The Fashion Of Mario Kart World’s Was Created In An Unexpected Way
Fit check.
Mario Kart World will shake things up when it releases alongside the Switch 2 later this week. One of the game’s newest additions will be the sheer amount of ways players can personalize their favorite Mushroom Kingdom speedster.
In Mario Kart World, players can pick up special food-based pick-ups that change the racer’s outfit when consumed. Doing so also unlocks that outfit in the game’s character selection screen. It’s a relatively small tweak compared to some of the bigger changes being added to the game, but it’s a fun one nonetheless, especially considering the new game’s focus on expanding the series to an open world full of fun secrets and challenges to discover.
This fashionable new feature wasn’t something everyone on the development team understood the appeal of at first, according to the game’s producer Kosuke Yabuki, speaking to Inverse in remarks translated from Japanese. And that’s due to the approach the legendary developer has when making its timeless games.
Most classic Mario Kart characters have secondary outfits they can unlock by eating food from drive-thru establishments in the open world.
Yabuki says the food and costumes feature evolved across “different stages” in development but started with a challenge to its team of creators. The veteran designer who worked on hits like Arms and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe said this is common when making a new at Nintendo.
“Because we have so many people working each on their own different areas, they can become very focused exactly on the thing that they’re working on [for the game],” he says. “And it’s up to people like me who can see a little bit of the big picture, to look for those opportunities that make these different elements. Sometimes that means I have to walk up to them and issue the challenge.”
In an interview published by Nintendo last month, the developers revealed that the food mechanic and the outfits started out as entirely different ideas. Initially, the team experimented with creating a shop where players would exchange coins for outfits. The idea was scrapped when they realized it disrupted the flow of being in the open world.
Hilariously, Yabuki admits to Inverse that pitching such a wacky new concept left some developers very confused in the early days of making this sequel.
Developers experimented with players obtaining alternate outfits via a shop in the open world, but the idea was scrapped because it broke up gameplay too abruptly.
“The very first time that we may have introduced the idea of ‘Mario eats a hamburger and then his clothing changes,’ the reaction from the developer that we were describing this to might have been, ‘What are you talking about?’” he says. “But that’s really an opportunity to make sure that we take the time to explain the concept and bring them along and get them on board so that we’re all headed in this direction.”
Mario Kart World’s food mechanic may have been odd at first. However, these relatively minor additions can have an unexpected impact on players. After all, who could have predicted that an NPC cow making her racing debut would be the breakout star of the Switch 2’s initial reveal? Yabuki’s happy that the feature came together the way it did. He sees it as a clear example of how these smaller ideas can help the greater project.
“Looking back at how natural and even obvious the concept [...] seems to us now, it inspires us to think about what other ideas could you mix,” he said. Unorthodox concepts like these coming together “brings in a lot of ideas for future development,” Yabuki says.
Mario Kart World will be the first new Mario Kart game in over eight years. It marks the first time the game will incorporate an open world to explore. It will also be one of a handful of games to take full advantage of the Switch 2’s new social features at launch. Incorporating these features, and its accessibility to new players, is why Nintendo is bundling it with certain units of the handheld.
