Mario Kart World is a massive refresh for the ludicrously popular kart racing franchise, bringing the total number of participants per race up to 24, while moving the action into a fully open world environment in which you drive from one race course to the next.
Quite a few returning favourites from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and beyond have been confirmed, along with a bunch of newbies. Below is a guide on how to unlock every character for Mario Kart World., as well as their weight class.
Weight classes, like in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, are a hidden stat, and the only way you can tell what class they are is by looking at a kart's stats after you've picked your character. Amazingly, these stats were worked out way back in April by reddit user ItzManu001, but it's not very different from previous games.
Basically, the lighter characters have a much higher acceleration and better handling stats than heavy characters, while the heaviest characters have the best top-speeds. This also all depends on vehicles, and there are downsides to picking a heavy character on a big vehicle, for example.
You can see in our examples below that, in the same kart, Mario and Luigi's stats are identical as they're in the same "class", while Toad's acceleration is higher than both. Bowser, meanwhile, has lower acceleration, but a higher top speed.
At the end of the day, though, you should just play with who you want and who you feel comfortable with!
How do you Transform into Characters with Kamek?
Kamek is a brand new item that's pretty rare, but he's essential if you want to unlock all of the game's characters.
When used, Kamek will summon enemies onto the course and transform all racers in its path into a random character or enemy. If you're not sure how to get Kamek or how it works, we've got a guide that should fully explain Kamek for you.