How Mario Kart World Encourages an Old School Approach to Games

Mario Kart World is a huge and whimsical game that’s helped kick the days of the Nintendo Switch 2 into gear with ease. From the challenging elimination races found in Knockout Tour to being able to drive around pastures as a cow in a car, there’s a lot for fans to do and see in the latest kart racer. This is especially true with the way Mario Kart World earns its name: an entire open-world map full of courses and secrets. This vast island contains each and every track, the roads connecting them, and even the spaces between, and it’s all up for exploration.

Everything players can encounter in Free Roam is part of the general thesis behind Mario Kart World. The wide open spaces encourage freedom and the journey, and the new charge jump mechanics invite fans to have fun and experiment with the shortcuts players have enjoyed discovering since the series first began. Though much of what makes Mario Kart World so notable is new to the franchise, including the concept of Free Roam, this feature also manages to capture the spirit of old-school gaming at the same time.

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Free Roam in Mario Kart World is One Big Playground For Fans

When players jump into Mario Kart World, they have the option of pressing the + button to drop into Free Roam as whatever character is on their title screen. From there, they’ll immediately have full control of going virtually anywhere they want. Sometimes, where they can go depends on how well they can control their kart and the charge jumping parkour mechanics, but every important location in Free Roam can be easily reached by driving there or via fast travel.

Like many of Nintendo’s other open-world ventures, like Super Mario Odyssey or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there are items to find and missions to complete. What sets Mario Kart World apart, though, is that there’s nothing too pressing to accomplish in Free Roam. Peach Medallions and P-Switches help tie into how players can unlock Mirror Mode, but most of what players are coming to Mario Kart World for are in other modes like Grand Prix and Knockout Tour. However, that’s exactly the point, as Free Roam gives players a gigantic playground to explore and do anything they want, even if it isn’t something the game actually intended.

Free Roam is more or less just a wide, open space for players to interact with. Even outside what’s there to entice the player to explore, fans can block other cars from moving, stop wandering Yoshis to dance with them, and topple towers and pyramids of Goombas that are blocking the path on certain roads. It invites players to enjoy the world in whatever way they see fit, as it’s essentially a toybox to play with however they want. To some players, it may feel reminiscent of the days when they used similar hub worlds as a place to play pretend, making a designated area to be their “house” when interacting with the game as a child.

As many games fill their overworlds with tons of pressing quests and markers that tell players exactly where to go these days, having Mario Kart World hand a world to players where the only objective is to explore how they want to and at their own pace is very refreshing. It’s one of the things that truly makes Mario Kart World feel like a Nintendo game in a way that hasn’t been seen for a few years now. It’s certainly a bright start to a brand-new era of Mario Kart and the Switch 2 as a whole. If this design strategy continues beyond MKW and throughout the Switch 2’s entire lifecycle, then fans have quite a lot to look forward to with the new console’s first-party releases.