How do you improve upon the best selling game for Nintendo Switch? Mario Kart World is the successor to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, originally a Wii U game that went on to sell 67 million copies on Nintendo Switch. Now Mario Kart World is about to launch with the Switch 2, demonstrating Nintendo’s confidence in the franchise. Today I’m going to explore some of the lesser known development secrets of Mario Kart World.

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Without further delay let’s dive into the development secrets for Mario Kart World.

When did development start for Mario Kart World?

Kosuke Yabuki (Producer) describes development started before Mario Kart 8 Deluxe launched by prototyping in March 2017. The team went into full development mode at the end of 2017, once the Nintendo Switch and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had launched to the world. The team felt they had perfected the GP formula with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and that’s backed up by the impressive sales figures. This time the team wanted to create a game where players could race around a large world, and so Mario Kart World was born.

Why is it called Mario Kart World rather than Mario Kart 9

The name was decided fairly early on in the process to convey the new approach to the game. Given the Mario Kart team are trying something new with the open-open, knockout and free roam modes, they wanted to convey this through the title. If they simply added more courses to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, then it could have been a Mario Kart 9 title, but the game is going in a brand new direction and the title needed to convey that message.

Open-world and connecting courses

In previous Mario Kart games once you finish a course, then you transition to a new course, often with a fade to black. Now with modern technology the team wanted players to be able to drive to the next course, to convey the large connected world.

Kenta Sato (Programming Director) described his excitement and nervousness at this technical challenge. At the time of development there were a lot of open-world games out there, and he had heard about the technical challenges related to creating these games. From a technical point of view he wanted 60 frames per second and split-screen co-op as essential features.

Masaaki Ishikawa, the art director, described the challenges of bringing the character through into the game. Previously they had relied on the courses to be designed around a particular character, noting Legend of Zelda and Animal Crossing had been brought in via DLC. The expression of Mario characters had been through the courses, but now with the Mario Kart World being connected, this would be much more of challenge.

Atsuko Asahi, music lead, expressed similar concerns. Previously the sound and music had been related to courses, but now, with everything being connected and with the ability to drive anywhere, there were so many more things to consider. There are lots of sounds to fill the gaps between courses, and because players take different routes and drive at different speeds.

Playful and adventurous design

The visual design has changed a lot since Mario Kart 8. In Mario Kart 8 the visual design was quite sleek and futuristic, with karts tranforming into hovercrafts. In Mario Kart World the design team wanted to convey the feeling of adventure, and recapture the feeling from the original Super Mario Kart. This led to 24 players being added creating a chaotic vibe where anything could happen, like the lively and bustling atmosphere where lots of characters are in a pack, jostling for position.

24 players

It was very early in the development cycle where it was decided 24 players would be able to race in the game. In Mario Kart 8 that could support 12 players, but the Mario Kart team wasnted to be ambitous for the next title. Given they would be creating an open-world, you could end up with long stretches of gameplay with few players, and given they wanted the playful, adventurous feel, 24 players felt neccessary to create that busy feeling in the open-world. From a technical poitn of view the Programming Director Kenta Sato said they had to make all kind of processing optimisations to accommodate 24 players.

Nintendo Switch 2

The team first brought up the topic in 2020. By then the team had been developing the game for 2 years, but the technical specs for the Switch 2 were forming and it was then decided to release the game for the next Nintendo console, the Switch 2.

If the game was developed for the original Switch, Kenta Sato said they would have had to make compromises on the frame per second, which is something they didn’t want to do, plus there could have been framerate drops, especially given the open-world nature of Mario Kart World. From an art and design point of view the team were happy to move to Switch 2 because the designs could be more detailed, and that definitely comes across in the animations for the characters, plus the terrain and environments you drive through.

Changing weather and time of day

The weather and time of day changes in Mario Kart World, but behind the scenes this create enormous challenges for the team. Ishikawa decribed the challenge from an art point of view

“The sheer volume of work required to prepare all the art needed to show time and weather changes in a seamless world… We were under no illusion. We were even on the verge of giving up on it at one point.”

Ultimately the desire to keep the weather and time changes won out. But the developers had to change their approach due to the workload.

“The programmers were also worried about how they were going to work together to handle this volume of content. We knew what we wanted to do, but the big challenge was working out how we could actually complete it. That said, we thought it might be possible if we could change our development approach in a way that reduces the workload.” said Kenta Sato, Programming Director.

Kosuke Yabuki (Producer) described the process of modelling time in Mario Kart World.

“Rather than having the time change in accordance with the real world, we prioritised it working well with the gameplay. Besides that, in terms of weather changes, sometimes it will rain or snow, or there might be a flash from the Lightning power-up followed by a sudden change in weather. For these kinds of things as well, we were thinking about how we could make a lasting impression on players and what kinds of effects would be fun for them as they drive around. For the background music, we took songs from a variety of previous Super Mario games and arranged them into fun driving tunes, which I think will add an extra layer of enjoyment for players.”

Fun in a straight line

Over the years there has been a lot of emphasis on drifting, but in Mario Kart World the team had to make it fun to drive in a straight line because of all the interconnected environments.

This was challenging because of the traditional reliance on drifting, if you put too many corners in, then you lose sight of your destination – even though it’s fun to drift around the bends. Driving in a straight line isn’t too fun, so the team had to find ways to mix it up. That’s where rail riding and wall riding can from, plus the development of new “tricks”.

Given the world is so big, it wouldn’t be much fun just driving in a straight line. There was a book the team took inspiration from that said “Skateboards create infinite possibilities in a city with just a single piece of wood”. Tricks open up a world of opportunities for fun traversal, so the team took inspiration from the world of skateboarding, snowboarding and BMX.

Food and outfits

The team added food into the the game, which gives you a speed boost and also can unlock new outfits for characters. Yoshi’s drive-thru have been added all over the map, so you can pick up some food which racing around courses. The team wanted to add food, especially local food that’s unqiue to a certain location in the game. The team did consider removing the feature at one point, because you not only have to add the food but the food stores themselves, which would even more content and increased complexity. Originally the food and the outfits were separate features, but they eventually came together.

Kosuke Yabuki (Producer) describes how they came together

“We discussed the idea of using coins to buy clothes from clothing stores, but that would have meant stopping at stores to shop, which would have disrupted the flow, given that this is a world where you can keep driving. That’s when the idea of food came up. We thought, why don’t we have a drive-thru system where characters eat while driving, and eating makes them change outfits or transform into a different character? Though, it’s utterly ridiculous.”

Does Mario eat mushrooms?

On the topic of food, the question came came up related to Mario eating mushrooms. “Does Mario, in fact, eat mushrooms?” We’ve all watched him for years in the Super Mario series go super-sized from a mushroom power-up, but does he eat them?

So in the midst of development, we went up to Tezuka (famed Producer of the Super Mario series) and asked him to confirm, “Is Mario actually eating those mushrooms? He said “Yes, he eats them”.

NPC drivers

There are loads of characters in Mario Kart World, and some you might not expect. Like Cow. In previous games Cow was in the scenery, or an obstacle on the course. Early in development someone sketched Cow driving a truck, and it was decided to add them into the game. By adding Cow, who had previously been in the background, the team felt like more characters in the background could be added.

Masaaki Ishikawa (Art Director) described the process of adding Cow

“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.”

These type of characters are called NPC drivers. They’re not stricly NPCs, this is just the name given to them by the Mario Kart World team. Cow inspired a new item called Kamek. When Kamek casts a spell, the racers are transformed into playable NPCs, so one by one they might all turn into Cow mid-race.

Making the game approachable

The team put a lot of effort into making the game comfortable and satisfying to play. The terrain was sprinkled with landmarks liek mushroom-shaped mountains. They are designed to be easy to recognise and intriguing, so players are naturally pulled towards these destinations.

“We could just have used arrows to point players in the right direction, but that would have just made the world feel cramped. We felt it was important for players to be able to sense which direction they should be heading while racing.” said Ishikawa.

Sometimes the team needed to clerly indicate the route to ensure players wouldn’t get lost, but the team did experiment a lot with the environment and natural sign-posting.

“Our commitment to approachability extends beyond the gameplay itself. The Mario Kart series often brings people together during the holiday season who wouldn’t usually play games. So, we’ve designed the menu screen so that you can select the number of players and get started right away. The world’s much bigger in this game and there are loads more things you can do, but we didn’t want it to become so complicated that it takes ages just to start a game.”

Free roam

The Mario Kart team describe the P-Switch missions in free roam.

Unlike traditional courses, where we’ve accumulated a lot of know-how, the P-Switch Missions were our first attempt in this game at something like this, so we particularly valued the feedback we got from those who played them.

P-Switch Missions involve going to places you normally wouldn’t, or repeating actions you wouldn’t often perform. But when you go back to racing after completing a mission in Free Roam, you’ll realise, “Hey, I know another route here!” and feel like you’ve improved a bit.

We think it’s best for players to discover different ways to play as they drive around, so one of our goals was for players to naturally pick up skills as they play through the missions.

The information in this video is taken from developer interviews with the Mario Kart team and you can find links below for the full interviews.

Let me know what you think about Mario Kart World in the comments.