Ever since its official reveal at the big Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, Mario Kart World has been met with a mostly positive reception. That’s regarding the game itself, by the way – not so much the $80 price tag. With all that said, some players are wondering if Mario Kart World has hidden characters or tracks that weren’t revealed in any of the pre-release material. While we don’t exactly believe that’s the case, we’re absolutely open to being proved wrong. The more content, the better! Here’s why we think Nintendo has shown most of Mario Kart World’s content (hypothetical updates and DLC aside).

Starting with tracks, we think it’s very unlikely that Mario Kart World is hiding any courses other than Rainbow Road, which was hinted at in the Mario Kart World Nintendo Direct from last month. At the time of writing, there are 30 courses confirmed for the game. There are two different routes through Crown City and Peach Stadium, which are counted as additional courses for the purposes of Grand Prix mode. If you count both of those, then there are 32 courses in total. All of these courses are present within Mario Kart World’s big open world, which does appear to have been revealed in full. Furthermore, this makes the idea of hypothetically adding courses via updates or DLC problematic. You can’t really insert a new track into the established open world, so you’d have to introduce a completely new continent. It’s important to note, however, that Rainbow Road is in space. That’s obvious, but theoretically you could connect it to other courses that take place in space. In the final game, it’s most likely that Rainbow Road is the only course that takes place above the open world, but it would be neat to see some other hidden courses added to the game in this way.

Moving on to characters, it also appears that Nintendo has shown the complete character roster already. We know of exactly 50 playable characters at the moment, and that’s a very even number – an easy one to use in marketing, too. Mario Kart World’s roster definitely isn’t weak, though! It’s got plenty of unique characters (Nabbit, Pauline, Pianta) plus some downright humorous additions like Sidestepper, Snowman, and Fish Bone. You could argue that using a bunch of standard enemies from the Mario series isn’t very creative, and that’s fair. At the same time, though, keep in mind that Mario Kart 8’s big headlining newcomers were the Koopalings, Baby Rosalina, and Pink Gold Peach. Mario Kart 8 on Wii U was sort of infamous for its incredibly lacking roster, so it’s clear that Mario Kart World is at least a big improvement on that. With that said, World is still missing a few key characters. King Bob-omb, Kamek, and the Miis are nowhere to be found. But most importantly, Diddy Kong is still missing. This is especially puzzling, given that he’s recently received a design overhaul. It seems that many of Mario Kart World’s enemy characters, like Cheep Cheep and Conkdor, are unlockable. And judging from pre-release videos, it seems these characters don’t have any outfits. So any character added in updates could add themselves to this category and not have any outfits to choose from.

Although it’s definitely possible that there are somehow unseen characters and courses in Mario Kart World’s launch version, we think it’s unlikely. Historically speaking, Nintendo tends to reveal most (if not all) of the content in Mario Kart games prior to release. Mario Kart 8’s pre-release trailers revealed anti-gravity, the Koopalings, kart customization, and most importantly, all of the unlockable characters and courses. All of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s new characters, modes, and vehicles were also detailed before launch. So if you go by Nintendo’s track record with Mario Kart, they tend to reveal nearly all of the games’ contents prior to launch. It’s been over ten years since Mario Kart 8’s release, though, so it’s also possible that Nintendo has changed their philosophy a little and is hiding a little bit of unrevealed content behind the full game. In any case, we’ll find out soon enough!

There’s also always the potential for updates or DLC. It’s certainly too early to be thinking about any of that, though – we don’t even have the full game yet! That said, Nintendo would almost certainly receive some backlash for selling DLC for a $80 game. Even so, Mario Kart is a once-per-console-generation scenario now. Mario Kart World is the Mario Kart game we’ll be playing for five years at an absolute minimum, and the idea that Nintendo would launch the game and then never update it again doesn’t sit right. Adding characters in post-launch updates, even for free, helps keep the game relevant and in the news. As a new console, Nintendo Switch 2 needs all the momentum it can get, and Nintendo could help keep it going by adding a couple of new characters to Mario Kart World every few months. Even with its large character roster, there are still plenty of good ideas for new additions. Here are a few of our ideas.

Do you think Mario Kart World is hiding unrevealed characters or courses, or have we seen just about everything the game has to offer? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. The final game could go either way, but we’re leaning towards “probably not” just to be on the safe side. If you want to read more about the content that is currently confirmed for Mario Kart World, take a look at the official website for the game.

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