Mario Kart World is just two weeks away, launching alongside the Nintendo Switch on June 5. In the lead-up to the game’s release, Nintendo released a four-part interview series with the team behind Mario Kart World, including producer Kosuke Yabuki. In this interview series, Yabuki is asked how many courses are in the game, to which he responds that there are more than 100.
Yabuki explained that because Mario Kart World is designed as an open world racing game with lots of terrain and more to explore en route and between designed race tracks, it’s tough to quantify the number of courses. However, if you add up all the possible variations, the number exceeds 100, according to Yabuki.
“In this game, you don’t just race on the courses,” he said in the interview. “The areas between courses are also used for racing. So it’s as if there are courses spread out all over the world, and if you were to add up all the possible variations, it would easily exceed 100.”
The interviewer then joked that Yabuki said earlier that Mario Kart World’s design philosophy wasn’t about increasing the amount of content, despite the game doing just that. Yabuki added, “Since it’s now a single, interconnected world, it’s hard to do a direct comparison with the last game, but in the pursuit of approachability and fun in this new, vast world, the volume of content we had to create in terms of visual design, programming, and audio increased dramatically.
“And as a result, the gameplay is more varied than ever before.”
We’ll all discover how varied the gameplay is in two weeks when Mario Kart World launches exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2 on June 5.
In the meantime, read Game Informer’s hands-on preview of Mario Kart World, and then read about how Nintendo considered dropping the resolution and frame rate of Mario Kart World before changing development to the Switch 2. After that, check out Game Informer’s 2025 Switch 2 release schedule list.
Are you excited about Mario Kart World’s open world design? Let us know in the comments below!
