When it comes to Mario Kart World, one of the biggest issues with the game is the lack of tracking features in free-roam. Indeed, with the game’s map not marking down P-Switches or Peach Medallions by default, collecting them all was a chore of insane proportions, with the last update only improving things a tad by telling you once the grind was complete.
But now it seems things have improved significantly. Why? Because Nintendo’s released another update for the game, and included some very useful features there to boot.
Here’s the full changelog from their official website:
Version 1.3.0 Changelog
Changes
- You can now join friends playing “Knockout Tour” by selecting “Friends” from “Online Play” “1p.”
- Up to 2 players can now play “Free Roam” while waiting if the game was full when trying to join friends playing “Race,” “Knockout Tour” or “Battle” in “Online Play.”
- The “Free Roam” map now displays the locations of P Switches you’ve run over and Peach Medallions you’ve obtained.
- You can now select a P Switch from the map and move to a location near the P Switch.
- In “Free Roam”, you can now transform into the character pulled into the UFO.
- If “Dash Food” in “Settings/Controller” is set to “Doesn’t transform” then you will not transform.
- It is now easier to encounter UFOs in “Free Roam.”
- The conditions for the appearance of some Peach Medallions in “Free Roam” have been adjusted.
- When spectating in “Knockout Tour” or “Balloon Battle” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play”, you can now choose who to watch, even if you are holding the Joy-Con 2 or Joy-Con horizontally.
- Decreased the time between when an item box is taken by someone and the next time it is revived.
- Increased the invincible time after spinning or crashing during a race.
- Reduced the force of jumps when landing on a rival from above.
- Decreased the amount of time between when you finish and when spectating begins in “Knockout Tour” or “Balloon Battle” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play.”
- Decreased the amount of time between passing through the checkpoint and when the ranking is displayed in “Knockout Tour” in “Wireless Play” and “LAN Play.”
- Further increased the frequency of lap-type courses appearing in the selection when choosing the next course in “VS Race” and wireless races.
Fixed Issues
- Fixed an issue in “Online Play” and “Wireless Play” where the ranking would sometimes become incorrect if a player went off course at the same time as reaching the finish line.
- Fixed an issue in “Grand Prix”, “Knockout Tour”, and “VS Race”, where the CPU’s ranking would sometimes drop after reaching the finish line.
- Fixed an issue in “Knockout Tour” in “Online Play” where other players’ ratings would sometimes appear as “0” on the results screen.
- Fixed an issue where a Spiny Shell would sometimes pass the first-place player in “Wireless Play” or “Online Play.”
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes be sent flying backwards a great distance when hit by a Spiny Shell.
- Fixed an issue where the second item in an item slot would sometimes not disappear when hit by Lightning.
- Fixed an issue where hitting the base of a pillar in mid-air would sometimes cause a large jump.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused movement to become unstable when doing a wall ride on water.
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes be swept away strongly after landing when doing a mini jump while going up a river.
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes pass through the ground when hit by a car driving on the road.
- Fixed an issue in “Free Roam” where players would sometimes be unable to enter pipes correctly after exiting a trailer.
- Fixed an issue where the results screen would sometimes become distorted after spectating “Balloon Battle” in “Online Play.”
- Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes not proceed to the course selection screen after exiting a pipe during “Free Roam” in “Online Play.”
- Fixed an issue where Bullet Bill would sometimes slip through walls when used in “Sky-High Sundae.”
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes get stuck on a wall at the start of the race heading from “Airship Fortress” to “Shy Guy Bazaar.”
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes get stuck in walls when using a Bullet Bill in “Bowser’s Castle.”
- Fixed an issue in “Cheep Cheep Falls” where item boxes were sometimes difficult to pick up when Smart Steering was turned on.
- Fixed an issue in “Knockout Tour” “Spiny Rally” where sometimes there was an item box buried in the ground.
- Several other issues have been addressed to improve the gameplay experience.
Yeah, there’s a lot to go over here. But in our eyes, the most interesting one is definitely this:
The “Free Roam” map now displays the locations of P Switches you’ve run over and Peach Medallions you’ve obtained.
Yup, there’s now a tracking system for P-Switches and Peach Medallions in Free-Roam. As a result, you can now easily tell which ones you’re missing by comparing your screen to a finished map online, and even warp to the ones you’ve completed to make getting around the map much easier.
So yeah, screw sites like IGN and their ‘pay to tick off completed missions’ crap. You can now just find any old map of the game, and compare your progress directly without a stupid tracker.
You can also get characters a lot more easily too. Since well, Kamek isn’t the only way to unlock NPC drivers anymore.
Nope. Now the UFOs you encounter in free-roam will do the trick too, being able to suck up enemies and NPC racers and transform you into those characters once the UFO’s timer runs out.
Basically you can use the ufo to unlock npc characters instead of relying on kamek pic.twitter.com/atmJ14DEEV
— aurelicai (@aurelicai) September 24, 2025
So, instead of having two players sit on a particular track and roll item boxes until someone gets the Kamek Orb, you can now just find the character you need in free-roam (in either enemy or NPC driver form), then get a UFO and suck them up. Voila, one new NPC driver, no randomness required.
What’s more, apparently this is pretty easily ‘exploitable’ too. Since well, the driver you abduct with the UFO doesn’t have to be CPU controlled for the system to work.
Hence if you’ve got a friend or six with the game, you can just have people pick characters that the others don’t already have, them get a UFO and capture them for the free character unlock. Congrats, Fishbone and Dolphin are now significantly easier to unlock than ever before.
And the changes just keep on going from there. Want to play online with friends? Now that’s possible, including in Knockout Tour. Feel like you’re getting too many intermissions online? Now 3-lap tracks show up significantly more often, albeit not to the degree they did before the random button was nerfed. Dislike being Mario Karted too much? Now there’s at least a bit more in the way of mercy invincibility, so you won’t get utterly wrecked every time a stray item happens to connect.
It’s all a lot more convenient than ever before, and makes the game… somewhat more enjoyable than it was before that point.
Heck, even the bug fixes seem to be addressing things that fans have found frustrating. For example, the whole issue of going off course at the finish line and getting a wrong result seem to be related to the Wario’s Galleon/Shipyard finish line shortcut, where riding the wall at the end will sometimes have the game drop you in last place by accident. Now that risky shortcut is going to remain a shortcut no matter what, rather than an opportunity for the game to unfairly screw you over.
Same goes with the tweak to how long Knockout Tour results took to display. It sounds minor, but it fixes an unfortunate issue people have experienced where they cross a checkpoint in a position too low to qualify, but remain ‘in-play’ for a good 30 seconds or more for no apparent reason.
All of these changes address issues shown on social media sites like Twitter, and on videos by creators like TWD98 and Shortcat. In that sense, it’s clear Nintendo’s devs are at least listening to feedback here.
But there’s still more they could have done. Like say, including many of these things by default when the game came out. Or adding options for standard races rather than slowly raising the chances of encountering them piecemeal.
Still, that’s the latest update for Mario Kart World, and absolutely everything it changes in-game. So, what are your thoughts here? Does the update provide enough to make Mario Kart World worth coming back to? What changes are your favourites so far?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below, on social media, or on our Discord server today!
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