- Primary Subject: The Best Alternative Kart Racing Video Games
- Key Update: A comprehensive breakdown ranking the six best kart racing games available across Personal Computer, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo platforms outside of Mario Kart.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: August 19, 2026
- Quick Answer: Top alternatives to Mario Kart include Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, and The Karters 2: Turbo Charged across multiple gaming platforms.
Mario Kart World sold 14.70 million copies by the end of March 2026, an attach rate of roughly 74 percent on Switch 2.
Nintendo has the genre locked down, and it keeps the series locked to its own hardware, which leaves everyone on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox out of the conversation entirely.
That group has more to choose from than it has had in a decade. These six are the ones I would point them toward.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is the new benchmark
Sega's September 2025 release landed an 82 on Metacritic, tying Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed for the highest-scoring Sonic racer ever and leaving Team Sonic Racing's 72 far behind.
Steam users are warmer still, at 93 percent positive across more than 8,000 reviews.
Credit the Travel Ring for most of that. Partway through a race, a portal drags the whole grid into a different dimension, and lap two plays out on a completely different track built as a tight one-lap sprint.
Two runs on the same course rarely feel alike. Crossplay works across every platform, split-screen holds four players, and free updates are pushing the roster toward 56 characters, with an Avatar Legends pack landing in October 2026.
Sega told investors in February and again in June 2026 that sales have fallen short of expectations even after passing a million units, which says more about the projections than the racing.
Server hiccups and desyncs are the one recurring complaint worth taking seriously, and the grind for Donpa Tickets wears thin long before the roster runs out.
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled still has the highest skill ceiling
Beenox's 2019 remake of the PS1 classic remains the driver's choice, and I still rate its drift system as the best in the genre.
Chaining reserve boosts through a corner sequence rewards practice in a way no rival kart racer matches, which is why the competitive scene has outlasted seven years of newer releases.
The remade Adventure mode is generous, the track list pulls from both CTR and Crash Nitro Kart, and the presentation has aged well.
Then there is the PC situation, as a PC version was never made and still has not been. Steam players are locked out entirely.
Character unlocks also sit behind grind or Wumpa Coin purchases, a decision that felt cynical in 2019 and looks worse now.
Everyone else gets it on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, plus current hardware through backward compatibility.
The Karters 2: Turbo Charged is the PC scene filling the gap
Roughly eight people at Polish studio Pixel Edge Games have built the CTR-style racer PC never got.
Turbo Charged hit Steam Early Access in July 2025 and sits around 90 percent positive from close to a thousand reviews.
It runs dedicated servers with ranked matchmaking and monthly ELO tournaments, supports six-player split-screen including online split-screen, and hosts a Steam Workshop stocked with more than 1,500 community tracks and characters.
Early Access being Early Access, the game is unfinished, and the player base is small. Console versions with day-one crossplay are penciled in for late 2026 without a firm date. The modding scene is the reason to buy in now.
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3 punches above its license
Licensed kart racers have a deserved reputation, and the first Nickelodeon Kart Racers earned every bit of it. Slime Speedway, the third entry, is a genuine improvement.
All 40 characters got real voice acting from their shows, the track design finally has some personality, and it runs on everything from Switch to PS5.
Steam has it at Mixed, around 69 percent, and OpenCritic averages in the high 60s. Frame rate problems dominate the complaints.
Online play is supported, though the lobbies were never busy, which leaves this as a four-player couch game first and foremost. On that count it holds up fine.
Garfield Kart: Furious Racing became a real community
The joke ran long enough to turn sincere. Garfield Kart holds 89 percent positive across 7,445 Steam reviews after critics savaged it on release in 2019, and both verdicts hold up.
Sixteen tracks and eight characters is thin, the AI is soft, item balance leans on luck, and the audio will test anyone over the age of nine.
I picked it up during the pandemic for the same reason everyone else did: it cost almost nothing, and my friends and I needed something we could all get into on a whim.
We got a good few weeks out of it. The item chaos that reads as lazy design in a review turns into the entire appeal once five other people are yelling over a call.
The community is still active, and both online play and split-screen still work, which is more than plenty of better-reviewed racers from 2019 can claim.
Karting Superstars is for readers who want the real thing
Original Fire Games followed up the excellent Circuit Superstars with a pure karting sim. No shells, no boost pads, no items, just a proper simulation of a kart around a track with rubbering-in racing lines and dynamic AI.
It sits in Early Access at 81 percent from 333 reviews, so expect something small and rough at the edges. Nothing else on the market treats karting as motorsport rather than a party game.
Which one to buy
For most people, I would say Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and leave it there.
Anyone who cares more about how a kart handles than how a race looks should go to Nitro-Fueled, still the better driving game seven years on.
PC players locked out of both have The Karters 2, with a modding community thrown in.
Stay tuned to racinggames.gg: the best website for racing game coverage.