While many have been waiting for the next Mario Kart title to drop, the biggest question that fans had was about “how Nintendo would top things.” To be fair, even the team behind the upcoming Mario Kart World had that question. In a multi-part interview on Nintendo’s official website, multiple members of the dev team discussed what it took to make this game happen. They even noted they didn’t call it “Mario Kart 9″ because they didn’t want to make fans feel that it was” just getting new levels. Instead, they wanted to feel like there was something “truly special” about the game.
To that end, the team created an open-world landscape that would connect tracks and make everything more expansive, which many have responded positively to. However, they also did some “wilder” things, like adding a cow to the driver roster, and having drive-thru food come into play to get new costumes. So…how did that come together?
According to Producer Kosuke Yabuki, the team did a lot of concept/sketch art to flesh out the world and make it feel more alive, and that’s where the cow came in:
In previous games in the series, Cow was part of the scenery or an obstacle on one of the courses. But when we were working on an early version of a course in this game set on a ranch that players can drive through, this sketch came up.
Art Director Masaaki Ishikawa added:
“Each new Mario Kart game features new characters to race with, but since we added so many to the previous game, we wondered where we could go from there. And then one of the designers came up with that silly sketch of Cow cruising along, and I thought to myself, “This is it!” So that’s when we realized the course surroundings actually contained a lot of untapped resources.”
So that explains one thing, but what about the food? To that, we got to Shintaro Jikumaru, who is head of the planning team:
“While development was ongoing, about two years after the idea came up, I thought to myself, “You know what? I need food!” Unable to let it go, I asked the programmers to implement a hamburger model I’d created and make it so that the characters could eat it. It was well received within the team, and the designer started to churn out different kinds of food. Before we knew it, the number of variations had exploded.”
It was actually Yabuki who decided to merge the foods with outfit options. Mario Kart World was already getting those planned out, so they decided to merge them, and the rest is history. So, say what you will about the game, but you can’t deny they got REALLY creative with some of its elements!
