The real secret to winning in Mario Kart: World isn’t about the cars or the tracks—it’s all about using coins wisely. Content creator Shortcat ran meticulous tests to reveal exactly how much of a speed boost each coin gives to players.

Nintendo Switch 2 is finally here, and players are diving headfirst into Mario Kart: World to discover the shortest routes and fastest strategies. The game offers plenty of ways to get ahead—from mystery box items to in-track boosts—but what truly caught the community’s attention is how coins grant a small but critical speed increase, even though most people never really understood how it works. That’s why one creator decided to run a thorough series of tests to get to the bottom of this in-game bonus.

Shortcat’s work is genuinely impressive. In his YouTube video, he highlights comments from Mario Kart: World fans claiming that 20 coins equal a +4% speed boost, that each coin adds 0.2%, and that the system isn’t as strong as it was in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But as he says himself, “the coins do not work as you would expect”—those numbers are wrong.

His experiment measured how many frames it took a character to cross a set stretch of track. Without coins, the racer took 261 frames; with 20 coins, just 248 frames—a 5.3% improvement. Further testing showed the full boost ranges between 4.5% and 5.3%, depending on your chosen vehicle, because the coins’ effect isn’t a fixed percent, but depends on the base stats of your kart. So, 20 coins make you roughly 5% faster—meaning each coin adds about 0.25%. However, Shortcat discovered that not all coins are worth the same. The first 10 coins grant a 3.6% speed increase, while the next 10 only give another 1.7%. “In other words, the first 10 coins are more than twice as valuable as the last 10.”

Conclusions from the Mario Kart: World Experiment

Shortcat went even further, examining the speed bonus of each coin individually. By closely analyzing frame counts, he found the first coin is by far the most valuable—granting a 1.3% speed boost—while every other coin adds less than 1% each. The research could go even deeper, but even now, it’s a huge step toward finally understanding how coins really work in one of the Switch 2’s most popular games.

Some may think this is obvious, but these findings are extremely important for players who take the Mario Kart series seriously. Expect pros to pay close attention to Shortcat’s data and put every last trick to use in their pursuit of victory.

Source: 3djuegos