Mario Kart’s Most Viral Character Is About to Be Put Out To Pasture
The cow uses she/her pronouns.
Once just an innocent grazing farm animal with a love of grass, Cow in Mario Kart has certainly “moo-ved” up the ranks in recent times. When you saw cows in Nintendo’s most popular game of all time, they were just something to avoid bumping into and they easily faded into the background. While creative fans have tried to imagine with mods what would happen if the cow in the background of Moo Moo Meadows could drive a kart, for 30 years, that sort of an idea was just relegated to the world of dreams. Not so in Mario Kart World, the Nintendo Switch 2’s day-one launch title, which features a vast, inter-connected world, several new shiny features — and a huge promotion for Cow.
“In previous Mario Karts, this was really just a background element or even an obstacle,” Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki tells Inverse in an interview translated from Japanese, “Now this is a playable character, so I imagined that fans of the series from way back would be really happy to see something like that, and that’s our motivation for including it this time.”
Cow, whose pronouns are she/her, has quickly become Mario Kart’s very important character.
The intriguing inclusion came after a brainstorming session the developers had where they were deciding what new Mario Kart characters could be added this time around, and one of the designers sketched a drawing of Cow cruising along a hilariously tiny truck. This addition made the team realize that the formerly non-playable characters of Mario Kart’s backdrops, like the Cheep Cheep fish or cactus-like Pokey, could potentially all drive and compete. A whole new world was unlocked by that realization, and the developers joked that Cow completely changed the game for Mario Kart, spawning tons of new ideas.
Yabuki says his old way of thinking was that characters needed to have hands and feet to drive karts. But now, characters without any hands or feet, like Goomba and Pokey will be playable, too, so the old rules have gone out the window, he says.
“Maybe I’ve changed my thinking now,” Yabuki says, “Characters like Goomba or Pokey, I probably wouldn’t be able to even explain how they drive exactly, but so long as we’re surprising and delighting people, I think that’s important.”
Cow in Mario Kart World’s free roam photo mode.
Still, in the two months since the Mario Kart World trailer showcased Cow, the developers weren’t prepared for the outpour of support and interest she’s received, spawning plenty of fan art and social media tributes.
“I have to say the reaction really went beyond our imagination in terms of how happy people were and how excited, so that was a wonderful surprise,” Yabuki says. “On release, I’m sure that we’ll see a lot of players choosing to race with Cow or Penguin, but this is still Mario Kart, so I hope that everyone remembers to play Peach and Mario, too.”
