Mario Kart World Makes Me Sad to be an Adult

23 Feb, 2026

I originally had another post lined up. In an effort to practice my media criticism skills in the stuff I was watching, reading, playing etc through the week I would introduce an element of my blog where I write a few quick sentences of analysis of something I had been enjoying lately. Brainstorming this new segment, my thoughts on Mario Kart World spun out of control, and that other real blog idea is put on hold. So here's what I've got for you instead:

It was my birthday recently, and my family was nice enough to get me a copy of Mario Kart World, a game way too expensive for me to ever buy for myself¹. My opinion of the game is obviously skewed by the fact that I didn't pay anything for it, but it really is fantastic. The new trick system, despite a few little nitpicks and occasional jank moments, is a fantastic innovation adding so much depth to the track design and moment-to-moment gameplay, the tracks have an incredible level of polish, and shit I even like those "routes" tracks everyone's been bitching about. I see the problem with only experiencing one lap of most tracks in the Grand Prix, but I think it's a really cool gimmick!

The open world conceit is something I've been daydreaming about since a kid. I loved the little details in Double Dash like seeing Daisy's Cruiser off the shore of Peach Beach, similarly in Super Mario Sunshine I loved that feeling of interconnectivity seeing other levels faintly in the distance, making Isle Delfino feel like a real place. Something about it just really sparked the imagination. Unsurprisingly, I've been having a lot of fun with the open world! The little challenges are cute, some surprisingly tricky, and it's just a great way to spend some time when I only have a couple of minutes on-hand to sneak in some playtime.

The only problem? I thought I'd like to explore a bit more. When I boot up the open world, I find a P-switch and do its challenge. Then, another one pops into my view and I go do that. If I don't see any, I just follow the nearest road until another challenge pops into view. This is a satisfying gameplay loop. It makes my eyes dilate like when Homer eats the McRib, but when I turn off the console I can't help but feel a little...melancholic?

I was recently in a lil book club with Jay Dragon where we read The Rule Book by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola, her primary source for the brilliant, Bloggie-snubbed Does Super Mario Bros. (1985) Have Rules?. Our discussion of video games as toy objects had me reminiscing about how I used to play video games. Here's what I wrote back in October:

one thing i am thinking of is smash bros melee for the gamecube and how the same game object has been used for multiple “games”; some people play this highly competitive 1v1 or 2v2 experience that rules out a huge chunk of the content on the disc, most people play what is considered “casual”, a less restricted competitive experience using most of, if not all, the content on the disc. but then also when i was much much younger i had a friend who i would do roleplay on smash bros melee with. we would play with no goal, no time limit, just pick a big stage and each juggle 2 controllers playing different characters telling a little story

i can distinctly remember being a kid and not really understanding what my goal might be in a video game, and all i would do is just explore and run around aimlessly. it was just a toy. when i played mario kart i wouldnt even do a race, i didnt want to. i wanted to just freely drive the car around and see what i can find and if i could get my car over to that weird cliff over there or to drive into that town off to the side (you of course never could lol)

A few console generations later, and I finally had my dream. A Mario Kart game where I can drive freely without any pressure, where I can finally run my kart as far off the road as I want, cruise around that town off to the side, go right into that big castle. But here I am, I clock off from an 8-hour day of doing little tasks on a digital screen before moving on to the next one, and I go sit down on the couch, look at a bigger digital screen and check off tasks one-by-one.

Of course, I'm older now. Duh. When I was a kid, I'd play the Free Roam mode of Kirby Air Riders's City Trials with my best friend and pretend to be citizens of Kirbyopolis, one of us would be a Warp Star Dealer and the other a customer checking out the wares, and once we were tired of that game we'd go see if we could get up to that giant island floating off in the sky, just because. We were bummed to learn that in Free Roam mode there was nothing cool up there, but fuck if I don't remember those play session fondly. But god, imagine what my partner would think of me if I asked them to do Kirby City Roleplay with me on the new Kirby Air Riders. Fuckin' weird, right?

This is a very cynical view of things. First of all, my partner would be quite polite about Kirby City Roleplay because we love each other very much. Even if they weren't, do we really need to let external pressures dictate how we play games? Can I not do my Donkey Kong Road Trip in Mario Kart World solo²? And imagine me, part of the new guard of the elfgame blogging scene, telling people that adults don't play games of imagination. We do! Grandpas go crazy for building model trains, and it ain't just about the trains, the little model villages, depots, factories, etc are a space for worldbuilding, for imagination. The hell are Civil War reenactments but LARPs for people with dubious historical ideas³? Hell, even in video gaming you have your roleplay communities, and whatever the hell AnyAustin is doing on a given Tuesday.

What if the existence of those little P-Switch objectives is what's taking the imagination away from me? I feel as if my life has been dominated by objectives and metrics lately. I watch a little bar on Goodreads go up every time I finish a book. When a movie closes, I log it on Letterboxd. I keep a spreadsheet of my gaming backlog and don't buy new games until it gets below a certain number. I type ".c" into the music channel of a friends' server to show off what albums I've been listening to lately. "Stop and smell the roses" is such a tired cliche, but honestly I can't even remember the last time I've actually, literally stopped to smell some flowers. Where do you even find a flower these days? The Walmart garden section doesn't have the same grandeur it had as a child, when I'd lag behind my mothers shopping cart to get the full sensory experience of every potted bit of beauty I could find. I don't reread books. I barely rewatch films. Sidequests get thoroughly ignored, I need to stay on pace with the HowLongtoBeat.

I don't know whose fault this is. Have I been programmed? Did the suits take away my imagination, unless packaged into rulebooks, blogs, and subpar fictions? Is it my fault for knowing this world of Grades and Quantities is wrong and still allowing it to determine my worth? I don't have to check my BearBlog analytics to see how many of you are still reading. I don't have to pester my players for feedback over and over again until I get the smallest nugget of criticism to ruminate over for the next week. I don't have to hit those P-Switches to Make a Wild Dash Past the Angry Goombas!

Mario Kart World won't bring back my imagination, it won't nurture my playful spirit, it won't make me feel that barely-describable sense of wonder. Only I can do that. I guess it's about time I try.

What I've Been Chewing On:

• I was surprised to see somewhat mixed reception to Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems. I've never been much into poetry, something I've been wanting to rectify as of late, and while yes the other poems have long left my brain at this point (the one about Walt Whitman at a grocery store was clever, I guess), "Howl" itself damn near moved me to tears. The necrotic touch of Moloch is written all over the post above, and his stream-of-consciousness portrait of those who try to escape it made me feel kinship, regret, and strange tinges of envy all at once. I'll be thinking about this one.

• I rewatched the 1977 Dawn of the Dead for the first time in years. I'm surprised by how much genuine, non-ironic levity exists throughout the film. Years of irony-poisoned "That Just Happened'-isms and the grimdark tendencies that often arise from attempts to buck the trend left me shocked by how much this gore-spattered takedown of late-stage capitalism highlights the tenderness the four leads show each other. Also, the way Romero baits you into thinking "Gosh, this makes a zombie apocalypse look like a ton of fun" before smashing you in the face with the cruel reality of the situation is wonderful.

• Godzilla Vs. Biollante is cool as hell. Could probably say something more insightful about its Jurassic Park, Frankenstein-adjacent "science gone wrong" themes (and how goddamned confused the movie is about its own messaging), but really I just want to say that Biollante puppet is sick as hell. Up there with the coolest non-Henson-affiliated puppets I've ever seen in film. However, the ambition of the puppet unfortunately hampered the action sequences; I'm used to these motherfuckers doing WWE moves on each other, and most of Godzilla did in these fights was untangle himself from a bunch of vines and shoot lasers. Still a lovely watch.

Blogspirations

• Farmer Gadda says "We (bloggers) have GOT to get sluttier (link more)", so let's start the second blog-addendum off with a shoutout to Gadda's "Your Own Worst Enemy", a great reassurance to overcritical GMs.

• My buddy Thad K isn't an RPG blogger, mostly rambling about music and/or internet culture, but you all may enjoy "Hiding Review Scores is the Best Thing Pitchfork's Done In a While", a brief rant on the ill effects of the review score. Anyone who related to my lil' rant about Goodreads, Letterboxd, etc may find a bit of catharsis here.

• If there was any direct blogspiration for this post, it'd be the brilliant reviews of Valeria. Her most recent Daggerheart review is wonderful, and really this blogpost is just an inferior thematic cousin of "I Do Not Like the Horse Woman"