Mario Kart 9 needs these crucial features

Mario Kart 8 was originally released for the Wii U in 2014. That’s over ten years ago! Since then, the game has received a host of refinements, updates, and new content. This includes everything from characters to courses to balance changes and everything in between. Then we got Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a renewed version of the game on Nintendo Switch – and it sold so incredibly well that Nintendo never got around to making an all-new entry on the console. It’s easy to see why, but with rumors of the Switch 2 swirling around as usual, it might be time for the Mario Kart franchise to look to the future. We think a hypothetical Mario Kart entry on Switch 2 needs a couple of key features to succeed – here’s everything we’d like to see in the next game.

An all-star roster

Right now, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has a rather expansive roster. Also, it’s the largest one in the series, if you don’t count Mario Kart Tour. The key words there are “right now”, though – when Mario Kart 8 first released on Wii U, its character roster wasn’t exactly impressive enough to write home about. You always have series staples like Mario, Bowser, Wario, Toad, and the like in Mario Kart – but it’s the new additions that usually catch peoples’ eyes. In base Mario Kart 8, you had all seven Koopalings as new drivers, plus Baby Rosalina and Pink Gold Peach. The Koopalings aren’t the most popular characters, but they’re at least decently well-liked and they’re a fairly standard pick, given how many modern Mario games they actually appear in (mostly the New Super Mario Bros. and Paper Mario series). Pink Gold Peach and Baby Rosalina, on the other hand, weren’t great inclusions. The former was a simple palette swap of Peach in the same vein as Metal Mario, while the latter makes no sense given Rosalina’s lore! As a child, she was not a galaxy princess – she was a normal girl with reddish hair, and only became a princess later on according to the storybook in Super Mario Galaxy.

Thankfully, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and its Booster Course Pass massively expanded the game’s roster. It brought back key exclusions from the base game like Bowser Jr., King Boo, Birdo, Petey Piranha, Diddy Kong, and Dry Bowser. It also added a few new characters who hadn’t been seen outside of Mario Kart Tour, including Pauline, Peachette, and Kamek, among others. Thing is, Mario Kart 8 needed these characters in an update – we think the next game would be much better off with these drivers available at the start, plus a bit less fluff. Mario Kart 8 has five babies, two metal characters, Tanooki Mario, and Cat Peach.

A wider pool of new drivers would help, too. Most new Mario Kart characters in recent times are generic enemies or palette swaps, and that’s fine – but give us some deeper cuts. Let’s rapid-fire a whole bunch of examples: Professor E. Gadd, Geno or Mallow, Stella or Grape from Princess Peach Showtime, Ashley or Mona from WarioWare, Prince Florian (or even a Talking Flower, if you want an odd pick) from Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Cappy from Super Mario Odyssey, or maybe have Poochy, Donkey Kong Jr.,  or King Bob-omb return from Mario Kart Tour. We’d also recommend a Paper Mario character or two, and possibly Starlow or Snoutlet from Mario & Luigi: Brothership given those games are all topical at the moment. Point is, there are tons of characters you can use from the greater Mario series. You can even include more guest characters like Captain Falcon (he already has two courses in the game!) and possibly Kirby or Pac-Man, the latter of which has already appeared in two Mario Kart games (albeit Mario Kart Arcade GP games, which are kind of like Mario Kart spin-offs in a way).

Lots of courses, both new and old

This one’s obvious, but every Mario Kart game is defined by its courses. It’ll be extremely difficult, if not flat-out impossible to outdo what Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has on offer right now. Between the base game, the Wii U DLC, and the Switch Booster Course Pass, this entry has more courses than any other Mario Kart game (except for Mario Kart Tour). That said, the Booster Course Pass tracks, while incredibly enjoyable, are of a lower visual quality than the other tracks. The textures are smoother, simpler, and sometimes, barely present at all. That’s understandable, though, given that the Booster Course Pass was simply meant to extend Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s lifespan until the end of the Nintendo Switch console cycle.

That, however, is how the next Mario Kart can become a worthy successor to Mario Kart 8 – visually beautiful courses. Mario Kart 8 has more than a fair few of these as part of its base content, but we’d love to see some of the Booster Course Pass tracks remastered with the same level of care and detail as those base tracks in Mario Kart 8. Not to mention, there are several tracks from the series that appeared once and never again – we wrote up a big list of them here. The next Mario Kart course could feature retro tracks like DS Bowser Castle, GCN Rainbow Road, GCN Mushroom City, and the like.

As for its new courses, we’d also like to see Mario Kart create more tracks based on existing Mario locations. That isn’t to say that every track should be based on an existing location – some of Mario Kart 8’s original tracks like Dolphin Shoals, Toad Harbor, and Sunshine Airport were absolutely excellent. On the other hand, the Booster Course Pass Yoshi’s Island track is exactly the kind of course we’re talking about – it’s based on Super Mario World 2 and features music and characters from the game. What if we could see something similar for Super Mario Odyssey? Or a Lake Lapcat course from Bowser’s Fury complete with a giant Fury Bowser? The possibilities are endless, and we can’t wait to see what comes next.

Other small additions

In terms of gimmicks, the past few Mario Kart games have added quite a few. Mario Kart 8 added anti-gravity, Mario Kart 7 added gliding and swimming, and Mario Kart Wii added motorcycles. We’re sure the next Mario Kart game will add another such gimmick – something somewhat subtle that doesn’t change the gameplay too much, but adds enough of a difference to be significant in advertising and marketing for the game. We also have no idea what that gimmick could be – karts can already run underwater, up walls, on ceilings, and through the sky, so what other modes of transportation are there? Perhaps we’ll see drills that can forge paths underground or something similar.

We’d also like to see slightly streamlined online play. While Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s current online system works just fine, there are a few minor changes we’d make. For one, here’s the way it works right now: players meet up in a lobby and are given a couple of stages to choose from. Each player votes, and a stage is chosen from those three. With so many stages available in the game, some of the courses can start slipping through the cracks. In our experience, we played online for several hours but wound up totally forgetting about some of the tracks that weren’t randomly selected as often. A voting system where each person votes on their own track could be a better replacement, especially if there’s a cooldown rule where one stage cannot be played in a random online lobby over and over again. That would help keep things fair.

One last thing we’d like to see come back is Mission Mode from Mario Kart DS. This mode was supposedly planned for Mario Kart Wii, but was later scrapped entirely. That’s kind of a shame – the individual single-player missions aren’t anything revolutionary, but they were fun time-wasters if you had Mario Kart as the only game in your DS and needed something to do. Mario Kart DS’ boss battles against King Boo, Wiggler, and the Bullies (characters who otherwise were not playable in the game) were memorable bouts, and we’d certainly like to see a revamped mission mode appear in a future Mario Kart title. A full on story-mode is almost certainly asking for too much, but Mission Mode hits a good balance. Not too in-depth, but something to do for those looking for a bit of single-player content.

What do you want to see most from the next entry in the Mario Kart series? Do you think Nintendo will launch a new Mario Kart as a Switch 2 launch title, or do you think they’ll hold it back a few months or even years? Are there any characters you really want to see introduced or brought back? Whichever the case, feel free to tell us all about it in the comments down below.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is still available on Nintendo Switch, and you can check out the official website for the game (and all of its characters and courses) right here.