Mario Kart World goes open-world and off-road on Nintendo Switch 2

As suggested by the initial Switch 2 reveal, the big launch game for Nintendo’s new system will be an all-new Mario Kart. It’s called Mario Kart World and will launch alongside the console, Nintendo revealed during Wednesday’s Switch 2 Direct.

Mario Kart World is an open-world racing game in the style of Forza Horizon, in which fields of 24 racers compete across a huge map with different regions. It has many features associated with more realistic racing games, including a photo mode, dynamically changing weather conditions, and time-of-day that will affect the racing experience. Players will be able to go off-road and drive “virtually everywhere in this world” in a free-roam mode, while the drive from one race to another during a traditional Mario Kart four-course Grand Prix will be an integral “part of the competition.”

The trailer showed off a wide variety of custom vehicles, including snowmobiles, jet skis, and karts adapted for actual flight — not just gliding. On some levels, it’s possible to perform the Mario Kart equivalent of wall-running and grinding rails. The cast of characters encompassed all the Mario Kart favorites and a few wild cards (like a playable cow), and it seemed as though custom outfits will be a thing in Mario Kart World.

Nintendo’s focus on Mario Kart World at the launch of the Switch 2 is easy to explain: Its predecessor, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, has been a smash hit on the original Switch, selling an astonishing 67 million copies. It’s the best-selling Switch game by a large margin. In fact, if you add sales of the original Wii U version to bring the total to almost 76 million, Mario Kart 8 is the fifth-best-selling game of all time. It’s also, arguably, Nintendo’s biggest hit ever — Wii Sports has shipped more copies, but that was bundled free with the Wii console in many territories. Mario Kart 8 was so successful that Nintendo kept adding to it throughout the Switch’s lifespan, unleashing six waves of new courses and characters through the Booster Course pass.

So it’s no surprise that Nintendo should peg Switch 2 marketing to a hugely popular series that both defined and dominated the kart racing genre, and that has been a perennial on every Nintendo system since Super Mario Kart debuted on the SNES in 1992. Mario Kart is one of the biggest games series in the world. Will Mario Kart World continue the trend?