Mario Kart World looks like Super Mario and is perfect for the Switch 2

Was Nintendo right to choose the new Mario Kart as the console's launch game? Definitely yes, even if some would have preferred the new Super Mario that has been missing for years now, but if we look at the sales data we can only agree with the managers of the Kyoto company. The Mario Kart series has sold over 189.7 million copies worldwide until March 2025, making it the best-selling racing saga ever. On Switch, Maria Kart Deluxe alone has sold 68 million, becoming the game at the top of the sales charts on Nintendo Switch. The problem is that it wasn't easy to think of a sequel to a racing game that was born practically perfect. That is, the big risk was to re-propose the same game from eight years ago. And in part, it seemed that way to many, but only because they didn't play it enough.

What changes?

Mario Kart World is Mario Kart, it plays the same way. You race, accelerate, drift around curves, take powers and then play pranks on your opponents to get there first. So what changes? Everything and nothing. The structure changes, we are in a sort of open world, with 32 tracks that make the game explorable as if it were Super Mario. The physics of the crashes changes, the collisions are even more precise and fun, therefore the driving changes and the world that revolves around the course that always remains peaceful and joyful but now seems with the new console (and the new hardware) finally more colorful and more alive. All the tracks are connected in a large explorable world. You travel between races without loading, there is the off-road, there are stunts, the freezing power and the water races where you have to tame the waves. You can eat at the restaurant, slide on the rails and jump against the wall. There are challenges for up to 24 players at the same time which is pure chaos. While the most fun new feature is the survival mode. There is also free running but it was thrown in a bit, in the sense that you don't really understand the point. All these new features do not distort the racing game. As well as the possibility of playing with the camera and voice chat that allows you to make faces when you overtake or are overtaken. It is therefore not a homework, "more of the same" is more of a Mario Kart that has copied the best from Super Mario's platformers. Once again, for the umpteenth time, it is something new even if you play it the same way. Nintendo, we are used to it by now, changes very little but always manages to be fun. Year after year. Decade after decade. That's why there couldn't have been a better game at launch.