Earlier today, Nintendo released a new update for Mario Kart World on Switch 2. Labelled version 1.1.2, the update fixes various glitches on a handful of tracks, as well as a few online issues in general:
- Made readjustments to fix an issue where rate fluctuations were sometimes displayed incorrectly in “Online Play” and “Knockout Tour.”
- Fixed an issue where you sometimes can’t recover quickly after falling off the course in “Dino Dino Jungle”.
- Fixed an issue where you continually hit the wall near the finish line of “Boo Cinema” when transformed into Bullet Bill.
However, much to the dismay of many fans, those weren’t the only changes made here. No, Nintendo made a rather controversial change to how the random track feature works in Vs mode too.
You see, for whatever reason, the random track feature used to only select 3 lap tracks online. As a result of this, it became known as a way for die-hard fans to avoid the ‘highway’ sections between levels and play the game in a manner more closely resembling that of previous Mario Kart titles.
And that was important for many, since the highways weren’t exactly well-received overall. They weren’t bad per se, and they could certainly be fun during Knockout Tour…
But in traditional Vs matches, they usually offered a less interesting experience than the actual tracks. The number of alternate routes was generally on the lower side, with the rails and wall riding opportunities that did exist being less optimal than just driving straight. The lack of complexity meant that item luck played a huge part in the proceedings until the actual track began…
Plus, the huge offroad shortcuts made available via Mushrooms or Stars made Bagging (hanging back for good items and using them near the end) the go to strategy.
So, most pro players avoided them altogether. Every room from about 7000 VR onwards had everyone picking random for the normal tracks, with the highways generally showing up once in a blue moon at best.
Then came today’s update, where Nintendo changed the whole system. Now, the random option can select highway tracks in addition to 3 lap ones, with the ones included in the normal course selection being the most common. Here’s the statement about it from the Nintendo site:
Adjusted courses selected in “Random” when selecting next course in a wireless “VS Race.”
Plus, a more accurate breakdown by dataminer OatmealDome:
[Mario Kart World]
The Random option can now also pick from the options you are given (i.e. courses with an intermission) in version 1.1.2.
It *can* still choose to teleport everyone to a random course with 3 laps.
Repost to fix an inaccuracy. https://t.co/oWaoCuhttB
— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) June 26, 2025
It’s a controversial decision for sure, and one the fanbase were not pleased with at all. Indeed, with popular Nintendo YouTubers like TWD98, Shortcat, and Nathaniel Bandy calling it the Death of Mario Kart World online, it’s clear that Nintendo’s decision here was probably not the right one:
So, why did they make this change? What should they have done instead here? And how will Mario Kart World be affected going forward?
Well, it’s complex. With the first of those questions likely having an answer that’s far more pedestrian than people make it out to be.
You see, despite all the comments about Japanese culture and Nintendo wanting people to play games their way and higher ups being annoyed that players were ignoring the highway tracks, we believe the real reason they changed it was a lot less interesting. Put simply, they saw the lack of highways in the random course selection as a bug, and acted accordingly.
Think about it. Why would a random track option leave out highway tracks here? Why would it only select a certain type of track in a game with hundreds of them?
The answer is that it usually wouldn’t. It’s not a button for ‘pro mode’ or ‘3 lap tracks only’ or what not.
So, it’s probable that the only reason we could filter out highways here was due to a developer oversight. That someone on the dev team accidentally had it filter out all the highway tracks, and that this change is their attempt to ‘rectify’ this.
And if there’s one thing Nintendo is really bad at, it’s realising when a glitch or oversight is beneficial for a game and should probably be left alone. It’s why the Switch era Zelda communities got thrown into chaos with random patches and updates, and why a lot of the time, the things that got patched seemed more like accidental fixes than anything deliberate.
Hence they probably saw that the random option was giving everyone 3 lap tracks, didn’t bother to work out why everyone was selecting in en masse, and ‘fixed’ it in the worst way possible.
Regardless, what they should have done is look at the use cases here, and implement an alternative with the same functionality. Perhaps online could have done with a ‘competitive’ mode, sorta like the ‘For Glory’ mode in recent Super Smash Bros games. This could disable highways between tracks, rejig item probabilities to make things more skill based, and maybe tweak a few other settings to avoid the utter chaos that online Vs mode has become in this game.
Alternatively, if that’s too much of a hassle, they could always have just enabled the track selector from friend rooms instead. Give players the option to press + to see the full map, then select whatever track they want from there. This would solve a lot of Mario Kart World’s current issues pretty effectively, in that it’d let players travel further across the world in a shorter timeframe, pick tracks they personally enjoy rather than the ‘best of what’s available’, and even let those that like the highways choose their favourite ones rather than the few Nintendo’s randomiser picked out for them.
It’d be pretty simple for new players too. If you like the choices available, pick those. If you have no idea, pick random. If you have some specific idea for a track or highway, pick that instead.
So yeah, there are better options here, and Nintendo probably should have picked one of them.
As for how it’ll affect the game in the long run? Eh, that’s a bit harder to say.
On the one hand, the average Mario Kart player isn’t exactly a pro at the game. The majority of them will be either disappointed or apathetic, but not enough so that Worldwides will end up off the table.
So at the most casual end of the skill curve, it probably won’t affect too much. You’ll still find opponents online, and they’ll still play exactly as they do right now.
It also won’t affect the folks playing Knockout Tour for obvious reasons, nor the 3 people in the world still playing battle mode for whatever reason.
But at the highest levels, this could cause problems. Remember, about 80% of the player base selects only random and 3 lap tracks once you hit 8000 VR or so. And the higher you go, the smaller the percentage of people happy to play these highways gets.
So there could be a genuine loss of players at the higher ranks. There could be a decent number of pro level players that either purely play Lounge (friend room only Mario Kart World with 12 players and 3 lap tracks) or who go back to older Mario Kart games altogether, leaving better players in the lurch as far as VR and rankings are concerned.
Still, that’s what Nintendo changed in the last Mario Kart World update, and why it was such a poor decision to make. Hopefully they take the feedback into account and add a new option for 3 lap tracks in the next update, or revert the current change as quickly as possible. Because if they keep going down this route, Mario Kart World could drive away many of its most dedicated fans, and lose a lot of activity as a result.
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