

Anyway, let me just leaf right past Mario here and get to...

...Pauline, who is probably my favorite character. She can sing, she fits into that red dress incredibly well, she's a great mayor, and I would love to spend a few hours lapping her. Preferably on Rainbow Road since that level seems like a good place to lap someone.

Her hips, Jesus. I don't know about that giant noggin, however. Why does she look so different from most of the rest of the cast? It's like she's from a different dimension. Like that tall guy in Mother 3.

There are a lot more characters than just the main crew, though. And...they're really kinda scraping the barrel here. We've got a bunch of random enemies from old games, babyz, and Nabbit for some reason. What's the deal with Nabbit? Guy seems to pop up in every Mario game now and I have no idea why, or if he's even popular, or where he came from.

Yeah, they're really scraping the barrel. While I'm glad the N64 Penguin got to be a racer, are we really giving character slots to random bee enemies?

Also, NO KOOPALINGS. You can be Pokey here, one of the most unappealing enemies from early in the series, but NO KOOPALINGS.

There's a huge selection of vehicles and I'm not that sure what the difference is between most of them, so I generally go with whatever looks coolest with any given character. At least it isn't making me choose my tires and sails too like previous games. That being streamlined is very much appreciated.

Mario Bros. Circuit - One word comes to mind to describe the levels in this game: Sprawling. The world is structured a bit like an actual open world. Rather than the courses being a single contained area that you do a few laps in, the courses are pretty much the third lap of each "level" with the first two laps being the drive to the course. So the beginning of each level is pretty much going to look like the end of the previous level. It's interesting. Also not how I would have done it.

This first level is a fairly generic "first Kart level", but I like the stone mesas and whatnot. I'm going with Wario for this first sweep. His mixture of yellow and purple really works, and those are two difficult colors to make work together. Matter of fact I can't think of anything else offhand that has that color scheme. Maybe Elden Ring sort of? Yeah no, that's more gold+blue. Ah, Star Fox 2 uses yellow/purple. That's about all I can think of.

Anyway, Wario CACKLES INSANELY at the end of levels.

Crown City - This one starts with you driving into the city via a dusty highway. Yoshi's Diner is over there on the side of the road. Nice atmosphere they're setting. These between-course highway sections could have easily been bland, and they're not. If you have to do them, they better be interesting.

We get some rain during the actual Crown City section, and the rain effects on this system are impressive. Not going to say it's super mind-blowing to have a Switch that's like half of a PS5 in power level, but a Switch upgrade at all was LONG overdue, and I think this system will end up surprising people a bit with what it can do visually. I've seen a few things that were unexpectedly impressive, like rain and water effects. They seem to have focused on framerates a lot with this system rather than graphical fidelity / light effects, so framerate enthusiasts will find a lot to like.

Whistlestop Summit - This level is a railroad, basically, with trains and train tracks. This would be a good time to mention that the Switch 2's screenshot capability is SOLID. I'd go so far as to say it's much better than PS5's. The Switch 1 already had less delay on screenshots "firing" than the various Playstations do, and this system cuts the delay even more to almost-none. It might even be instant, it's that close. Also the clarity on these screenshots is nuts, so it isn't losing anything in the conversion from game to capture.

Check out this front-view of Wario. This is an actual ingame, in-motion shot of the gameplay, and everything about it pops. There's a total lack of blur, which might be the most surprising thing about this system.

The screenshot editor is also better than the Playstation one, and considerably quicker to use. I can record the last few seconds of gameplay, bring it up, pause it at the exact moment I want, and output a screenshot...all in about 5-10 seconds. There's no loss of visual fidelity by taking shots from a clip, either, unlike Playstation.

The lack of delay is the best part, and I'd go so far as to say that if I'm going to do a post for a new game, I'd choose this system over PS5 to play it on just for the screenshot capabilities.

DK Spaceport - Really cool level that is patterned after the old Donkey Kong arcade games, culminating with a zig-zag up a bunch of skyscraper girders to face off with a giant mecha DK. More on this level later.

Finish Mushroom Cup and it unlocks Donkey Kong, the only one of the Original Eight not available at the start. This actually gives him significantly more appeal, since instead of just a less-cool-than-Bowser heavy character, he's something you had to earn.

Flower Cup gives us the western desert, Wario's Mad Max dystopian stadium, and the game's sole airship course.

For the Flower Cup, I'm going to go with Pauline and she'll be riding the world's luckiest bike. I usually don't use bikes in this series, so we'll see how it goes.

Desert Hills - Fun level here with sitar-infused music, as is tradition for Kart desert levels.

I was never much of a fan of bikes in the other games, but they work well in this one. It's much harder to get knocked down or fall off a course in this game, and bikes have some pretty sick drifting ability.

Why are there Moai statues here? OH, Super Mario Land. Now that's a deep reference!

Shy Guy Bazaar - A desert level that originally appeared in Mario Kart 7. It's very different here, transpiring during the daytime and involving the desert a lot more.

Also, some great architecture to be found in this level, and a couple of huge jumps. High marks for this one. No idea what it has to do with Shy Guys.

Wario Stadium - A rickety dystopia with fire jets, and not really a stage I particularly like. Also, I'm not sure what she's doing, but damn, Pauline.

Airship Fortress - A high fortress with parked airships and lots of Bullet Bills. Very nice sky for this one.

Daisy, of Super Mario Bros Movie fame and also Super Mario Land fame(?)

We never got a sequel to that movie! She said we weren't gonna believe what happened, then never told us! Bob Hoskins ain't talking either.

Star Cup is my favorite of the bunch, with two awesome ice levels and a stormy level to cap it off.

DK Pass - Possibly my favorite level in the game, this ski mountain setting is full of large open areas and lots of snow. This is the best place to run Battle Mode, hands-down.

Starview Peak - Then things get downright magical with this crystalline mountain palace.

It's almost like Rainbow Road Jr in that it's very ethereal and seems to be held together only by mystical forces. This is the realm of Rosalina, the Mario Galaxy lady.

Leaving the snowy area leads me into the food-themed domain of...

Sky-High Sundae - It's a food-themed level, no big whoop. Also, Mario is about to get whacked with a blue shell, aka the one thing that slows you down (often) in 50cc. You win with flying colors anyway, but get ready to get randomly blasted all throughout the run. I prefer moving all around the rankings in 100cc and actually getting some reasonable powerups, doing my best to overtake 1st by the end. Sitting in 1st for race after race with little effort gets old fast.

Wario's Galleon - Stormy, flooded zone here. It's really intense, and you can practically feel the storm. I wish I could switch the previous dessert-themed level out for something else, because the other 75% of this Star Cup is composed of some of the most awesome tracks in the game. Star Cups usually end up being standouts, I think.

Finishing Star Cup unsurprisingly unlocks Rosalina. The gang really is all here! ...except the Koopalings, for some reason. Where are the damn Koopalings?

From this point on, the character select looks like Pauline and Rosalina are holding hands. First off, I'm glad they found somebody. Second off, it isn't like they had much choice. The pickings on this roster are insanely slim. Luigi might be the only remotely-eligible guy here who is more than 5 feet tall, and he's basically homeless. Then you've got a lizard-monster, a giant ape, a cow, and a mushroom-man. And worst of all, Waluigi.

Rosalina's vehicle of choice is a big motorcycle. She's bad to the bone.

B-b-b-b-bad. Bad to the bone.

Getting into the non-traditional cups now, and surprisingly, no retro tracks in this game. Everything's new. ...I think. Some of these might contain elements of old tracks reimagined, or sections. Either way, it's easy to see why they didn't bring back retro tracks, considering that most of the tracks are linear paths where each "lap" (i.e. section) is different. The old track style would have been wildly incongruous with the new ones.

BUH BUH BUH BUH BAD.

Koopa Troopa Beach - Kinda the latest incarnation of that beach level from Super Mario Kart. Feels like this level has been with us since the beginning.

Faraway Oasis - This savannah level is noteworthy for having elephants roaming around.

Crown City - Didn't we already get this level earlier? Yes, but this is a different route through it, at a different time of day, and basically amounts to a completely new level.

BAD TO THE BONE. BAD TO THE BONE.

Peach Stadium - This is a nice, modern, civilized stadium, a perfect counterpart to the grafitti-covered dystopian nightmare of Wario Stadium.

Half of the game down, half to go! Man, this post is already longer than the average post. One of those "should probably split this into multiple parts" posts. I'm going to keep it all together though. So the second half starts...right now.

Pauline only has one alternate outfit, and it's this sick racing outfit. Hard to believe that she only has two outfits, when most of the page-one characters have like 5 or 6. Especially the women. Pauline was the one I was MOST looking forward to collecting outfits for. Very unfortunate, even if the two outfits in question are both superb. Chances are I'll be looking for a new "main" with more outfit choices.

Peach Beach - It's another beach. An absolutely glorious one with a setting sun, and you can see the castle in the distance. Yeah, this game has some inspired locales.

On the nearby boardwalk, we see Pauline having WAY too much fun.

Meanwhile a blue shell is incoming and she doesn't even know it!

SHE FIDDLES WHILE ROME BURNS!

Salty Salty Speedway - Another beach (I like the way this game clumps levels together by biome/theme). What's really noteworthy about this one is that the beach eventually gives way to the actual Speedway, and...

...it's a very European town with a water-filled canal as the racetrack.

Dino Dino Jungle - This level is mostly noteworthy for the gigantic DEATH WATERFALL midway through. Pauline here clearly isn't taking the DEATH WATERFALL seriously.

"Look at my butt!" she says.

Great ? Block Ruins - This has the distinction of being the worst-named level in the game. It has giant ? blocks. Well, the color scheme is nice.

Pauline continuing to not take things seriously. Hammering the R1 button during jumps to dish out her taunts is a great time.

Leaf Cup is a legitimately interesting one, with a couple of unusual levels. Boo Cinema in particular is unlike ANYTHING in this series before now.

Cheep Cheep Falls - No relation to "cheep cheep cheep" of The Room fame. This is a pretty level, with red trees and Japanese architecture. Also lots of very shiny water.

Dandelion Depths - Most of this level is fairly generic highway, but it's got an amazing water area near the end (the actual Dandelion Depths) that I really liked for the 20 seconds it lasted.

...what the hell is Waluigi doing here? GET HIM OUTTA HERE! SECURITY!

Boo Cinema - One of the most unique levels in the game, this is the "spooky level". It isn't like any of the ghost houses in the series, though. Most of the track is a giant film strip with old-timey footage playing on it.

There are also some theaters with movies playing and tons of Boos flying around, harkening back to Super Mario World.

Dry Bones Burnout - Most of this level is actually the road TO the lava area, which takes you through a jungle. It's a little weird the way this game is structured, where often the theme of a level only comes into play in like the last third of it after a bunch of highway driving.

The actual lava area is short (much like the water area a couple maps ago) and very scenic. Kinda wishing these themed sections of the levels were the whole level, though. I get that you have to drive from place to place due to the world design, but at least have the level theme be more than just the final lap.

I detour back to Mushroom Cup to run it in 100cc, and it's pretty clear that 100cc would have been a more fun way to spend time in this game. The races are more challenging and I don't spend all my time in 1st place. This means I get to use other powerups besides endless bananas and green shells. ...which this shot is a bad example of.

DK Spaceport, the final level of Mushroom Cup, was worth another look since I replayed it in 100cc. Here's the zig-zag across metal girders, a callback to the original Donkey Kong.

Pauline back-arching as she sings. Was this amount of hotness necessary, Nintendo??

Back to 50cc, I've got one more cup to finish up before unlocking Special Cup. It's Lightning Cup, finally cementing its place as the second-highest cup. Star Cup has been deposed!

For this one, I dig into the weeds of the multitude, nay, THRONG of rando characters very few people will play as. Cow, I choose you!

Thanks to Nintendo, no longer do you need to play Earthworm Jim to launch cows!

Moo Moo Meadows - It's only fitting that I bring Cow to this level. It's a farm.

"Ooooooh Dreaaaaam-weaver! I believe you can get me through the niiii-iiiiight!"

Cow is adorable. I love this guy.

Choco Mountain - The "chocolate" levels of yesteryear were never my favorite, and this is no exception. I think this is based on the N64 level of the same name, and it's similarly dull and brown.

Toad Factory - This dark hellscape is where Toad builds his infernal creations. Pretty weird that Toad's level would be a factory of all things. Has he become the Mushroom Kingdom's military-industrial complex?

Cow continuing to be adorable. How is this guy so cute? For such a random character, he's got personality.

Bowser's Castle - It's about time Bowser's Castle showed up, and it makes sense that it's the final boss before Special Cup.

Special Cup is unlocked. That said, this is kind of an odd Special Cup. Mario Circuit showing up here is especially odd because it's usually such an early level.

Acorn Heights - An overgrown with vegetation, hilly level. Lots of giant acorns and trees/roots here. Kinda mundane for the Special Cup opening salvo.

For this final cup, I brought back Mario. Seems only right that the namesake of the game gets to tackle The Ultimate Challenge.

"THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE WILL FALL TO THE POW-AA OF THE WOAH-YAHHS, HO KOGAAN!"

Mario Circuit - Nostalgic track here, even bringing back the rainbow block walls from the Super NES game. This one is less a "challenge track" and feels more like a little present the game gives you as things are drawing to a close.

I FINALLY have some issues getting to the head of the pack in 50cc, which gets me some actual good powerups for once. Here's Bullet Bill, probably my favorite overall, which ROCKETS you forward and decimates everyone in the way. Unfortunately it doesn't last long at all, and I can never seem to pop very many other racers with it.

Yeah, I really should have played on 100cc.

Hammer Bros... dropping things onto the freeway. What a complete dumbass.

Peach Stadium - Didn't I do this one already? Yeah, but this is the Special Cup version. Basically a different level entirely.

I've come to the conclusion that each level is basically like 3-5 tracks in one, using different sections depending on what mode you're playing in or what cup you're on. Rainbow Road for instance is basically five different tracks and you go through them one after another. What I'm saying is that if this game used the normal lap system, it could have had a lot more levels/cups than it has now by simply making all these different level-sections into their own track that you lap around.

Rainbow Road - Alright, this is going to be a bold claim: This is the best Rainbow Road in the series. Yep, they've really outdone themselves this time. As mentioned, five sections, and each section is basically a totally different track entirely.

I THINK the sections might be remakes of previous versions of Rainbow Road from the rest of the series, but I'm not sure. At the very least it draws from the entire series.

Some of it goes up into space, like the last few games. No jaunt on the moon, though.

Magical space-train going by. This level is magical from start to finish.

Get to the end, and everyone races through a space-portal. Well, that was some level, and a great capstone to this game. The game itself is decent, but it sure stuck the landing.

Good credits, with a bunch of icons from the original SNES game that bring back memories.

Annnnd that's it. So what else is there to do in this game? UNLOCK COSTUMES BAYBAY

Indeed, what's left to do now is collect outfits (and of course, plow the stages again in Knockout Tour). Here, I finally got Peach's jean short outfit, which I predict will get a lot of cosplay action this year.

Daisy, however, is where it's at. I didn't realize how awesome her outfits were until I finished the game. Not only is she delivering redhead representation, she also has outfits on par with Pauline's (and a lot more of them).

Better Hips: Daisy or Pauline? And since when did Mario Kart of all things have such rockin' hips?

Somewhere around Bee, Cow, and Penguin, is Daisy's swimwear outfit. This one probably wins for this game's outfits, outside of Pauline's red dress of course.

There's also...the Tune Thumper. Anyone who has seen Howard Stern biopic Private Parts knows what this means.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Well, glad Daisy's having fun!

Seriously though, she should probably keep her eyes open while driving. She's endangering EVERYBODY.

Daisy! What are you doing!

She's speeding down an ice bridge with no guardrails, leaping into the air and looking the wrong way. I can't even with this woman.

Daisy strikes more poses for social media as she flies down to the next track. YOU'RE GOING TO CRASH! TURN AROUND!

::explosion::

Well, that's it for this game.

So, final thoughts on this game? At the beginning I asked three questions:

Is it good enough to carry the system launch? Is it worth $80? Is it good enough to replace current best Kart game, Mario Kart 8, which has been holding down the Kart universe for the past decade?

1) Not really, no, but the system is going to sell either way so it doesn't matter much. I'll say this though, I was very quickly moving on to finding Switch 1 games to play on the Switch 2 with improvements. This alone ain't it. Without backwards compatibility, this system would have next to nothing right now, which wasn't the case with the PS5 at launch. It'll be like that for months, too, outside of the DK game in July.

2) Don't think it's an $80 game by any stretch of the imagination. All of the single-player content can be finished in less time than your average workday. It's a normal $60 game at best. There's no "tariff" reason to raise prices and no chip shortage or production issue that would cause a price hike, so this is quite literally just game companies being opportunistic.

3) First of all, HUGELY conspicuous by their absence are any sort of music-themed levels. There were some amazing music-themed levels in previous Mario Karts. Base game versus base game, I'd say Mario Kart 9 edges out Mario Kart 8. However, factor in the DLC and Mario Kart 8 sails ahead. I also liked the colors and contrast better in the previous game. On the flipside, this one is less zoomed-in which is a big plus for folks with any kind of vertigo / who like having a wider vantage of the environment.

In the previous game I did a Top 5 for the normal and retro courses, and that was fun, but I can't really do that here because of the way the courses blend into each other (and are very different depending on what direction you arrive in them from). This is, really, a world as opposed to a level-based game. The fact that it has a free mode for exploring said open world was an inspired choice, even if there isn't much that can be done with it.

It's an interesting game, but I hope the next one (in ten years) goes back to the traditional lap-based gameplay and de-emphasizes travel to the tracks.

I'd give this one a solid A minus, and it's definitely something worth getting with the system for the time being.

Super Mario Kart

Mario Kart 64

Mario Kart: Super Circuit

Mario Kart: Double Dash

Mario Kart DS

Mario Kart Wii

Mario Kart 7

Mario Kart 8

Mario Kart World