Summary
As it stands,Mario Kart Worldis the flagship game for the launch of theNintendo Switch 2. The game is being bundled with the console, meaning for at least a while, Mario Kart World will remain the most owned game on the Switch 2.
It’s vitally important that Mario Kart World is a strong product. Nintendo rarely disappoints in this regard, and everything we’ve seen from Mario Kart World thus far has been positive, except maybe the standalone price,which many fans take issue with.
Mario Kart World Was Almost Mario Kart 9
Arecent developer blog postreleased by Nintendo elaborated on how Mario Kart World came to be. The interview was with several members of the Mario Kart World development team: Kosuke Yabuki (producer), Masaaki Ishikawa (art director), Kenta Sato (programming director), Shintaro Jikumaru (planning team leader) and Atsuko Asahi (music lead).
Mario Kart World was originally envisioned as Mario Kart 9 until the team decided to focus on building a sprawling, less formulaic experience. Yabuki said the team wanted to “take the series to the next level” instead of just adding new courses.
Mario Kart World was originally in development for the Nintendo Switch, but the technical constraints of the console were making it difficult for the team to fully realise their vision.
“When we were developing for the Nintendo Switch system, it was difficult for us to incorporate everything we wanted, so we were always conscious of what we were giving up in return,” Sato explained. “We discussed things like toning down the visuals, lowering the resolution, and we even considered dropping the frame rate to 30fps in some cases. It was a tough situation.”
The team was distraught as they didn’t want to under-deliver on Mario Kart World, especially since the game was a departure for the series.
“[The conversation] of moving it to the Nintendo Switch 2 system came up, and this suddenly opened up a bunch of possibilities on what we could do. It was truly a ray of hope,” Yabuki concluded.
Mario Kart World is releasing on the same day as the Nintendo Switch 2, June 5.
