Mario Kart World Review
There are typically two sentiments about Mario Kart World: It’s overpriced and not worth 80 dollars or It’s the best Mario Kart of all time but which one is right?
With Mario Kart World there are the obvious visual and performance enhancements, which should be expected with a new system, but there have also been a lot of refinements that have raised the skill ceiling. Unfortunately, there have also been a few changes, which feel counterintuitive to increasing the skill ceiling, and a few changes that stray too far from Mario Kart necessity.
While we figure out where it fits alongside the greatest in the series including Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart Double Dash and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, we also decide where it fits among the best launch titles of all time, so be sure to stay after the review to see that.
Mario Kart World Review
Few franchises have been as successful or displayed the longevity of Mario Kart. The series first released for the SNES in 1992 and was an instant hit. In the years since, the Mario Kart series has sold nearly 200 million copies across seventeen games. While it might sound easy to release a new entry in the franchise, it becomes increasingly difficult to find new ways to innovate and move the series forward.
Not only does Mario Kart World carry the expectations of the series, it also had the added pressure of being the only real launch title for the Nintendo Switch 2.
Beloved staples return including Grand Prix, Time Trial, VS and Battle, but the real star of the show is the two new modes added Mario Kart World: Free Roam and Knockout Tour.
Free Roam mode is a blast just to chill out, cruise around tracks, find hidden secrets, unlock new outfits, collect stickers and just have some fun.
The other big addition to Mario Kart World is Knockout Tour, which is without a doubt the best addition to Mario Kart World. In Knockout Tour, 24 racers gather in a single, six lap race, but what makes it extremely unique was that every lap, 4 people get eliminated. There is a level of stress and urgency that has been absent from the series. At the bottom of the screen you are constantly reminded that you need to place 20th or better in the first lap or 16th or better in the second lap and so on. Every lap when more and more people get eliminated, the tension increases. When the final lap arrives, it’s only the best four drivers left.
There have also been a few refinements and tweaks to the formula, which raises the skill ceiling. You know have the ability to dodge blue shells with a properly timed item like mushroom, you can now shoot items in all directions provided you have the proficiency with the controller, rail grinding and slipstreaming seems more important than ever as the wind is better indicated than previous entries.
CRITICISMS AND PREFERENCES
It’s a bit of a disappointment that you can’t tweak performance by changing tires and other features of your vehicle like you had the ability in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and even double down on that system and make it more intricate. Different carts still have different stats, but it’s now reverted to the weight of characters and heavier characters have better top speed and lighter have better acceleration and handling
In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, there were a few courses that didn’t have traditional laps, but instead was just a race from point A to point B like Mount Wario, Big Blue or Peach Gardens. Out of the 82 courses for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, around ten percent were continuous path courses. In Mario Kart World that number doubles to about 20 percent of the courses featuring continuous path as opposed to the traditional three lap loop. The continuous path courses don’t allow you to master each section or attempt better turns or shortcuts the next time around.
I love finding all of the different character skins all around the world, but the character select screen can become slightly overwhelming with all of the characters different skins getting a position on the grid. With multiple players this can drastically slow down the action and become time consuming. The easy solution is to only give each character one spot on the character select screen, but have a simple button press to see alternate outfits.
Is Mario Kart World Worth it?
Mario Kart World is still Mario Kart, so if you never connected with the series, this wont be the game to change your mind. It does increase the skill ceiling in a variety of subtle ways that retains it’s signature approachability, but there is a still a lot that happens during a race that is left to chance.
With some great new modes, keeping the core essentials in place and making smart additions to the foundation that has been evolving over the past three decades, it’s hard not to label Mario Kart World the best Mario Kart of all time.
9
Mario Kart World is the best game in the Mario Kart series, but where does it stack up among the greatest launch titles of all time?
BEST LAUNCH TITLES OF ALL TIME
8th place - Mario Kart World
Well, I guess this cat’s out of the bag early. It’s hard to argue against the importance of Mario Kart World when talking about the games relation to the consoles success. Nintendo Switch 2 sold 3.5 million in 4 days and there is basically no other launch titles. The only counter argument is that the Nintendo Switch is almost the best selling console of all time and people were gonna buy it no matter what. It’s also bundled in with one of the two SKU’s available, and at a reduced price, so that would inflate the sales slightly. However in Japan, the Switch 2 has sold 1.1 million units since launch and Mario Kart World has sold 917k copies in the same time, which is a nearly 83 percent attach rate, which is wild, but there is basically nothing else to play.
7th place - Wii Sports
There is no denying how many casual gamers purchased a Wii just because of Wii Sports. People you knew that weren’t into gaming bought a Nintendo Wii because of how Wii Sports was just so simple and fun to play. The reason that Wii Sports is this far down the list is for a few reasons. The first is because the Wii also launched with a brand new Zelda title with Twilight Princess that also simultaneously launched on the GameCube. Furthermore, Wii Sports wasn’t really a game as much as it was a tech demo for the unique motion controls that the Nintendo Wii was built around. Wii Sports was also packed in with the Wii for a long period of time.
6th place - Tetris
Tetris has gone on to become one of the most iconic games of all time. If something like Tetris was released today, it would easily be in the conversation for game of the year and it was packed in with the system. These days Nintendo charges you to learn about the system you just bought in game format. However, the one counterpoint to importance of Tetris to the success of the Game Boy is that the system also launched with Super Mario Land. Having one of the most iconic games in handheld format in the late 80’s almost sounds unrealistic.
5th place - Breath of The Wild
I personally think Breath of The Wild is one of the greatest Zelda games of all time. It wasn’t the first time you could go anywhere in an RPG, but it was the first time you could do it as Link, which means a lot. However, in terms of its importance to the success of the Nintendo Switch, I think the console was unquestionably going to succeed with or without Zelda at launch. The ability to have a system that doubled as both a handheld and a home console was revolutionary. Nintendo also had a solid cadence of releases, which kept momentum going including what I believe to be the best Super Mario with Odyssey just a few months after launch.
4th place - Halo: Combat Evolved
Without Halo: Combat Evolved, Microsoft might not be in the gaming business today. Not only was Halo a revolution for first person shooters on console, but it was without a doubt a system seller due to the ability to have LAN parties. I can attest to this because I didn’t buy a Xbox when it first released, I purchased mine about a week or two after because I tried Halo at a friends house and played 4 player split screen. After leaving, I immediately went out and purchased an Xbox, Halo, three extra controllers and a LAN cable. The ripple effect allowed developers to continue to support the console and for Microsoft to see the potential and continue in the hardware business.
3rd place - Super Mario 64
Unpopular opinion, but i’m not crazy for Super Mario 64. However, I do understand how much of a shift in gaming it was because I was there at the time. It revolutionized gaming and that’s not hyperbole. Moving from console to console, it was important to show people what the differences were. Having Super Mario in 3D was the easiest way to tell your customers that this is the next movement in gaming and why it was time to leave behind the 16-Bit Super Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. Unfortunately, no amount of 3D Mario was good enough to compete with the other revolution happening in the industry, which was the PlayStation and it’s much cheaper and much bigger library of games that also happened to be skewed to a more mature audience.
2nd place - Super Mario World
Now you’re playing with power was the slogan and Super Mario World was the embodiment of this statement. This was directly in the middle of gaming when all that mattered was how many bits your console was. For those that didn’t understand what this meant, all you had to do was show them how incredible the sprites, pixels and colors of Super Mario World were. Super Mario World is not only near the top of the list of best Super Mario titles, but it holds up better than most as well. The Super Nintendo had titles like F-Zero and Pilotwings at launch, both of which were great titles, but both were unknowns. Super Mario World was instrumental in making sure that Nintendo followed up the success of the NES with their second commercial hit in a row as the console would go on to sell just shy of 50 million
1st place - Super Mario Bros
Gaming was in a very dark place. Just a few years prior to the launch of the NES, Atari had collapsed the industry with non stop shovel-ware, which led to consumers feeling burned. The Nintendo Entertainment System also launched with incredible games like Duck Hunt and Excitebike, but there is no denying the impact that Super Mario Bros had on the industry, almost single handedly turning it around. In addition the expectations of an industry, it was also an incredible game for it’s time that still holds up quite well, and without Mario, the NES wouldn’t have gained momentum and went on to sell over 60 million systems.
