What’s up with the uneven distribution of costumes in Mario Kart World?

When Mario Kart World was teased during the Nintendo Switch 2, in the brief and beautiful moments before we knew what the Switch 2 would cost, the internet immediately glommed onto one specific detail: Cow. You could play as a Cow.

Now that the game’s out, the glory of Cow—and other delightfully absurd additions like Penguin, Snowman, and my personal favorite, Cheep Cheep—is everything we believed possible. Well … almost everything. Because another one of Mario Kart World‘s new conceits is a new item, a bag of take-out food which transforms the driver into a new costume. Imagine me, during my first Mario Kart World Grand Prix. I’m obviously driving as the Cow. I pick up a glowing doggy bag from Yoshi’s, and … nothing.

Turns out, all the “creature” characters—like Cow, Penguin, Snowman, Goomba, even Dry Bones—don’t get costumes. And even among the main cast who gets fabulous outfit changes, there’s some major discrepancies. For example, Mario gets 10 outfits, the most in the game. Donkey Kong gets two.

Everyone loves dress-up

On the whole, Mario Kart World is a peak point in a beloved franchise. An open-world Mario Kart feels much more immersive than you’d think, and it makes for some epic tracks. New twists like the cut-throat Knockout Tour—where the bottom four racers are culled every lap—breathe additional new life into a franchise as old as Nintendo’s home console history.

Still, polished as Mario Kart World is, the bizarre unevenness of the costumes makes it feel like a game that has an obvious opening for additional content out of the box. It makes it feel not quite finished.

The idea that people have favorites and will want to play dress-up with them shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all one of the biggest game producers in the world. Hell, popular games like Infinity Nikki and, arguably, Monster Hunter Wilds use outfits as a primary motivator to progress gameplay, and people love it. Of course, people will want another costume change for Pauline other than “Aero.” But here’s the thing—Pauline’s Aero costume looks ridiculously cool! All these costumes are fantastic. They’re perfectly campy and delightfully dumb. Bowser’s “Biker” get-up involving jeans torn at the knee cap and greased-back hair, which screams “cool dad trying a little too hard”? Phenomenal. Wario can dress up as a bee. A bee! King Boo as a monocle-touting aristocrat? Please, yes!

The thoughtfulness of all these costumes is precisely why the chasm between Mario’s 10 outfits and Pauline and DK’s two feels so pronounced. There’s not much rhyme or reason to it all, either: why does Koopa Troopa get six costumes, but Dry Bones—the skeleton version—get none? It’s fine if every character doesn’t have as many as Mario, but to underplay the mascot of the Switch 2’s first adventure game like that feels strange. Honestly, it might be a sign that Nintendo’s planning to add more.

Give the Cow a costume, you cowards

As likely as it seems for Nintendo to add costumes for the main cast as Mario Kart Tour rolls along, we inevitably turn back to the game’s biggest meme: Cow. For us Cow-lovers, the bigger question is whether they’ll ever bother to add some outfits for the “creatures”.

It doesn’t have to be much, Nintendo. Just throw a scarf on that cow. Maybe some sunglasses and a floppy little hat. We’ll be so happy. It unfortunately feels doubtful: after all, the game has 50 playable characters. If each character had five outfits, we’re looking at 250 driver options. I’d be surprised if Nintendo had that in mind from the get-go. At the very least, the character select menu would need a major overhaul, but that’s necessary anyway. (How are costumes not a sub-menu for each character? How is it not at least organized by character? It’s mayhem!)

Still, I hope against hope. Please, Nintendo, if you’re going to put the Cow and the Penguin in the game, let them play dress-up, too.