Mario Kart World was originally in development for the original Switch, but Switch 2 has allowed the developers to realise their vision of an inter-connected world.

Nintendo began prototyping for the new Mario Kart game back in 2017, even during development of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Development then began at the end of that year.

“I felt that in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, we were able to perfect the formula that we’d been following in the series up to that point, where players race on individual courses,” explained Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki in a new interview from Nintendo. “That’s why, this time, we wanted the gameplay to involve players driving around a large world, and we began creating a world map like this.”

Programming director Kenta Sato continued: “When we were developing for Nintendo Switch, we often worried whether we could find the right balance between planning and performance. Of course, the Switch system’s performance is sufficient for developing different kinds of games, but if we had included everything we wanted to in this game’s vast world, then it wouldn’t have run at 60 fps and would have suffered from constant framerate drops.

“I think there were a lot of people on the team who were worried about whether we could really manage it. But once we decided to release this game on Switch 2, we expected our worries to evaporate all at once. I remember being overjoyed when I discovered we could express even more than we’d originally set out to.”

Yabuki noted that had the idea for the game just been more courses it would’ve been called Mario Kart 9, but the new approach led to the name Mario Kart World. In fact, that name was added to concept art in the early stages of development.

“In previous Mario Kart games, after finishing a course, you’d move on to the next course,” said Yabuki. “However, I thought that with modern technology, being able to seamlessly transition between courses and realise a single, vast world wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. So, with this in mind, we set out to create a new kind of Mario Kart…And that’s when all our troubles began.”

Sato had heard of difficulties in creating open world games and felt pressure to achieve this with Mario Kart, especially as Nintendo considers 60fps to be important for the series, as well as split-screen multiplayer. It seems the power of the Switch 2 allowed for this to happen.

The move to an open world also led to the increase of 24 players instead of 12, which was decided fairly early in development.

“By creating long routes in a vast world, you could end up with players spread out in various places, which could diminish the sense that they’re racing against each other,” said Yabuki. “So, we figured that by increasing the number of racers, you’d be sure to see some competitive action here and there.”

Added art director Masaaki Ishikawa: “I felt like the 12 players we had previously was a lot, but as Yabuki-san said, once players spread out, the course starts to look sparse, and the visuals give off a sort of lonely feel. So, I thought that 24 players would be better because there’d be more interaction between various players. That said, it was quite challenging once we got going and the volume of design work increased. But it was worth it.”

Speaking of art, the team wanted to recapture the “lively, bustling atmosphere” of Super Mario Kart on the SNES, with a key phrase being “playfulness”. This led to the more rounded, cartoonish designs of Mario Kart World.

“The characters in the Super Mario series have a rounded look, so we wanted to give the vehicles a rounded design too, to match their appearance,” said Ishikawa. “We also wanted to give the characters a livelier look even while they’re in their vehicles, so we put everything together in a way that gives off a sense of playfulness through the combination of the characters’ rounded designs, soft facial expressions, and rich movements.”

The open world design means courses are now inter-connected across the world, but Yabuki said adding up all the possible variations would “easily exceed 100”.

Lastly, the developers discussed the creation of Mario Kart World’s meme-worthy new character, Cow.

“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,” said Ishikawa. “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 realised the course surroundings actually contained a lot of untapped resources.

“The character designer quickly put together a prototype of Cow that could race, and surprisingly it didn’t feel out of place at all. So we thought maybe we could include other obstacle characters, and decided to add Cheep Cheep and Pokey as racers. As a result, the idea of taking obstacle characters, usually found in courses in past games, and having them participate in races made sense to me in terms of an interconnected world.”

Mario Kart World will launch alongside Nintendo’s Switch 2 on 5th June as a key game in the launch lineup.

Earlier this month Nintendo responded to the suggestion it had used AI-generated images in the game.