For Mario Kart fans across the globe, Nintendo has dropped a big piece of news. Now, Nintendo has announced a special livestream event regarding the Mario Kart World Invitational in 2025 during Nintendo Live 2025 TOKYO in Japan. The stream opens Saturday, October 4, at 9:30 pm PT, featuring Parents and Kids competitions alongside General competitions, giving the viewers a full weekend of kart-racing action.
Those sorts of announcements, though, yielded some wild, all-over-the-place responses from the community; some kind of people want to watch the poor guys drifting on Rainbow Road, but others are taking it very seriously and actually attempting to dissect such an event competitively, whereas others… well, they are demanding DLC announcements instead. Classic.
Essentially, the Mario Kart World Invitational is Nintendo’s flagship competitive event set in Tokyo next year, with the aim of it being broadcast via livestream. What’s interesting is the Parents and Kids competition-imagine families competing against each other in Mario Kart away from yelling at each other on couches. That either might turn out to be super cute or just utterly outrageous; probably both.
Looking from the replies to Nintendo’s tweet, it seems like a ton of interesting discussions will be brewing within the Mario Kart community. One user named LonelyGoomba said this: “I’m so fascinated how this is gonna play out if they include routes. Like, bagging is genuinely the competitive strat for those. Are they gonna do it? Will they have to comment on it live? Will the racers play dumb and not do it? Can’t wait.”
For those unfamiliar with Mario Kart lingo, bagging refers to the strategy where players intentionally go backwards in the early stages just to collect better items and make a comeback later; this is a legit strategy but would look weird to casual viewers. Another user, Jje261, said, “…the one time I saw Nintendo do something like this for deluxe there was a good number of players bagging and the commentators acknowledged it.” So we may well see some proper competitive action at this invitational; it sure would be fantastic for esports cred.
But hold up. The announcement didn’t please everyone. Several users were already demanding DLC announcements right after. CanucksHouse declared straight up, “Would be a great time to announce DLC,” while kirbykoopa8 admitted, “I thought that this was a direct announcing DLC.” Like, come on people, can’t we just enjoy a racing tournament without immediately asking for more content? Though, to be fair, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has been out for ages, so some new tracks or characters would be nice. Just saying.
The timing of the announcement got other’s attention. Dr_Scaphandre pointed out “How convenient you announce this when Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is doing a Hatsune Miku event.” Console war drama never ends, does it? Meanwhile, other users were debating whether this was actually new news-turns out this event was apparently announced back in July according to Demonica0, but Nintendo’s tweet made it seem fresh. Marketing, am I right?
Has there been some confusion about the currently competitive scene? Basedtweetsonly said the game was dead yet Demonica0 came back to say “its been highly active, more than before thanks to the recent update that finally increased the 3 lap track ratio.” So the competitive community is definitely still there and apparently growing.
Then there’s the whole time zone confusion-Blaziken1014 asked “What time is that Eastern Standard Time? I live in Massachusetts.” So for those wondering, 9:30pm PT converts to 12:30am ET, Sunday morning. So East Coast viewers are pulling a late night for this one.
Perhaps the most entertaining take would be from Mario123, who said, “Oh boy so excited i can’t wait to watch esports of people driving on highways LOL I rather watch people crash into each other on real life highways on youtube at least that is entertainment.” Okay then.
Meanwhile, some users are already making cross-game comparisons. Majewra threw some serious shade by claiming “Garfield Kart 2 clears all those.” Bold statement, but we’ll see about that.
It is comical how this event symbolizes Nintendo’s continual march into the competitive scene. Mario Kart has always had that casual party game reputation, but there exists a very skilled competitive scene underneath all the blue shells and banana peels. This invitational stands in a position to bridge the divide between casual and competitive play.
The Parents and Kids competition is the smart move, as it allows them to go further in making the event more accessible and family-friendly, which is very much on-brand for Nintendo. Imagine watching actual parent-child duos trying to coordinate while dodging red shells. It’s either going to be cute, or a complete disaster. Probably both.
