I really want to give Mario Kart 8 another spin now. I really hope they improve on World in the coming years. I wonder if this update means they are also cooking something up for World.

Yeah Mario Kart Wii got a lot of flak for prioritising free-for-all chaos over competitive fairness, which fed into the "hardcorez" narrative at the time that Nintendo was abandoning their "fans" in favour of the so called casual audience, but frankly the ridiculous chaos is what makes it an all-time great party game.

Breath of the Wild charged for getting higher res and better FPS on Switch 2. No DLC included.

It's absurd how good the game has become. I remember falling in love with the vanilla version on WiiU in 2014. Now it has a proper battle mode, 96 tracks, 48 characters, support for eight players in local multiplayer, and, in my mind, the best moment-to-moment gameplay in the franchise. I don't know how any racing game, Mario Kart or otherwise, could top it.

Y’know it’s really funny how the newest MarioKart always goes from being a huge step down from the previous entry (MKWii to MK64 back in 2008, MK8 to MKWii in 2014, MKWorld to MK8DX in 2025) to eventually being seen as the “definitive version of MarioKart”. It’s certainly not a MarioKart exclusive phenomenon, but it’s funny to see it happen nonetheless.

I've liked every Mario Kart more than the previous on release except Super Circuit, 7 and World.

I don't remember 8 getting hate, other than some complaining about no battle mode lol.

I do, but the bright side isn't shining enough from Nintendo, and that hurts me more because I grew up with Nintendo, so I expect better of them than I did from Xbox and PlayStation. I need Nintendo to move forward while PlayStation and Xbox are moving backwards.

I haven't really observed this. On a personal level, I didn't really get into Super Mario Kart; I liked Mario Kart 64, but not as much as Diddy Kong Racing; I felt Super Circuit was a step backward; I loved, loved, loved Double Dash; I really admired Mario Kart DS (bring back Mission mode, you cowards); I respected but didn't really click with Wii; I thought 7 was just shy of greatness; I immediately considered 8 the best game in the series; and I thought World was an exceptional racer diminished only by the brilliance of its predecessor.

Well it definitely sounds like MKW could be much improved, but at least this is a rare instance of Nintendo actually doling out an unexpected gift for their customers. More often Nintendo makes boneheaded anti-consumer decisions, especially in the S2 era, so this is pretty cool to see even though I doubt very many people will be taking advantage of 8 player screens.

Maybe someone somewhere at Nintendo is still making good decisions...can we get that person to give us Prime 2 and Prime 3 and Wind Waker released on Switch please haha, and at like $20 a pop, thanks in advance .

From what I recall, the biggest complaints were (i) no inside drift (hence the massive community of MKWii hold-outs) and (ii) roster (Pink Gold Peach, koopalings, very safe/tame picks, no Funky Kong, etc). Wasn’t much but it was enough to leave the community sticking close to MKWii for a while.