Mario Kart World was a good Switch 2 launch game after all

The Switch 2 launch lineup was weird — or that’s what I thought after watching the April Nintendo Direct, anyway. Sure, Mario Kart World as a launch game made sense from a business perspective. When a re-release of Mario Kart 8 sells 68 million copies on the original Switch, it’s hardly surprising to see Nintendo lead with what data shows would more than likely be a big success. But was that really it? Just a racing game?

One month later, I’ve played Mario Kart World more than any other game on my Switch 2. The way it fits into my life, whether I have a few minutes or an hour to play, transformed it from being an odd-seeming launch choice to one that makes perfect sense, even if Nintendo’s doing its best to make it seem otherwise.

I opted for the Mario Kart World bundle to save money, but the really exciting part about getting a Switch 2 — or so I thought at the time — was the chance to play The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in full at last. I bounced off the game hard after speeding through some of its more difficult challenges for guides, and since it stuttered frequently in places and froze for several seconds during transitions between the open world and dungeons, I figured there wasn’t any point starting again until a more powerful Switch existed. The day my Switch 2 arrived, I loaded Tears of the Kingdom to see how much of a difference the frame rate improvement makes and haven’t played again.

Instead, I’ve spent most of my time with Mario Kart World. So far, I’ve ended up playing it far more than I played Breath of the Wild alongside the launch of the original Switch in 2017. At the end of a long day, after work and family obligations, I don’t just lack free time. I lack the desire to do much with the time I have and certainly don’t want to do something that requires mental effort. I could explore more parts of Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 or learn how to play a new character in Street Fighter 6 — or I could put a cow on a motorcycle and have them do backflips off a dinosaur.

It’s an easy choice, and one that fits into lunch breaks, quick sessions at night, longer play with others over the weekend — whatever I want, really. If I’m yearning for something with a bit more depth beyond learning a course’s shortcuts or messing around with wall-riding, I can always go online for a quick Knockout Tour. Five or 10 minutes in Tears of the Kingdom won’t get me much, but I can start and finish something that feels enjoyable and worthwhile in the same amount of time in Mario Kart World.

Not having enough time or willpower to allocate to longer games isn’t a problem unique to me. While it’s easy to label this a recent cultural trend brought on by publishers releasing a ludicrous number of games every week and the rotten state of national and world affairs, it’s not really a trend at all. It’s a constant of how we interact with games. Researchers studying how to improve project scope in game development for the Entertainment Computing journal found that most players never finish a game, even if they like it. As far back as 2013, former Ubisoft designer Jason Vandenberghe wrote in Game Developer Magazine that any good game developer knows most of their players won’t finish their game.

In a parallel universe where the Wii U wasn’t a historic failure, Nintendo’s software pipeline hadn’t dried up during the console’s final years, and the company didn’t have to prove it was still a contender with Breath of the Wild, I could see Mario Kart World or something like it being the launch game for the original Switch. Its mix of quick-hit challenges and longer races are the embodiment of the “anywhere, anytime, however you want” style of play Nintendo pioneered with the system, and it slots into your schedule without feeling like you’re having to sacrifice something else just to enjoy it. It’s the kind of game for people who don’t finish games, which is most of us.

That was important for Nintendo in 2017 when the convenience of mobile gaming living in your pocket seemed like its biggest competitor, and it seems even more important now when time and money constraints are influencing the industry more than ever. Of course Nintendo wants to launch its new, expensive system with a game that won’t make people think they’ll wait until X months later when they have more time, one they can play with friends and family without having to buy additional consoles and games. It just makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is Nintendo’s approach to pretty much everything else about the Switch 2’s launch lineup. Mario Kart World seems like an anticlimactic opener thanks in part to the lack of transparency about what’s next. Yes, the excellent-sounding Donkey Kong Bananza is out later this month. But beyond that, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is still floating in the aether, with no announced release date, and Pokémon Legends: Z-A is months away. Where Nintendo promised a set number of games each month and extensive third-party support during the original Switch’s first few months, there’s little indication of what’s in store between now and the holidays.

Nintendo provided fewer development kits to its publishing partners than it did in the lead-up to the first Switch’s release, in what some publishers told me is an effort to focus on quality. The policy led to excellent ports such as Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky, but it also means there’s just not as much coming to the Switch 2 this year. Or if there is, we don’t know about it. That leaves Mario Kart World to steer the console through its first months of life, and racing games rarely carry much weight with critics or consumers, no matter how good they are.

Mario Kart World might not have the star power of a new 3D Mario game or the surprise appeal of something like Donkey Kong Bananza, where a second-tier mascot suddenly takes center stage. It might not have the universal appeal of a Pokémon sequel or the shiny veneer of a new Metroid. What it does have is convenience, flexibility, and respect for my time. In that regard, Nintendo was right after all: Just a racing game was enough.