I’m Super Stoked About ‘Mario Kart World’, but I Don’t Understand Why Nintendo Still Can’t Make a Good Character Selection Menu

Regardless of the price, I already know that I’m going to be there on day one for Mario Kart World. Or, whenever I can finally get my hands on a Switch 2, rather. I’ve spent well over 500 hours between the Wii U and Switch versions of Mario Kart 8, and from what I’ve seen? This looks like it’s going to be the biggest shake-up yet. But there’s one thing that still baffles me more than anything. After all of these years in the games industry, why can’t Nintendo just make a normal menu like everyone else?

Yes, ‘Mario Kart World’ Has a Lot of New Racers, but the Menu Is Beyond Padded by Costumes

The racers in Mario Kart have always been decked out in their standard Mushroom Kingdom attire. But once Mario Kart Tour became a thing, we started to see Nintendo getting a little weird with it. Something that I, personally, love to see. Weird Nintendo is the best Nintendo, in my eyes. Especially after watching the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, I was happy to see that there were pages upon pages of racers to choose from. Imagine the disappointment when most of that roster fills itself with costume-swapped versions of the original racers.

Rather than just having a submenu with additional costumes for your selected racer in Mario Kart World, we’ll get to thumb through 13 different pages, all while searching for Sombrero Waluigi. Yes, it may look like a riff on Waluigi’s Taco Stand, and I’m all here for it. But I don’t want to spend time looking through menus to find the perfect costume for my racer. Just let us press X or something and select the costume we want to use. You did it with the different colored Yoshis and Shy Guys in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, why can’t you do the same here?

Maybe, just maybe, Nintendo is trying to trick players who are getting hands-on previews of the game. That’s what my hope is for the time being. Maybe these menus will be padded out with more obscure racers when the game finally does release. Because Mario Kart is all about getting onto the track as quickly as possible, not waiting 10 minutes for someone to find out if Elephant Daisy is available as a racer.