Earlier this week, the Switch 2 was hacked for the first time. As a result, it finally became possible to datamine exclusives for the system, including the likes of Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment.
And while all three of those have some interesting unused content, Mario Kart World arguably has the most. Indeed, as pointed out by dataminers online, there’s evidence for a ton of scrapped characters and ideas in the game.
Like Spiny. Yeah, Spinies were meant to be NPC drivers at some point in development, as shown by the presence of ‘Driver_Togezo’ on the list here:
Amazingly, MondoMega has found 8 additional potential scrapped drivers in a file that relates to the character weight stats: Twomp, Blooper, Ninji, Goomba "twins" (presumably Goomba Tower), Chain Chomp, Fuzzy, "Bird" and "Banana". https://t.co/ypXNUylm0J
— Rimea (@The_Rimea) October 28, 2026
And it’s only the top of the iceberg. Here are all cut characters that were meant to be playable at some point in development:
| Internal Name | Name | Weight Class |
|---|---|---|
| Driver_Banana | Banana | Lighweight |
| Driver_Bird | Bird | Medium Weight |
| Driver_Gesso | Blooper | Medium |
| Driver_Wanwan | Chain Chomp | Medium Weight |
| Driver_Chorobon | Fuzzy | Lightweight |
| Driver_KuriboTwins | Goomba Twins? | Lightweight |
| Driver_Hakkun | Ninji | Lightweight |
| Driver_Togezo | Spiny | Lightweight |
| Driver_Dossun | Thwomp | Medium Weight |
Yeah, they’re all NPC drivers that are found on the tracks and in the open world. And, given that the list features the likes of Rocky Wrench and Conkdor after them internally, we wouldn’t be surprised if they were cut in favour of those due to the latter being a bit more… ‘interesting’.
Interestingly, their weight classes don’t seem to match any logical setup here. Indeed, while the lightweight characters are certainly characters that would appear to be lightweight in canon (Fuzzy, Spiny, Banana, etc), the bigger characters all seem to be classed as middleweights here. So, unless we were playing as particularly small Thwomps and Chain Chomps, it appears their ‘stats’ were copied over from a default character template.
What’s more, it’s also clear that the Blooper being an item was a last minute change too. That’s because the item list for the game looks like this internally:
- 000 – Banana
- 001 – Green Shell
- 002 – Red Shell
- 003 – Dash Mushroom
- 004 – Super Star
- 005 – Lightning
- 006 – Triple Bananas
- 007 – Triple Green Shells
- 008 – Triple Red Shells
- 009 – Triple Dash Mushrooms
- 010 – Golden Dash Mushroom
- 011 – Bob-omb
- 012 –
- 013 – Spiny Shell
- 014 – Bullet Bill
- 015 –
- 016 – Coin Shell
- 017 –
- 018 –
- 019 –
- 020 –
- 021 –
- 022 – Feather
- 023 –
- 024 –
- 025 – Fire Flower
- 026 – Coin
- 027 – Super Horn
- 028 – Boo
- 029 –
- 030 –
- 031 – Boomerang Flower
- 032 – Ice Flower
- 033 –
- 034 – Mega Mushroom
- 035 –
- 036 –
- 037 –
- 038 – Kamek
- 039 – ? Block
- 040 – Hammer
- 041 – Blooper
Yeah there are a lot of empty slots for items, while the one for a Blooper is stuck right on the end. Presumably, the original plan was to remove Blooper as an item and turn it into a driver, until the devs decided the item balance would be better off with it as an item after all.
As for unused tracks?
Well, there isn’t that much evidence for them. There’s nothing in the files labelled ‘MapleTreeway’ or ‘CoconutMall’ or what not. The only oddities there are the tracks were already knew were retooled from existing ones, like how Faraway Oasis used to be DK’s Jungle Parkway or Starview Peak used to be Rosalina’s Ice World.
That said, there is a reference to a ShyGuyBazaar_01 in the files, in addition to the 00 version used for the regular track. So, it’s likely that the ‘Daisy’s Palace’ variant used at the end of some routes was either meant to be a selectable track during development, or will be added to the list later on, similar to the SNES tracks in the last update.
There’s also a reference to a ‘Volcano Wall’ track too, though the jury’s out on whether that’s the Big Donut battle arena, or the race around the outside of Bowser’s Castle used in that free-roam mission.
It also appears like a Super Mario Land 2 track may have been planned at some point too. Or at least, the music from that game was meant to be used for a track of some kind or another.
That’s because unlike most free-roam songs, there’s an empty ‘PrimaryCourse’ variable in the files for that theme. So, this song was presumably meant to be more important than it currently is:
Modes might have been scrapped or left empty for future updates too. That’s because the internal list of modes for this game is as follows:
- 00 – Grand Prix
- 01 – Knockout Tour
- 02 – Time Trials
- 03 – VS Race
- 04 – Battle
- 05 –
- 06 –
- 07 – Friends
- 08 – Balloon Battle
- 09 – Coin Runners
- 10 – Knockout Tour (alt)
- 11 – Events
- 12 – Battle (alt)
- 13 – Bob-omb Blast
There are some obvious gaps here, and ones which could be connected to some sort of scrapped online mode or two. Again, it’s hard to speculate based on this info alone, but it is an interesting detail nonetheless.
Either way, that’s all the unused content found in Mario Kart World so far. The characters are definitely the most interesting of the lot, given how many familiar foes were meant to be NPC Drivers in development, but the possibility of unused tracks and modes is certainly worth bringing attention to as well.
Regardless, what are your thoughts here? Are there any scrapped characters you wish made it in? What modes and items could have filled some of the other empty slots here?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below, or on our Discord server today!
Sources:
- Rimea’s Post About Unused Characters (Twitter)
- Various Dataminers and Discord servers for Switch 2 Games