How Mario Kart World Makes A Difficult Part of Racing Games Fun Again

Spoilers for Mario Kart World ahead.

With a rather large number of racing games releasing this year, many players are enthusiastically looking forward to putting the pedal to the metal with their favorite characters and franchises. Mario Kart World has pushed the new era of the Switch 2 into overdrive and led the charge for the 2025 racing lineup with a strong start. Not only is Mario Kart World confidently leading Nintendo into a new console lifecycle, but it’s also marking a new start for the kart racing franchise in general. It marks a lot of series firsts, adjustments, and improvements.

The biggest first of Mario Kart World is most certainly its open-world approach. With an entire island to race, wall-ride, and rail grind around to discover surprises, this changes almost everything about what fans have come to expect from the Mario Kart experience, even standard and Grand Prix races. There have also been a few tweaks to course design and gameplay balance that have had a great impact for the better on the experience as a whole. Items, the bane of most Mario Kart players’ existence, are now fun bumps in the road that keep the competition exciting.

Mario Kart World Costume Unlocks Fashion Show-1

Mario Kart World’s Costume Unlocks Turn Every Race Into a Fashion Runway

Costumes in Mario Kart World aren’t just collectibles, but instead are power-ups, rewards, and runway-ready transformations hidden in plain sight.

Mario Kart World is a Master Class in Balancing Items

Mario Kart’s Items Have Been a Blessing and a Curse For Years

For almost as long as the Mario Kart series has been around, fans have known the pain of losing a perfect first place to a poorly timed blue shell and more. Every player knows the crushing defeat that’s almost certain when enough items strike a racer at once, making it so they drop multiple places before they can even try to regain their lead. It’s helped give Mario Kart its chaotic and friendship-ruining reputation as a party game, but it’s hard to imagine the franchise without it. After all, items are a key component to the kart racer sub-genre as they have plenty of advantages and disadvantages that are healthy for a fun competition.

Balance is key to making sure the items help give other players an advantage against their opponents while still allowing the ones who get hit to recover and have a chance to race. This is why first-place players get coins as their most frequent item to avoid them keeping their lead consistently with red shells, for example. Every Mario Kart title handles its items and their effects differently. Mario Kart World, in particular, shortens the time items stun racers for, but that is only half the battle, as it also manages to balance its items efficiently as well.

How Mario Kart World Makes Items Fun Again

Mario Kart World takes great care of where item boxes are placed, making it so there won’t be too many long intervals in courses without them, but there also aren’t too many. The spacing between the item boxes feels just right when playing, giving players time to choose to use their item in the space between at just the right time before another one is up for grabs. Once again, certain items are only available in specific places to make sure things aren’t completely out of control, and every item has its perks no matter where players get it if they know how to use it.

Combined with how players no longer come to a complete stop and can easily pick up speed when an item strikes them, Mario Kart World offers some of the most unpredictable, chaotic, yet satisfying races in the series. This careful balancing act elevates so much of the open-world kart racer, making the new Mario Kart World modes breezy yet challenging, which matches well with its themes.

Mario Kart World wouldn’t feel nearly as amazing as it does to play without the careful consideration that was taken to its items. Even bananas and green shells were nearly cut from Mario Kart World during development to keep the gameplay flowing. Thanks to these decisions, Mario Kart World may remain one of the best racing games on the Switch 2 long into its lifespan.