Nintendo Switch Online Has a New Free Surprise for Mario Kart World Fans

Nintendo Switch Online has a new, free surprise for Mario Kart World fans. The Nintendo Switch 2 released this week alongside a new Mario Kart game, Mario Kart World, which is the console’s big launch game and, ultimately, its only consequential launch game. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that to accompany the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, and the release of the first Mario Kart game since Mario Kart 8 was released in 2014, Nintendo has a new Mario Kart World freebie for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. And unlike some new Nintendo Switch Online offers — such as access to GameCube games — this new offer is not locked behind the Expansion Pack tier, but is rather available to all NSO subscribers regardless of the tier of their subscription.

More specifically, Nintendo Switch Online subscribers — on not just Nintendo Switch 2, but Nintendo Switch as well — can now download several different NSO icons featuring Mario, Peach, Bowser, and more, all of which range from five Platinum Points to ten Platinum Points each to redeem. That said, the whole collection of icons will be divided up across seven waves, with each wave running exactly one week. To this end, the first wave is available until June 11, while the final wave will complete on July 23.

Once gone, each icon will become unavailable, and while Nintendo does release icons again, it is seldom, and typically when it does it locks the second release behind owning whatever the associated game is.

Future waves will feature characters such as Luigi, Daisy, Rosalina, Bowser Jr, Donkey Kong, Paulina, Shy Guy, Wario, King Boo, Birdo, Yoshi, and Cow. Oddly, some characters — in fact many characters — are missing. That said, as you can see by comparing the two images, the roadmap image below does not feature every icon available in the first wave, so there is opportunity for subsequent waves to have additional characters.

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For those that don’t know, these are the first Nintendo Switch Online icons of the Nintendo Switch 2 era. What will follow next, remains to be seen, but there is a good chance it will be Donkey Kong Bananza icons given that hits Nintendo Switch 2 on July 17.

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