Play Mario Kart World at Vocari Hub

The next meeting will take place on June 28th at Vocai Hub. It starts at 1 PM and ends at 10 PM, but you don’t have to stay the whole time and you can come and go as you please. The featured game is Mario Kart World for the Nintendo Switch 2 and I will have three Switch 2 systems and three copies of the game at the event. The game has four player split screen, and can also be played by two people per system in local wireless mode. When I was setting up the Switch 2 they had the option of either transferring everything over from the Switch 1 to 2, but erasing everything on the Switch 1 or just copying over the same account to the Switch 2. I did the second option but my saved data is stuck on the original Switch and I have to unlock stuff again in Mario Party and Smash Brothers. I will also provide four pizzas, cola, and bottled water for guests to eat during the party.

Mario Kart World is the first new game in the series after the well supported Mario Kart 8 which naturally leads to comparisons between the two games. Mario Kart 8 had twelve racers per track, but Mario Kart World has twenty four and all the courses are much wider to support it. I get hit by items much more frequently due to the increased number of opponents, but it seems like the amount of time from being stunned by a fire ball, boomerang, green, red, or even a blue shell have been reduced significantly. Yet the horn has both it’s range and stun time buffed for some reason.

A new mode in Mario Kart World is Knockout Tour which is a six race circuit where twenty four racers are whittled down to only four that qualify for the final stretch. There were a bunch of gimmick sections to tracks in Mario Kart 8 which have either been removed like the antigravity portions or scaled back like with the underwater or hang glider interludes. Now instead of driving underwater karts will transform into jet skis and float above the surface, but it feels much slower than skimming the bottom of a lake for some reason. In Mario Kart 8 use didn’t have very precise control of your vehicle when it was gliding, and it felt more like an emergency parachute to prevent you from crash landing. In Mario Kart World you can maneuver through the air much easier, but you still can’t gain altitude like in Diddy Kong, Sonic Transformed or other plane racers.

The main feature of Mario Kart World are the interconnected tracks and being able to free roam around the map outside of racing. Normally a race would begin at the starting line and finish at the same location after three or so laps. In Mario Kart World races typically begin with a rolling start, the course differs each lap and you see the terrain transition from one track to another mid race. The realism of the map causes problems for multiplayer however. You can start a session on any of the games thirty two tracks but the next race must happen on a course that is geographically located next to the first track on the game’s world map so that the drivers can drive there directly without a detour or load screen. Why can’t you just select the next courses after each race, or make a playlist before the start? It’s needlessly limiting.

There are a lot of characters in Mario Kart World. Some characters start out as road hazards but when Kamek transforms a racer into one of them the creatures will be unlocked as new driver. Other characters are merely costumes for the drivers to wear like track suits, beach clothes, biker gear, or silly hats. To unlock a new costume you’ll need to look for gold item bags on the side of the road called Dash Food. Using the item will give you a speed boost and change your outfit for the rest of the race.

Battle Mode returns with both Balloon Battle and Coin Runners. My issue however is that many of the eight Battle Mode maps are too large to accommodate twenty four characters so it’s difficult to find an opponent to hit and pop a balloon. I guess the giant maps work a little better for Coin Runners so you can sneak around and collect coins in peace. You can turn off computer controlled characters but feel like only Chain Chomp Desert and Big Donut are small enough size for a Battle Mode maps. Scaling the arena to the number of players would be much better