According to people who have played Mario Kart World, the upcoming Switch 2 launch game from Nintendo, the new open-world kart racer is bigger than you might have expected, especially when compared to other open-world games like Forza Horizon 5.
Mario Kart World arrives alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 on June 5, which is just a few days away. Since it was officially unveiled in April, it’s sounded like a very exciting shake-up of the popular but stale Mario Kart formula. Instead of individual tracks that you race on separately via different events, Mario Kart World features an open map with no loading screens. Each race track in this open-world playground is connected by roads and highways. Events are spread across the open map, which you can explore between races to find collectibles, missions, and more. And the map all of this takes place in sounds large. Very large.
Game File’s Stephen Totilo got his hands on the Switch 2 early via an official press event. (Unlike how some others have snagged Switch 2 consoles ahead of the launch.) He reported that it took 10 minutes and 12 seconds to drive across Mario Kart World’s open world map. Giovanni Colantonio, the senior gaming editor at Digital Trends, reported that it took him about nine minutes or so to cross the map. So, how does that compare to other open-world games?
Is Mario Kart World bigger than Forza Horizon 5?
Well, to drive across the whole map in Forza Horizon 5, it takes around six minutes, according to the wonderful YouTube account and website How Big is the Map? In Grand Theft Auto 5, it takes about eight minutes to quickly drive across the map using roads and highways. Meanwhile, in Ubisoft’s The Crew Motorfest, it takes about 16 minutes, driving as fast as possible, to cross its enormous map.
Now, keep in mind that we are comparing very different video games using vehicles that drive differently in worlds that contain different physics and were built at different scales. So don’t take this as scientific proof that Mario Kart World is in fact bigger than Forza Horizon 5 or GTA 5.
Instead, to me this just implies that, yes, the open world in Nintendo’s upcoming kart racer is big. It’s not a tiny little open world that you’ll explore in a few minutes, but something that, according to a preview from Polygon, is filled with hundreds of collectibles, missions, and side activities.
Though, according to IGN, the open-world mode in the game doesn’t feel nearly as exciting or content-packed as that of Horizon 5. This is still a Nintendo-developed Mario Kart game and not some highly detailed simulation of a real world filled with multiple progression bars and seasons, like Forza or The Crew. Still, I’m very excited to get lost for hours exploring Mario Kart World when it arrives for Switch 2 on June 5.
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