Pretty much the entire internet was expecting today's Switch 2 debut, but the trailer did bring us a surprise first look at the next Mario Kart game - which, for the sake of convenience, I'm gonna be calling Mario Kart 9 from here on out. More than anything else, I'm obsessed with Yoshi's, which appears to be a Yoshi-owned-and-operated roadside diner that's giving me flashbacks to a 32-year-old puzzle game I thought Nintendo had forgotten about.
The track displayed in the bits of Mario Kart 9 footage we see is set along an American-style highway through the desert, and as befits the setting the racers blast past a roadside diner/gas station combo. Here, though, that diner is shaped like a Yoshi's head and is appropriately named Yoshi's, implying that there's a colorful dinosaur behind the counter slinging burgers.
The Yoshi's logo immediately reminded me of the cover art for the oft-forgotten puzzle game Yoshi's Cookie, originally released in 1993 across NES, SNES, and Game Boy. The tongue-out pose and angle of the face is very similar to the old game's box art, and the little chef's hat immediately calls to mind the Mario chef outfit from the old game. Maybe I'm reaching to think this is an official tribute, but at a minimum it looks like Nintendo's bringing Yoshi back to the kitchen after a long, long time away.
The new game doesn't yet have an official title, but given the lineage of the past couple of mainline entries - Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8 - calling it anything other than Mario Kart 9 would seem a bit odd. Technically you could count Mario Kart Tour in as the ninth game, making this Mario Kart 10, but that'd be giving the mobile spin-off an honor Nintendo never offered to Mario Kart's numerous arcade entries.
Whatever it ends up being called, the new Mario Kart appears to show off 24-person multiplayer in that trailer, as well as a whole new look for Donkey Kong seemingly inspired by the Mario movie. Perhaps the most shocking detail, though, is that Princess Peach has given up proper racing gear to round the track in a full royal gown once again. Good for her, I guess, but that seems like a safety hazard.
Check out our Nintendo Switch 2 live coverage for all the news on the console as it comes through.
After just 5 months in Early Access, the unstoppably charming love child of Wind Waker and Kiki's Delivery Service fully launches on all platforms this month
After handheld PCs like the Steam Deck cribbed from Nintendo Switch, the Switch 2's new Joy-Cons could harness PC gaming's most powerful weapon: the mouse
