Mario Kart World (5th June 2025)

[Julius]

Ask the Developer interview for the game is up! Including how Cow got involved in the racing scene...

Love the little sketch 

 

The lowdown, stolen shamelessly from ResetEra:

Quote

- World's development started in late 2017 after ARMS was complete.
- Started as a Switch 1 game before being moved to Switch 2 in 2020 after work on the Booster Course Pass for 8 Deluxe started to not compromise on the game's ambitions.
- Would have been called Mario Kart 9 if the game was simply a follow-up to 8 Deluxe with new tracks.
- Soundtrack uses more live instruments this time around.
- The soundtracks includes 200 tracks, "all brand-new arrangements".
- One day cycle is 24 minutes of in-game time.
- Rail and Wall Riding was added to make driving between tracks less boring.
- 100 tracks in the game if you count all the variable path between tracks.
- Karts can be customized with stickers you find in Free Roam.

 

Edited yesterday at 02:07 PM by Julius

[BowserBasher]

2 hours ago, Julius said:

ould have been called Mario Kart 9 if the game was simply a follow-up to 8 Deluxe with new tracks.

Tour and Home Circuit are not recognised as main line games confirmed. 

[Dcubed]

That’s crazy that the game spent 8 years in development! (Granted, it got mothballed for a good while, since they struggled to get it running acceptably on Switch 1, but still!).

That explains the existence of the BCP as well.  It was to buy them time while they waited for Switch 2 dev kits to come along.

I suspect that we’ll be hearing similar stories about most of Nintendo’s first party Switch 2 exclusives for the next couple of years or so…

Edited yesterday at 05:42 PM by Dcubed

[Ashley]

1 hour ago, BowserBasher said:

Tour and Home Circuit are not recognised as main line games confirmed. 

In your face @Glen-i!

[Helmsly]

I love the little bits of development art they posted in that interview:

Very nice interview and reading more about this game now, I am looking forward to the free-roam mode a lot. As odd as it sounds, since Mario Kart 64, I have always gone into Time Trial a few times just to try and explore the tracks a little (or as much as Lakitu allows you ) just to see what there is. I remember being able to drive all the way up to Peaches Castle in Royal Raceway and driving around or watching the steamboat in DK Jungle Parkway just to see if it actually goes anywhere. MK8 has a lot more detail in the tracks so i spent ages going around and seeing what they put around the place. One of the tracks has a Yoshi on the side humming totaka's song!

That said, for Grand Prix mode I am still unsure if driving between tracks is going to be fun. My assumption is that I would rather just get sent straight to the next track then having to drive there (a few people that got to play the game already said it felt like it would get old pretty quickly). I guess we'll know in a couple of weeks.

Aside from that it all sounds very interesting.

Edited 21 hours ago by Helmsly

[RedShell]

On 5/21/2025 at 5:06 PM, BowserBasher said:

Tour and Home Circuit are not recognised as main line games confirmed. 

Or, (with the revelation of MKWorld's development starting in 2017 ) it means that MKTour is a main line game, but it's technically Mario Kart 10?

[Glen-i]

On 5/21/2025 at 5:06 PM, BowserBasher said:

Tour and Home Circuit are not recognised as main line games confirmed. 

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe disagrees. Those tracks have their own little "Tour" tag, much like "SNES", "N64", etc.

[BowserBasher]

2 hours ago, Glen-i said:

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe disagrees. Those tracks have their own little "Tour" tag, much like "SNES", "N64", etc.