8 years since making the jump from Wii U to Nintendo Switch, Mario Kart 8 is more essential than ever

Mario Kart 8 is, perhaps, the finest example of the supremely popular Mario Kart series. It’s also a deeply weird one – which is good, because otherwise I wouldn’t have too much to write about. It first came out on the Wii U, way back in 2014. To put it in perspective, that puts it both 11 years from 2025 and the release of Mario Kart: Double Dash. Yes, I get a perverse joy out of spooking people out with the passage of time.

It was a strong showing on the Wii U, but that console being what it was, meant that not many people got to experience it. Oh, sure, it sold over a million copies in its first four days, but the Wii U’s general unpopularity meant that not many people got to experience it. I remember that the rerelease on the Switch a whole three years later was a controversial move, but in the long run, it turned out to be the right one.

Changing lanes

When I grabbed a Switch in 2020, battling my way through lockdown scalpers, Mario Kart 8 was top of the list of my most-wanted games. If you play games, there’s a significant chance that you understand why. Mario Kart is constantly wheeled out (pun only slightly intended) at gatherings, and it’s a perfect party game. I’d argue that it’s a much better party game than something like Smash Bros., which while easy to get into, can be more difficult to intuitively understand. We all know what racers are like.

The game’s Switch version would have remained a fantastic game, but more of a stopgap installment, were it not for the additional tracks that started hitting with the game’s DLC. These packs, drip-fed to us over the course of 2022 and 2023, added a whole host of classic Mario Kart tracks from across the series’ history. They include city tracks from Mario Kart Tour, the Mario Kart Wii’s horrifically tough Rainbow Road, DK Mountain from Double Dash, and my all-time favorite Mario Kart circuit, Coconut Mall, from the Wii.

This cartload of content, which would have been more than enough for any single game, was added to an already 48 courses, giving us a total of 96 courses in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. If you want to play a Mario Kart game in the year of our Luigi 2025, there’s little reason to play anything else. If you’re a motion controls sicko, you’re still catered to as well, much to my chagrin, so even the venerable Mario Kart Wii, a staple of my student flat, can be retired.

Ever since I picked up Mario Kart 8 and its DLC, it feels like there’s always something fresh to play. I’ve probably played every course in the game at least once, but that doesn’t really matter much, as by the time you’ve finished rotating your way through them all, in 50-200cc karts, the first tracks will feel fresh again. Above all else, Mario Kart 8 feels like a love letter to the entire series, or a greatest hits album. The new tracks are all fun, but it’s in the revisits to old favorites, like Coconut Mall, my beloved, that really sell the game to me. Older games in the series have featured tracks from previous games, but never in such numbers.

It is the essential Mario Kart game.

While fantastic, this could also pose a problem for Nintendo: where does it go from here? This seems like a ne plus ultra, so what can the next Mario Kart game do to not feel overly fluffy and inessential in comparison? With Mario Kart World announced as a launch title for the Switch 2, I feel that it will need to build on Mario Kart 8 rather than try to replace it. This could, for instance, involve integrating the DLC tracks from Mario Kart 8 into Mario Kart World as bonus stages. Otherwise there’s the possibility that World will feel barebones (I nearly wrote Dry Bones) in comparison, regardless of its open world features.

Until we try out the game's open world and see just how substantial the new additions are, I can’t say whether Mario Kart World will be able to replace the previous installment or not. One thing we can say for certain, though, is that if you own a Switch, you absolutely need to own a copy of Mario Kart 8 as well. It’s as essential as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, or Super Mario Odyssey. What’s more, it’s emblematic of the Switch’s design philosophy as a whole – it’s a console that lends itself to multiplayer better than any other modern alternative, and what better multiplayer game than Mario Kart? It is a keystone game, arguably the most essential Switch title, even after all this time.

As Mario Kart World and all other upcoming Switch 2 games draw nearer, we'll be bringing you all the Nintendo Switch 2 news as it happens