Mario Kart World vs Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Which to Buy?

If you only own one Mario Kart, the short answer is Mario Kart World if you already have (or are buying) a Nintendo Switch 2, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe if you're still on the original Nintendo Switch. World is the newer, pricier, Switch 2-exclusive racer built around an open, interconnected map, while 8 Deluxe is the eight-year-old Switch favorite that now carries 96 courses across the base game and its Booster Course Pass DLC for a lower total cost. Neither game is "obsolete," and the two genuinely play differently, so the rest of this comparison breaks down price, track counts, and the features that actually separate them.

What Actually Changed Between the Two Games

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, first released on the original Nintendo Switch on April 28, 2017, is a souped-up port of the Wii U's Mario Kart 8 with a stack of battle-mode fixes, new characters, and — starting in 2022 — the 48-course Booster Course Pass. It plays like every mainline Mario Kart before it: pick a cup, race four tracks lap by lap, collect your trophy, repeat.

Mario Kart World, a Nintendo Switch 2 launch title released June 5, 2025, keeps karts, items, and the core drift-and-drift-boost loop intact but rebuilds the structure around a single, continuous open world. Instead of loading into an isolated track, every course in Grand Prix mode is connected to the next by a drivable transition route, so a four-race cup becomes one long, uninterrupted drive with three "real" races stitched between them. Nintendo also added Free Roam (an explorable sandbox version of the whole map) and Knockout Tour, an elimination race across multiple linked courses. If you want the deep dive on how Knockout Tour's checkpoints and eliminations actually work, we've covered that separately in our Knockout Tour explainer.

Price and Value

Mario Kart World lists for $79.99 for the digital edition on Nintendo's own store — $20 more than Nintendo's usual $59.99 price point for a first-party Switch game, and $20 more than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's $59.99 list price. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's Booster Course Pass, which adds 48 remastered courses from across the series' history, costs $24.99 on its own, or comes at no extra charge if you're an active Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack member (that tier runs $49.99/year individually or $79.99/year for a family plan).

So on a pure cost-per-course basis, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with the full Booster Course Pass is the better value: roughly $85 total (or just $59.99 if you already pay for Expansion Pack) for 96 courses, versus $79.99 for Mario Kart World's smaller, but far more interconnected, course list. World's price isn't for "more content" in the old sense — it's paying for a different kind of game built from the ground up for Switch 2 hardware.

Platform and Hardware Requirements

This is the biggest practical dividing line. Mario Kart World is a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive — it will not run on an original Nintendo Switch at all. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe runs on both: it launched on the original Switch and, per Nintendo's own listing, received a free Switch 2 update that adds enhanced visuals, faster loading, CameraPlay support for 2–4 players, and up to eight-player local multiplayer on a single Switch 2 console. If you haven't upgraded consoles yet, 8 Deluxe is the only one of the two you can play right now. For more on what the Switch 2 hardware itself brings to the table against other handhelds, see our Nintendo Switch 2 vs. Steam Deck OLED breakdown.

Track and Course Counts

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's course total is well documented by this point: 48 courses from the base game (32 original plus the 16 added as Wii U DLC, all carried over to Switch), plus 48 more from the Booster Course Pass, for 96 total courses across 24 cups once everything is installed — a figure Nintendo's own Booster Course Pass product page confirms by describing the pass as adding "48 additional courses" on top of the existing lineup.

Mario Kart World's course count hasn't been published by Nintendo as a single headline number the way 8 Deluxe's eventually was, but it's commonly catalogued at 30 base courses split across eight Grand Prix cups (seven available from the start, with a hidden Special Cup unlocked by gold-trophying the rest), plus intermission routes that connect them in the open world and don't count as standalone tracks. Nintendo has continued adding free content after launch, including new courses and a free update letting players race as a team in Knockout Tour, so this number has grown since release — treat any specific course count for World as a snapshot rather than a permanent figure.

Grand Prix: Open World vs. Classic Circuits

In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Grand Prix is exactly what longtime fans expect: choose a cup, race four self-contained tracks, three laps each, and collect a trophy based on your cumulative placement. Nothing about that structure has changed since the Wii U original.

Mario Kart World keeps the cup-and-trophy framework but changes what happens between races. Per Nintendo's own description, only the very first race in a Grand Prix cup is a traditional, self-contained lap race; every race after that has you driving from the finish line of one course, through an open connecting route, into the start of the next course, with the transition itself exposed to traffic, shortcuts, and hazards. The practical effect is that a "four-track cup" in World feels closer to one long point-to-point event than four separate sprints, and that connective world is also what Free Roam and the open map are built from.

Knockout Tour, Free Roam, and Battle Modes

Knockout Tour is Mario Kart World's headline new mode and doesn't exist at all in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Up to 24 racers run a single long course made of connected routes, with the lowest-placed drivers eliminated at set checkpoints until only a handful remain near the finish. We go deeper on exactly how eliminations, checkpoints, and routes work in our explainer on Knockout Tour.

Free Roam is World's other defining addition: an explorable version of the entire connected map, where players can drive almost anywhere off the marked racing lines — Rainbow Road is the one notable exception — at their own pace, discovering collectibles and shortcuts outside of a race. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has no equivalent; its between-race content is limited to menus, not a drivable overworld.

Battle Mode looks different in each game too. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's Deluxe-specific overhaul let racers hold two items at once and restored classic battle courses alongside new ones, including the Splatoon-themed Urchin Underpass. Mario Kart World carries Balloon Battle and Coin Runners forward as its battle offerings, now staged within the open-world courses rather than fully separate arenas.

Multiplayer, Online Play, and GameChat

Player counts are one of the clearest upgrades in World. Nintendo's own listing puts Mario Kart World at 1–4 players on a single system, 2–8 for local wireless, and 2–24 online — double Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's online cap of 2–12 (with up to 1–4 local on one system and 2–8 local wireless). Both games tie online play and cloud saves to a Nintendo Switch Online membership.

Mario Kart World also supports GameChat, Nintendo Switch 2's built-in voice (and optional video, with a compatible USB camera) chat feature. Per Nintendo's listing, GameChat needs an internet connection and a Nintendo Account, and — starting after March 31, 2026 — will also require an active Nintendo Switch Online membership; until that date it works without one. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, running on older hardware architecture, has no built-in GameChat equivalent, though it does support Nintendo's separately organized online tournaments.

Which One Should You Actually Buy?

If you're deciding between the two as a Switch 2 owner who has never played Mario Kart, the practical pull toward Mario Kart World is strongest: it's the version built for your hardware, it supports more players online, and the open-world Grand Prix, Knockout Tour, and Free Roam are genuinely new things the older game can't replicate. The $20 price premium buys you features, not just more of the same tracks.

If you're still on an original Nintendo Switch, the decision makes itself — Mario Kart World won't run on your console at all, so Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the only option, and a perfectly deep one: 96 courses, a tight four-item-max classic Grand Prix structure, and nearly a decade of balance and content updates behind it.

If you own a Switch 2 but are torn purely on value, consider that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also plays on Switch 2 with its free visual update, meaning you could own both: 8 Deluxe for the deepest classic course library at the lower price, and World for the new open-world modes and bigger online lobbies. They aren't direct replacements for each other so much as two different eras of the same series.

What to Do Next

Before you buy, confirm which console you actually have — a Nintendo Switch 2 box or eShop listing will say so clearly, and Mario Kart World simply won't install on an original Switch. If you're Switch 2-ready and want the newest mode set, buy Mario Kart World at $79.99. If you want maximum course count for the money, or you're not upgrading consoles yet, get Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at $59.99 and add the $24.99 Booster Course Pass (or check whether your Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership already includes it for free). Either way, check Nintendo's own product pages linked throughout this piece for the current price in your region before checking out, since regional pricing and bundle offers do shift.

Written byJonah Reyes

Jonah Reyes leads Pandromeda's gaming coverage: console and handheld hardware, release dates, pricing changes, patch notes and the business moves behind the biggest franchises. He sources every date and price from the platform holders and publishers themselves, and says plainly when something is still only a rumour.

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