Mario Kart World preview – A bright new tourney begins

Mario Kart, as a franchise, is now three decades old. You’d think, after all this time, it would feel less special – or that new iterations would start to firmly tread old ground. But not so, at all – and especially not with the latest iteration, Mario Kart World for Nintendo Switch 2.

During a recent hands-on preview event in New York, GamesHub was able to play through multiple tracks in this adventure, as well as experiment with a new, competitive mode known as Knockout Tour. It was the perfect showcase for a bright new chapter in Mario Kart history, beginning on 5 June 2025.

For years, the franchise has followed a familiar formula of races. Here, that formula is adapted into a looser format, for a more social, more competitive, and more innovative game.

Reinventing the wheel

As revealed by Nintendo, this Mario Kart will feature joint races, with a pathway that takes you through multiple stages of a much larger, connected world. While these tracks are generally traditional in structure, they also do feel far more open – and not just because the Nintendo Switch 2 can render much further into the distance, providing a rich and gorgeous backdrop to explore.

In my time with the game, I discovered a lot more rabbit warrens than I anticipated, with many courses having alternative pathways (some obvious, some hidden). You can follow the beaten path, sliding your way around corners like a DK (not that one), or you can slip into a side alley for a shortcut, beating your rivals to the punch. There’s more of a sense of choice in these raceways, which feels like a natural evolution for the Mario Kart franchise.

After the generous helping of courses in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Nintendo has chosen a different tactic to make the courses of World feel layered and worth exploring. Even the smallest of changes makes the action feel more exciting – and one of these is that you’ll start races in the midst of the raceway, with your kart already speeding down highways, rearing for the next bend. Another is that as you change courses, the transition is relatively seamless.

You’re simply following a path forward, so desert sands may turn to sea, as the race course around you shifts and changes dynamically.

The core elements remain, and there’s much familiar in Mario Kart World‘s approach to kart racing. But everywhere else is a novelty of changes, to make the game’s kart races brighter, and more dazzling. It really is one of the prettiest Mario Kart games we’ve seen, with visuals backed by the higher performance of the Nintendo Switch 2.

Read: Nintendo Switch 2 – Hands-on first impressions

You roam along a waterway, and crisp blue waves eddy around you. The desert-cowboy vibes of the game’s flagship track (spotted in its recent trailers) is immaculate, with sand ebbing and flowing around you as you yee-haw your way to victory. You can actually yee-haw, by the way – because Mario Kart World arrives with a plethora of cool costumes for your favourite characters. Personally, one of my favourites was King Boo’s aristocrat robes, which make him truly look like the king of ghosts.

As for what else is new, there’s plenty – and much that had the crowd in the New York preview event ooh-ing and aah-ing. There’s new moves in this game, with riders now able to jump between obstacles and grind rails to get through obstacle courses. There’s also new power-ups, like a cool hammer-throwing weapon. There’s also a few new racers – most notably, the Moo Moo Meadows Cow. That’s right, you can now take this cow from its lovely pastures, teach it to drive, and absolutely decimate it.

The Moo Moo Meadows Cow is a lovely inclusion here, and a great people-pleaser. Plenty of folks at the preview event were playing with the cow, and it should prove to be a very popular inclusion – beyond just demonstrating Nintendo‘s capacity to get a bit weird and wild with this Mario Kart.

The part where things get serious

Playing around in the new courses, I was mostly struck by how good-looking each track is, with each featuring sweeping vistas, and beauty in every facet. But they weren’t the most exciting part of my preview of Mario Kart World.

That honour goes to the aforementioned Knockout Tour mode. Here, you’ll compete in a race against players, where the twist is that you must stay ahead of a bell curve. A little notice in the bottom of the screen will tell you what ranking you must achieve to survive, and at intervals, those under the cut-off point will be struck down, and only the best players will remain. This is survival of the fittest, Mario Kart World style – and it absolutely rules.

Competitive matches in Mario Kart are usually very fun, and I have plenty of positive memories tied to the reign of Mario Kart Wii. But a few loops around a bend to crown a winner isn’t entirely satisfying – at least, once you come to grips with the Knockout Tour mode. Here, you must succeed against all odds. You must defeat your enemies and keep ahead of the pack. It’s like having wolves snapping at your heels, or sitting on the edge of Fortnite‘s ever-shrinking field of play. Slip, make a mistake, or get hit by a power-up, and you’re gone. It’s devastating, and oh so very juicy.

In a field of 32 players, I was only able to last for the first half of this particular tournament, and I consider myself a fairly decent player. I can only imagine how cut-throat this mode will be once the real professionals get stuck in.

As part of the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct preview event, these were the two main showcases for Mario Kart World – a few trips around the sun, and a bloodthirsty round of Knockout Tour. While only small, even this slice was enough to have us all salivating for more – to understand the game’s semi-open world system, where one track bleeds into another, and to see more of what’s planned for its multiplayer battles. As a first teaser, it was love at first sight.

At the very least, there’s not long to go before we’ll see more of this upcoming game.

_{GamesHub was invited to attend the Nintendo Switch 2 reveal event in New York by Nintendo, with flights and accomodation covered. Nintendo did not have editorial oversight of this article.}