Mario Kart Worldboasts the largest and most eclectic cast of characters of any game in the franchise. The game’s 24 main characters and 26 NPC racers eclipseMario Kart 8 Deluxe’s42, once the sixBooster Course PassDLC characters have been counted. With so much choice, it’d be easy for decision paralysis to kick in.
We decided to see if that was the case, meticulously counting character picks from dozens of races to figure out Mario Kart World’s most-popular character — and it’sa disappointingly obvious one.
After 3,000 Character Picks And Dozens Of Races, We Figured Out Mario Kart World’s Most Popular Racer
Let’s start with the method: we counted over 3,000 individual character picks from over 150 online races in Mario Kart World, manually logging each and every one of them. We ensured that we removed any characters selected from multiple races against the same human player, only counting the first. We also excluded computer players that often helped fill lobbies and, of course, only counted our own picks once. This led us to our findings, which were quite conclusive.
In first place by some margin was Yoshi, who was chosen 214 times out of the 3,014 picks we logged, accounting for a whopping 7.1 percent of player picks.Mario ranked in second place, 31 picks behind Yoshi on 183, for a total of 6.1 percent.Toad came in third placewith 162 picks, andRosalina fourth, in arguably the first shocking placement in our findings.Peach rounded out the top five, before Waluigi, Cow, Daisy, Luigi, and Shy Guy made the top ten.
Shockingly, there was no place for Bowser in the top ten, falling four picks short of Shy Guy and ranking 11th. Perhaps even more surprising was how few players chose Donkey Kong, especially giventhe imminent release of his new game. The primate ranked in a lowly 15th, with 73 players using him, out of more than 3,000. Baby Luigi was the least-popular “main” character, with only 22 picks, Birdo then had 27, and Baby Mario had 35.
As far as the most popular NPC characters, Cow was clearly top in seventh, followed by Penguin in 19th overall, Nabbit in 20th, and Stingby and Monty Mole in joint 23rd.
At the other end of the scale, Rocky Wrench finished rock bottom and was the only character to fail to break double figures, finishing on nine out of 3,014. Wiggler finished 49th with ten picks, and Pokey finished 48th with 11. Cataquack and Hammer Bro made up the rest of the bottom five.
1
214
26
46
2
183
27
44
3
162
28
43
4
157
29
40
5
126
30
35
6
121
31
33
7
112
32
8
108
34
10
101
11
97
36
12
89
37
23
13
80
38
22
14
77
39
20
15
73
16
72
41
19
17
67
42
18
64
63
58
47
49
48
25
50
9
Total
3014
Naturally, you’d expect the NPC characters to rank lower, given their unlock requirements, but the disparity between top and bottom is stark. You have to wonder how things would have shaken out had Nintendo includedother popular characters that it left out, like Diddy Kong, Link, Isabelle, or the Inklings. But the companyhas made it clear it doesn’t want that.
