For many years now, reverse tracks have been something fans have wanted to see more of in the Mario Kart series. Oh sure, there have been a few fan-made efforts to implement them, and they’ve appeared in a limited capacity in both Mario Kart Wii’s tournaments and Mario Kart Tour as a whole…

But as a rule of thumb, they’ve mostly been absent from the main series games. We got mirror mode, and that was about it.

However, it seems like Mario Kart World might finally buck the trend. Why? Because eagle eyed folks online have spotted an interesting oddity in the mini map layout for Mario Bros Circuit in this Japan only commercial:

Don’t see it?

It’s been reversed from the version seen everywhere else! Here’s a comparison with the Treehouse Live footage of the same track:

A standard race on Mario Bros Circuit

A reversed race on Mario Bros Circuit

As you can see, the split paths are near the top right in the commercial version, while they’re at the bottom right in the normal one. And obviously, the entire track is reversed in gameplay footage too, since players come through the tunnel and down that part in the normal version, while they’re going the other way in the commercial one.

So yeah, it definitely seems like reverse tracks will be in the game in some capacity.

The question is, how will they work?

Because there are a few options here.

Option 1, is that they’re what we expect. Reversed versions of each track exist in Grand Prix, Knockout Tour and Vs Mode, and act like mirror mode did in the earlier games. This would make sense, especially given that mirrored versions of these open world tracks may not be as exciting as mirrored courses were in more standard games.

At the same time though, it’s also entirely possible we’ll just get this as a Vs mode setting tied to course routes. Since well, you can already choose tracks to race between in that mode.

Hence, it’s entirely possible that the method to play reversed tracks comes from picking the normal ‘finale’ of a tour as the first course and the normal starting one as the finale. That would make some sense layout wise.

Regardless, it’s definitely true that reversed tracks are in the game in some form, and likely replace mirror mode this time around. So, what do you think this is all about? How do you see the option implemented in the game?

Leave your thoughts in the comments below, or on our Discord server today!

Source:

It Seems That You Can Play Courses In Reverse In Mario Kart World (NintendoSoup)