Conkdor, an ostrich-like enemy that made its debut in Super Mario 3D World, should not be able to drive. First, it is a bird. Second, it has no hands. But in Mario Kart World, Conkdor can race alongside Mario on bikes, cars, and magic carpets, just like everyone else.
This newfound ability of dozens of new characters to compete in the game is a first for the series, and a change that required the developers to rethink how they approached playable characters.
“I have to say that in previous Mario Kart titles, we had to consider whether or not that character would be able to drive,” producer Kosuke Yabuki told WIRED during a translated interview. “My old way of thinking was, well, surely they would need to have hands and feet to be able to drive.”
As a Switch 2 launch title, Mario Kart World heralds the next generation of the series, and it does so with a huge cast of playable racers. At least 50 characters have been confirmed so far, and many variations of those characters exist with costume changes. Yabuki says that when deciding on the game’s cast, the team first had to consider if players would like new characters and, more importantly, if they’d use them. Nintendo wants players to be surprised by who they can play as, but that’s not all: “If you’re playing a match, would it be fun to see that character alongside you,” Yabuki says.
That may explain much of the game’s new cast, which includes several characters lacking feet, hands, or both. Yabuki mentions Goomba, the series’ iconic, grumpy fanged foes, or Pokey, a cacti character made of stacked spikey balls: “OK, sure, they can drive,” Yabuki says.
“I probably wouldn’t be able to even explain how they drive exactly in this setting,” Yabuki adds, “but so long as we’re surprising and delighting people, I think that’s the important part.” The game’s cow character is already a huge hit with players since her reveal. Yabuki expects that other new characters will be popular as well.
“I’m sure that we’ll see a lot of players that are choosing to race as the cow or the penguin,” Yabuki says, “but this is still a Mario Kart game. I hope that everyone remembers to play Peach and Mario as well.”
Mario Kart World’s huge cast is necessary now that its races can accommodate up to 24 players; the most recent Switch version of the game, Mario Kart 8, allowed only 12 players per round. Yabuki says the team decided early on that it would be doubling the number of racers for this game. “We knew that with a vast world that is interconnected and covered in all of these different routes, we needed a large number of simultaneous players to give a populated and fun feeling to that big a space,” he says.
That required some additional balancing. A race with 24 people can quickly go off the rails. “If we didn’t adjust anything else, you’d be receiving too many attacks and it would be too stressful of a gameplay experience,” Yabuki says. The same goes for crashes or spinouts, which have been adjusted so when players lose speed, they’re different depending on the event. “Certainly, we have to think about the chaos element as well,” Yabuki says. “Sometimes, a free for all is a really fun experience too.”