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Speedrunners Are Already Breaking Mario Kart World—And It’s Beautiful
July 5, 2025One month. That’s how long it took Mario Kart World, Nintendo’s bold new karting title on the rumoured Nintendo Switch 2, to earn its rightful place among the legends at Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ)—arguably the holy grail of competitive speedrunning events.
It’s fast, it’s chaotic, and fans can’t get enough of watching pros blaze through Mushroom Kingdom’s wildest tracks with glitchy tricks and pixel-perfect drifts. This isn’t just about nostalgia anymore. This is the beginning of a brand new speedrun era.
The Fastest Mario Kart Ever?
Nintendo went big with Mario Kart World, blending classic chaotic energy with modern flair—all on the ultra-hyped Nintendo Switch 2. And it FEELS faster. Not in a “wow the karts got new boosts!” kind of way, but in a “blink and you’ll miss Rainbow Road” kind of way.
Speedrunners, naturally, took that as a challenge. Within days of release, tech-focused players discovered a list of potential skips and exploits. Wall-jumps, shortcut glitches, and lap skips that brought back memories of the infamous Wario Stadium jump from the N64 days, but with slicker animations and tighter controls thanks to new tech. This modern Mario Kart isn’t just friendly for families anymore—it’s a hardcore mechanic-lover’s playground.
SGDQ 2024: All Eyes on the New Kid
SGDQ 2024 is happening mid-June in Minnesota, and the big surprise on the schedule? Mario Kart World speedrun debut. Despite only being out for a single month, the game earned a primetime slot during the annual week-long event packed with wild runs and charity fundraising for Doctors Without Borders.
This kind of rapid-fire inclusion is rare. Most games take years to gain a foothold in the speedrunning community. But Mario Kart World? It tore down the entry gate with no blue shell in sight. Why the rush? Well, Nintendo fans are ravenous for new content, and let’s be real—the Mario Kart multiplayer competitive scene has been waiting for a fresh injection of madness since Mario Kart 8: Deluxe got stale. Mario Kart World delivered chaos, bugs, and brilliance in equal measure.
Early Strats Are Already Wild
Watch any early Mario Kart World speedrun (most are under 40 minutes for full-cup clears right now), and you’ll see something magic: runners improvising mid-lap, exploiting half-tested physics, clipping through geometry like they’re starring in a 2002 YouTube glitch compilation.
This isn’t polished, and that’s the point. These routes are messy and revolutionary. Each lap is both a performance and a live science experiment. That messiness? Speedrunners eat it up.
Some of the most common tricks? Lakitu-swap exploits that fool the game into re-spawning players across the finish line for instant laps, boost-pad chain glitches, corner clipping that lets racers practically teleport, and, incredibly, item-memory abuse that manipulates RNG. Mario, Toad, Peach… they’re all flying through circuits like they’ve discovered warp zones to another meta entirely.
Mario Kart World’s Design Is Perfect for Breaking
On the surface, this game might look polished and gooey with vibrant Mushroom Kingdom vibes. But under the hood, it has horrific beast potential for skilled players. Levels are wide open, with plenty of verticality, open-air jumps, and crinkly shortcut shells that scream “break me.”
Also worth a mention—the new Switch 2 hardware brings high refresh tolerance and shorter load times—a huge win for the speedrun community. Even the tiniest frame saves now carries actual weight again. For Nintendo, catering inadvertently to speedrunners might just pay dividends in long-term hype.
Dev interview tease: According to a throwaway comment during a Japanese livestream (translated on Reddit), one of the level designers hinted they “left some boundary challenges in for fun.” So yeah, those are definitely intentional platforming exploits hidden beneath the rainbow chaos. You love to see it.
Where This Leaves the Fanbase
Multiplayer smash-hit? Check. Festival of third-person arcade racing mayhem? Also check. But more importantly, this Nintendo release is giving hardcore players something new to sink their teeth into. We’re seeing the beginnings of a new speedrun meta. Mario Kart World isn’t just another shiny kart reskin—it’s the next evolution of the racing game speedrun scene. Community discords are lighting up with new strats, YouTube is exploding with WR attempts, and Twitch chat is losing its collective mind during labbing sessions. If it’s this good one month in… imagine the skips we’ll see in a year’s time.
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