Nintendo is officially fucked. A few days ago, the gaming community was shaken by news many thought would never come: Garfield Kart 2 is currently in development and is set to release across all major platforms by the end of this year. However, with the drop of Nintendo’s much-anticipated Switch 2 only days away, many have been left wondering whether Garfield’s big reveal was merely coincidental or perhaps a strategic ploy to take attention away from the gaming world’s biggest giant. What’s added fuel to the conspiratorial fire is that the Switch 2 is launching with a racing game of its own: Mario Kart World.   

Competing with the big dogs is a tough task for anybody, not to mention a lazy, orange, fat, lazy cat who’s named after a U.S. president who got assassinated after only two hundred days in office. Only two hundred days? Pretty lazy if you ask me. Anyway, the reasons Garfield creator, Jim Davis, had for showing up to the party wearing the same dress as the company that made Wario’s Woods is anyone’s best guess, but if his choice was intentional, it could mean Jim is confident he has a true gem on his hands. 

Of course, the first Garfield Kart was nothing to scoff at. It offered a classic racing experience with engaging track design, customizable characters, and a soundtrack that would make Grant Kirkhope jealous. While I, along with millions of other gamers, spent hundreds of hours zooming through the suburban streets and lost corners of the Fieldverse, I’d be lying if I said I thought the game was a masterpiece. Suffering from occasional glitches, sloppy controls, and a 150cc racing class that the developers seemingly didn’t test, there were some days I actually preferred Mario Kart 8. 

While producing endearingly mediocre content has been Garfield’s bread and butter for the better part of the last fifty years, I guess Jim has decided that if the man in orange is going to compete with your grandma’s favorite Italian plumber, a change of direction is needed for the series. This is likely what prompted him to hire Eden Games as opposed to Artefacts Studios, who developed the original Garfield Kart. While an official trailer has not yet been released, the promotional images on Steam prove that the devs aren’t messing around, and if their previous work on 2022’s Smurfs Kart taught us anything, it’s that these guys know what they’re doing. 

And then there’s the game’s subtitle of “All You Can Drift,” a clear allusion to both its protagonist’s eating disorder and the game’s core mechanic: Drifting. Now, if you know anything about racing, drifting is essentially making the car go all loosey-goosey over the road by driving like an idiot. This causes the car to slide around, and while this usually spells sudden doom for the driver, there’s actually a whole legion of car enthusiasts who do this intentionally for “fun.” They even have judged competitions for this, which doesn’t surprise me much when you have things like professional cheese rolling, slap fighting, and baseball. To each their own, I guess.

If Eden Games can actually keep good on their promise and offer functional drifting, it could be enough for them to pull ahead of the competition. While companies like Nintendo and Sega have tried to incorporate drifting in past games, it was always as an optional experimental feature that had little to no impact on gameplay. If you wanted to, for example, you could attempt to drift in Mario Kart’s most recent installment, but doing so would result in literal fire emitting from the vehicle’s undercarriage. Out of fear of breaking my kart and having to walk across the finish line, I avoided this feature at all costs. Hopefully, the Garfield Kart team can crack the code that has eluded many of gaming’s top designers, or at least program their cars with built-in fire extinguishers.

While a release date is yet to be given, the mere knowledge that a new Garfield Kart is on the horizon was enough for me to cancel my pre-order of the Switch 2, Mario Kart bundle. I mean, sure, I could play Mario Kart World before Garfield Kart 2, as it probably won’t hit the shelves until the fall, but that would be like filling up on a bread appetizer before the main course of lasagna. Like any good, pious boy who worships at the altar of Jim Davis, I’m saving myself for Garfield.