Mario Kart World gets a free update adding team races to its Knockout Tour mode

Mario Kart World has received a free update which adds team racing to its popular Knockout Tour mode.

Knockout Tour is the Switch 2 game’s signature mode, and has 24 players racing through a series of tracks in a single end-to-end race.

Checkpoints mark the transition to each track, and players below a certain position are eliminated when they reach these checkpoints, eventually whittling the pack down to four players for the final phase.

If players reach the end, Knockout Tour races last more than 10 minutes, but because there’s only one winner at the end this means there are 23 players who don’t have much to show for it.

The game’s new version 1.5.0 update attempts to remedy this with a new team race mode in Knockout Tour, which makes every player’s finishing placement more important.

Players can be split into two teams (12 v 12), three teams (8 v 8 v 8) or four teams (6 v 6 v 6 v 6) and the winner at the end of the race is determined not by who finishes first, but by the total points tally of every member in the team.

50 points are awarded to the player who finishes in first place, with 40 points for second, 35 points for third and so on. The bottom four players – who get eliminated at the first checkpoint – only score a single point.

This means even if a player finishes in first place, if some of their teammates finish in the bottom four their team still has a good chance of losing. Likewise, even if nobody on a team wins the race outright, if they all get relatively high positions their total points can still get them the win.

Knockout Mode team racing can be played either online or via local wireless, with CPU drivers filling up the spots if 24 players aren’t found.

The full patch notes for the update are as follows:

Mario Kart World ver 1.5.0 patch notes

General

• Added team races to Knockout Tour when playing in a room during “Online Play” and “Wireless Play”.
• The game now supports the Polish language.
  • Note: You can change your selected language using the “Language” setting in the “System” menu of “System Settings.”

Fixed Issues

• Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes end if a player plays as Kamek on Choco Mountain.
• Fixed an issue where the displayed rating would sometimes be incorrect when joining “Everyone” in “Online Play” while in a room.
• Several other issues have been addressed to improve the gameplay experience.