A patent application made by Nintendo in July last year was made public on May 29, 2025. As several Japanese Nintendo fans have pointed out, the patent application (JP2025-82801) appears to describe technology related to the upcoming Mario Kart World. At the time of writing, the status of the application suggests that Nintendo has not yet officially requested for it to be examined by Japan’s Patent Office.
Unlike previous games in the series, Mario Kart World adopts an open-world format that lets you drive virtually anywhere. Race courses are no longer separated, but scattered across an interconnected map that players can navigate freely. In addition, the game’s new Free Roam mode lets you casually explore these in-between zones and clear small missions. The publication of Nintendo’s new patent application has already caused some disgruntled reactions about how “Nintendo is trying to patent open-world racing games” like Forza Horizon, but the scope of the patent is, naturally, nowhere near that wide.
What is it about then? Patent JP2025-82801 appears to describe a game system that “sets up” (more on this word choice later) varied race courses within the game field. It does so by using three components present on the game map: “zones,” “connecting routes (routes that connect the different zones)” and “internal routes (smaller routes within a single zone).”
When a race is initiated, the system determines the type of race and sets up a race course by combining these course components. For example, a course in which racers move from one zone to another, or a circuit-style course where racers loop through the “internal routes” of a zone a set number of times. Or alternatively, a hybrid course where the former transitions into the latter.
In other words, patent JP2025-82801 seems to describe a racing game mechanic that dynamically generates courses at the time the race is about to begin, depending on the type of race. It’s important to mention though, that terms like “automatic” or “generation” don’t explicitly appear anywhere in the patent’s overview (instead, it’s described as courses being “set up”). However, the language strongly implies that it’s about system-controlled configuration, as opposed to manual configuration by a game dev or player. Plus, since the type of race determines what kind of course gets created, this implies that the system uses some kind of conditional logic to select and combine the right course components.
Although we don’t know yet whether and to which extent this technology is actually used in Mario Kart World, the details of the patent do set it apart from other open-world racing games like Forza Horizon, as it doesn’t describe a pre-designed open-world where the player chooses where to drive, but rather courses that are created within the game field on the fly.
