When Mario Kart 64 came out, it was a game-changer for Nintendo. It’s still one of the best games of its time, and gamers today can play it together and still have a lot of fun. When I played it, I was blown away by the expansive 3D maps. While they were severely limited and you couldn’t go off course, the “implied bigness” captured my imagination.
The Royal Raceway course in Mario Kart 64 was especially captivating for its scope and how it felt like one big lost level from Super Mario 64. There is an excursion where players can find the courtyard to Peach’s castle, and it was almost 1:1. There was always a nagging feeling in me that wished I could keep on driving beyond the paved roads and explore.
After perfecting the Mario Kart formula, where else is there to go? Maybe some of the devs at Nintendo had a similar experience to mine when playing Mario Kart 64, because the only thing left is to take the races beyond the tracks. What kind of wacky races are going down in the Mushroom Kingdom? Find out in our Mario Kart World review!
This is a review coupled with a supplemental video review. You can watch the video review or read the full review of the below:
Mario Kart World
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Platforms: Nintendo Switch 2
Release Date: June 5, 2025
Price: $79.99
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was as perfect as a Mario Kart could be. It has everything and then some. The courses were a mix of fresh ideas and remixed classics, and they delivered them with some anti-gravity twists. The number of racers could be up to 24 at a single time. It was stacked with many modes and features that were inexplicably missing from the initial Wii U release. Even Link and the goblin from Splatoon got in on the fun.
The idea that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe could be topped was unthinkable. When it was announced that Mario Kart World would be $79.99 and that it would be a sprawling open world racing game, every gamer imagined that this was probably going to be one hell of an upgrade and would be the ultimate Mario Kart of all time.
Mario Kart World is just another good Mario Kart game. If you loved Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, you’re going to love World. It does some things differently, being how it features a massive, sprawling map where all the courses connect seamlessly, but the core of the experience is the same as it has been since the first game on Super Nintendo.
All characters come in light, medium, or heavy weight classes, and there are tons of unlockable vehicles. The racing mechanics are mostly like how you remember in past Mario Karts; focusing on drifting, charging up for boosts, and grabbing items to get ahead or to attack opponents.
This isn’t to say that there is nothing new. Mario Kart World ramps up the range of mobility and maneuverability with rail-grinding, wall-riding, brief flight sequences, and side jumping. While you can always play World like you could as if you were playing 8 Deluxe, there is added mechanical depth for those who crave a higher skill ceiling.
There is no mistaking it. Mario Kart World feels good as hell to play. The gameplay is as smooth as liquid fluid and the audio/visual sensory feedback is satisfying as wiping your ass with fine silk. The animation quality and physics are palpable across all racers, making gamers feel the heft and weight when weaving between obstacles or launching off ramps, or booster pads.
The weight gap between the weight divisions is more noticeable when playing. Bowser driving a big-wheeled kart feels unstoppable and weighty, like a beast that can’t be tamed. Little guys like Nabbit zip around with ease and get easily mauled by much bigger racers, but take off quickly when getting back up.
The graphics look on par with Mario Kart 8 on Wii U. Since cartoony graphics peaked, the only thing left for Nintendo to do was to ramp up the weather effects, lighting, and, of course, the scale. The vast open environment looks good. The level of detail isn’t macro, but when moving at high speeds, you won’t notice.
How does the open world factor into the core Mario Kart experience? It doesn’t really. The Grand Prix is restructured where racers have a pre-race that guides them to the next track, where the next race begins after the results of the last. At the end of the day, it’s still just more Mario Kart, but with more track variety since there is less repetition on running laps, and more long linear courses.
The Knock Out Tour is the headliner that gets more mileage out of the vast open world. While players are still funneled with barricades, there aren’t any breaks once this grueling marathon begins. The long, bad road of meat against bone and banana against shell is utter chaos, guaranteeing players don’t stay at the top for long.
Drifting and boosting at every corner possible, while making desperate dashes for items while landing death-defying jumps, is thrilling. It becomes all the more exciting as the race seamlessly connects to the next, keeping tension high throughout.
The Knock Out Tour is so insane that it’s unreasonable to expect players to be in first place to win. In 150cc mode, players only need to be in the top four places for it to count as a victory. It doesn’t even matter if you make it to first. The mode is just so wild and unpredictable that the rules had to be loosened.
The other module in Mario Kart World is the free-roam mode. This is where the open world was meant to justify the game’s fresh direction and its outrageous eighty-dollar price tag. Free-roaming the open world does not live up to its potential and serves mostly as an amusing distraction and a way to unlock stuff.
There are mini challenges and collectibles peppered throughout the entire Mushroom Kingdom and its raceways and its rolling hills, but it never amounts to substance. Getting around and clearing huge spaces is fine on a kart, but exploring and navigating smaller areas becomes a chore when you’re bound to a vehicle at all times.
If Mario Kart World had to be $79.99, Mario and the gang should have been able to get their butts out of their karts and be able to hijack rides. Free roaming didn’t need to be Grand Theft Auto, but it could have been more like The Simpsons: Hit and Run, where getting out of a vehicle was a practical way to get around as much as driving was.
Mario Kart World is another great Mario Kart. It isn’t eighty dollars good, but if you can get it for around sixty, you’ll be very happy with the value it offers. There are plenty of features and stuff to do to keep players enjoying this endlessly, like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but it is not the generational leap forward like some of the past entries.
The reality is that the Mario Kart formula has been perfected a long time ago, and all Nintendo can do is tweak it here and there. Setting it in a big open world is not much of a change from when players explored off-road in Royal Raceway back on Nintendo 64.
Mario Kart World was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 using a code purchased by Niche Gamer. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. Mario Kart World is now available for Nintendo Switch 2.