Get a head start on Mario Kart World with a few tips!

If you’re thinking of getting behind the wheel in the Mario Kart™ World game for the Nintendo Switch™ 2 system, you may not know your drifting from your drafting. But never fear, drivers—why don’t you take a quick pit stop with us while we give your skills a tune up?

Let’s start with the basics

1) Coins are super important—you’ll want to pick them up to increase your kart’s max speed for that course. You can carry up to 20, so keep an eye on how many you have.

2) Speed boosts help keep you in the race, and there are a variety of them:

• Rocket Start: During the countdown at the start of a race, press and hold the A Button when the 2 appears for a quick boost.

• Drifting/Mini-Turbo: Drift into corners by tilting the Left Stick in the direction you want to turn while holding the R Button. Keep holding it to get a bigger Mini-Turbo boost!

• Drafting: No, we didn’t misspell “drifting”! Hang out just behind another driver for a few seconds until a quick boost kicks in.

• Jump Boost/Tricks: Press the R Button right as you jump off a ramp to pull off a trick and get a boost when you land.

3) When Smart Steering is on, your Mini-Turbo will have two power levels (you can tell based on the color of your sparks). Turn Smart Steering off to unlock a third level.

Getting fancy

4) While those are some basic tips, Mario Kart World adds an extra layer on top:

• Charge Jump: Hold the A Button and then the R Button as you drive straight. This will cause sparks under your tire—now, tilt the Left Stick and release the R Button to do a small jump in that direction.

• Rail Ride: Getting on top of certain narrow surfaces like handrails and powerlines will let you drive up them. You can also Charge Jump onto them too!

• Wall Ride: While facing a wall, do a Jump Boost or Charge Jump into it. Whoa—now you’re driving on that wall!

5) Ready to put it all together? These mechanics are meant to be chained together, so it’s up to your own crazy creativity to see what works. For example, you may Charge Jump onto a wall, drive up the wall to a rail, slide down the rail, hop off onto another wall, etc.

6) Use Rewind if things go off the rails (literally). Just like in real life, not all “shortcuts” you make are actually shorter. Don’t forget that you can rewind your kart’s position in most single player modes by pressing the Down Button. Just remember that it only rewinds your kart position and not time itself!

Unlock stuff

7) Vehicles: Remember when we said coins were important? Keep collecting coins to unlock additional vehicles!

8) Characters: Want more characters? Some of them can be unlocked just by playing Grand Prix. You may also unlock certain characters when a Kamek item transforms you.

9) Outfits: Dash Food can give you a small boost and a chance to unlock an outfit for the character you’re racing as. It might be easier to do this in Free Roam because you can instantly explore different regions to get different types of Dash Food. Just remember that not all characters have additional outfits.

Free Roam

10) Before heading into Free Roam, check the Map option from the main Menu to see the location of different characters. Hover your cursor over one to see how many outfits you’ve collected for that character (and how many you’re missing). If you hover over a course, you’ll see how many ? Panels you’ve found there. Select either a character or location to quickly warp there.

11) While in Free Roam, you can bring up the map any time by pressing the Y Button.

12) We already mentioned this, but Rewind is essential when you’re in Free Roam (especially if you happen to roll off a cliff or something…). You can even use Rewind while doing a P Switch mission.

13) Press the A Button + B Button at the same time while tilting the Left Stick to spin around very quickly.

14) Quickly try different vehicle and character combos to see which you like best. Go to the menu at any time and choose “Change Character.”

15) On a related note, if you’re stuck on a P Switch mission, try out a different character and vehicle combo that is better suited for that challenge. For example, pick a vehicle with better handling if the challenge is about dodging obstacles. You can check vehicle stats by pressing the Y Button when picking one.

We hope this lil’ bit of drivers ed was helpful! You can purchase the game or add it to your Wish List by using the link below.

Mario Kart™ World

Regular Price:$79.99 

Nintendo Switch 2

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