Mario Kart World Revealed, Has A Free-Roam Mode

Well, here’s some news that absolutely nobody is surprised by. Mario Kart World has been revealed, and it’ll be released on 5 June, the same day as the Nintendo Switch 2. There is something surprising, though – it’s going to have free-roam.

Details are a little light at the moment, but we do know the game will centre around an open world. It’s looks as though all the tracks in the game exist in the same map, too, opening up the potential for a mega-long race.

You’ll be able to drive yourself to and from each race in a Cup or access the world through a separate free-roam mode, which supports multiplayer and has its own photo mode. Basically Forza Horizon, right?

Expect the races you take to be more chaotic – with the grid size increasing to 24 in Mario Kart World, up from 8 Deluxe’s maximum of twelve.

That’s about all that’s been officially spoken of so far, but we can pick out a few more details from the trailer shown during the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct. Rail grinding and wall-riding look to be new mechanics – someone must’ve been playing Tony Hawk lately – and it looks as though there’ll be some style of elimination races. Imagine those arguments with your siblings.

Character customisation looks to be featuring too, with different costumes for characters. We can see those alternate on the fly through in-race item pick-ups, though it’s unclear if you’ll be able to change them pre-events.

We’ll know a lot more about Mario Kart World on 17 April, with a Nintendo Direct deep-diving into the title. Until then, we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that the developers have implemented a few things from our wishlist…