Mario Kart World player gets to the bottom of how coins work

One Mario Kart World player has gotten to the bottom of how coins truly work in the game.

At first glance, coins may not seem that important. They can’t take out someone that’s in first place like the Blue Shell or provide an immediate speed boost such as with the Mushroom. Coins do provide a speed boost overall, but it now appears that we have a better understanding of how the whole system works.

Credit goes to shortcatt321 on Tiktok for this one. Using one particular character and kart, it was found that moving forward in a straight line provides a 5.1 percent speed increase if you collect the maximum amount of twenty coins. While you’d expect to get a 2.5 percent boost from ten coins, it turns out the actual amount is 3.6 percent.

Here’s where things get even more complicated. Using a character with a high speed stat, shortcatt321 found that ten coins only gives a 1.4 percent speed boost. So what’s going on here?

shortcatt321 ended up collecting data for every single coin count, showing there are different rates for low vs. high top-speed builds even though both eventually get to 5.1 percent at twenty coins. If you’re using a slow combo, you’ll go faster when collecting more coins early. However, for fast builds, the coins you obtain as you get closer to twenty are more impactful. Essentially, coins are a buff for slower combos and a nerf for faster ones.

Mario Kart World is available on Nintendo Switch 2. In other news, the famous Totaka’s Song Easter egg was recently discovered in the game, which we covered here.