Mario Kart World is the most excited I’ve been for a launch game since Mario 64

It’s crazy to think that it’s taken more than three decades to finally get a Mario Kart game on launch day.

On paper, it’s the perfect type of game to have available on day one – an established IP, one of the best-selling series in video game history, one that can be played by all skill levels, and one that will almost certainly provide longevity during those traditionally quiet post-launch months.

And yet, following the game’s SNES debut, Mario Kart has been released on every Nintendo home console and handheld since (sorry Virtual Boy, except you), but never day and date with a system (though 8 Deluxe came close, a month after Switch‘s launch). With Mario Kart World, it’s finally about to happen, and it probably couldn’t have come at a better time in the series’ timeline.

While it may not be immediately apparent given their two entirely different genres, Mario Kart World will do for Switch 2 what The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild did for the original console. Both games take a respected, well-loved series and – rather than giving players a visually improved take on the formula they’ve come to expect – instead upend things with open-world innovation.

My time with Mario Kart World consisted of two separate sessions, taking in two different types of race. The first of these sessions had me playing a Grand Prix race, which naturally felt more like the traditional Mario Kart we’re used to. Given a wide range of characters to choose from, there was only one I could have possibly opted for: Cow.

Mario Kart World seems to have adopted a Smash Bros-style “everybody’s here” approach to its roster this time – albeit strictly limited to the Super Mario series this time for now – because it seems that no character is out of the question when it comes to potential inclusion in the game.

Just as it felt like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had covered every viable character who could have featured in the series, the gates of the Mushroom Kingdom have been kicked wide open, and now any creature who’s ever been in a Mario game seemingly has a fair shot of getting in there. Already we’ve seen the likes of a Goomba, a Piranha Plant, Pokey, Fish Bone, Cheep Cheeps, Coin Coffers and more in there as playable characters, and that’s just scratching the surface.

How about Rocky Wrench, the little mole who first appeared in Super Mario Bros 3, coming out of a manhole in airship levels and throwing wrenches at you? Yup, he’s in there. How about Sidesteppers, the crabs that featured in the original arcade Mario Bros? They’re in there too. The Pianta people from Sunshine? The Penguin from Super Mario 64? Both are in there, too. Even a cow from Moo Moo Meadows is playable – so, naturally, that’s who I chose.

What isn’t yet clear is how these characters are going to be unlocked in the game. While Mario Kart 8 Deluxe hit you with a roster of 40 right off the bat, that’s because it was a special edition re-release – as with most previous games in the series, the original Wii U version of Mario Kart 8 started you with 16 characters and had you unlocking more as you played.

It seems inevitable that only a fraction of World’s roster will be available at first, with some of the more niche and lesser-known faces being unlocked later. Who knows, with any luck, this may be where the open-world side of things comes into play, with some characters potentially hiding out in unexplored areas.

“The Pianta people from Sunshine? The Penguin from Super Mario 64? Both are in there, too. Even a cow from Moo Moo Meadows is playable – so, naturally, that’s who I chose.”

Another change to the roster, but not an entirely new one, is something that appears to have been borrowed from mobile game Mario Kart Tour. Characters can now wear a bunch of different outfits – on the character select screen, I saw Mario in his standard overalls, in a rally suit, and in a cowboy outfit, and the game’s trailer showed more than that. While there’s a power-up that lets you change your outfit mid-race, it appears you can choose a specific outfit on the character select screen, too.

This throws up one issue, which will almost certainly have to be resolved for the main game – the character select screen is currently a random mess of characters and outfits. Nintendo has wisely decided to spread out the characters over numerous ‘pages’ (similar to apps on a mobile phone’s home screen) rather than trying to jam all their icons onto a single screen, but the demo already had eight pages with 60 characters and outfits in there, from a Toadette dressed like an ice cream vendor to Peach wearing a yukata (summer kimono).

Given that at least 50 characters have already been spotted so far, and given that it’s estimated that Mario alone might have up to 10 costumes, that list is going to expand way beyond 60 slots, so hopefully Nintendo will do the smart thing and just have a single slot for each character, which then expands to an outfit select once they’re chosen. Demos do sometimes have makeshift menus, so I’m not massively concerned about it yet.

One other interesting thing to note is that while the character selection appears to have grown arms and legs, vehicle selection seems to have lopped some of them off. In the demo at least, players could choose a kart or bike as normal, but there were no options for wheel or sail type. While this reduction in customisation options will mean less scope for cosmetic changes, it does at least remove some of the granular stat-shuffling that personally annoyed me. If this really does mean the end of having to choose between Sponge, Wood, and Slim tyres, then I won’t miss it.

I’m digressing wildly from my Grand Prix race, but that’s probably because it’s the aspect of the demo that felt most familiar to me. This is partly because I played two separate races – one on a Switch 2 connected to a TV, and another on a Switch 2 in handheld mode – meaning I wasn’t able to check out Grand Prix’s most interesting new feature. While the first race in Grand Prix is your standard three-lap circuit, the second race starts from the same circuit and has you driving there first – in a point-to-point race similar to Maka Wuhu or Mount Wario from previous games – before completing a lap when you get there.

For me, though, simply doing the first race twice in a row, it felt like a standard Mario Kart Grand Prix race, but that’s certainly no bad thing. Of course, there have been some changes to freshen things up a bit – grinding and wall jumping featured in the trailer, but you can also now hold down the hop button to charge a little boost jump. When I say little, I mean it – it’s not clear yet how useful this will be in races, but I wouldn’t worry about it being the new snaking yet. You can also perform numerous stunts in mid-air now, similar to the Sonic & Sega All-Stars games, with more stunts getting you a better boost when you land.

There’s also more of a focus on coins this time. Because the series’ games don’t explicitly say it much, some players may be unaware that in most Mario Kart titles, the more coins you collect, the faster your top speed goes, up to a cap of 10 coins. This has now been increased to 20 coins, and there are new power-ups – like a question block which appears above your head and can be hit repeatedly, or a gold shell which leaves a trail of coins behind it – designed to hit that cap quicker.

By and large, though, Nintendo has wisely opted not to change too much in terms of the core mechanics, meaning that even though there are plenty of new ideas here, anyone who’s played their fair share of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will immediately feel comfortable playing Mario Kart World.

And then there’s the Knockout Tour. The idea of elimination races is nothing new in racing games: in fact, I personally dislike them because they almost always last too long. Mario Kart World, however, has done the remarkable by providing an elimination-style race that I didn’t just enjoy, but loved.

The rules are straightforward enough. Players are initially taken to a free-roaming open world section as they wait for others to join. Once the full suite of 24 players are available, everyone votes on one of eight rallies, with one then chosen at random. All 24 players then take part in the long rally race, which is divided into six sections, each with a checkpoint. To get to each section, you have to pass the checkpoint in 20th or better, then 16th, then 12th, then 8th, then 4th, then, in the final section, it’s just four remaining racers battling for the top spot.

There are numerous reasons why Mario Kart’s take on the Battle Royale format works so well. For starters, the fact that the game has increased the number of racers to 24 means what was already a series fairly heavy on item-based mayhem has turned into utter carnage. Skilful racers will still make it to the front of the pack more often than less experienced players, but by doubling the number of power-ups flying around, the random nature of races has increased, and it’s a joy.

The other main element that makes Mario Kart World differ from so many other racing games with Elimination modes is that while most other examples involve applying an elimination-based ruleset to the same courses as usual – meaning you’re just completing multiple laps over and over until you’re the only one left – World instead has eight separate rallies, each consisting of six different point-to-point tracks.

“The fact that the game has increased the number of racers to 24 means what was already a series fairly heavy on item-based mayhem has turned into utter carnage.”

In one Rally, for example, you could start off at Desert Hills and travel through the new Mario Bros Circuit, Choco Mountain, Moo Moo Meadows and Mario Circuit before ending at Acorn Heights. The fact that the course keeps changing like this the further you get makes it infinitely more compelling than games with a lap-based Elimination mode – instead, for me it had more of an Out Run feel, with that unbridled joy that comes in hitting a checkpoint just in time (or in this case, just under the position cap) and watching the scenery change as your reward for surviving until the next stage.

There’s so much about Mario Kart World that still has to be discovered. My total time spent playing the open-world section amounted to around 45 seconds, as I came in just as almost everyone else was ready to race (though it was still enough time to have a Nintendo staffer tell me how to do the new boost hop, which I promptly did into a wall while being filmed – my very own Cuphead moment).

No doubt the upcoming Nintendo Direct, which focuses entirely on Mario Kart World, will reveal even more features, modes, and little extras, making it even clearer that this, the first entirely new main home edition of Mario Kart in eleven years, will have been worth the wait. All I know is that – and I’m sorry, Zelda fans – this is the most excited I’ve been to get my hands on a launch game since Super Mario 64.