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Kaan Serin

After helping Nintendo with Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, Xenoblade devs brought their open-world expertise to Mario Kart World as well

Mario Kart World screenshot showing Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Donkey Kong posing for the camera.

Nintendo once again called on its in-house open world specialists to help with Mario Kart World.

Long-time Xenoblade developer Monolith Soft announced as much in a new social media post celebrating the Nintendo Switch 2 launch game, where it explained the team helped to "develop the fields and character designs" for the new racer.

As the name suggests, Mario Kart World is a kart racer set within a single, giant, interconnected map that lets you free roam outside of the confines of a traditional MK track. So who better to call than the people who got Xenoblade Chronicles to actually run on a Wii, of all things, or made Xenoblade Chronicles X's mech-riddled world look so darn good on a Wii U?

This isn't Monolith Soft's first support rodeo, either. Nintendo previously got the studio to help push out its first-ever in-house open-world game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and its sequel Tears of the Kingdom, which are still some of the most impressive titles on the handheld-hybrid. It makes sense to get the studio to work on Mario's first open-world game as well, then.

Monolith's also chipped in on everything from Pikmin 3 and Animal Crossing to the Splatoon series. The studio's last solo work was this year's Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in 2022, so we should (hopefully) be seeing a new upcoming Switch 2 game from the team at some point soon.

Still wondering if you should even pick up the new console. Check out our Nintendo Switch 2 review in progress or find out where to buy a Switch 2.

Mario Kart World almost cut iconic items like the banana peel and green shell, because Nintendo wasn't sure if they still made "sense" in the Switch 2's new generation

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