Mario Kart World's Newest Tricks Will Change How “Players View The World Itself”
“We know that people will spend a long time in the game,” the game's producer said.
Even for the most veteran Mario Kart players out there, the next entry in the series is full of new mechanics and ideas they’ll want to master — if they want to stay as stylishly competitive as they were the last time around. And while that’s expected with certain niche genres like fighting games, this was a delicate balance for the team working on Mario Kart World.
In an interview with Inverse, Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki says that the team designed the game’s newest racing mechanic, the charge jump, with Mario Kart masters and newcomers in mind.
“We're so happy that Mario Kart as a series has lots of players, but when we add a new technique, we don't necessarily think that that technique has to be something that every player will necessarily use,” he says. “So even if we have some players that don’t know how to drift or don’t know how to use jump boost, we still want them to be able to reach the goal and have that feeling of fulfillment and accomplishment.”
The charge jump mechanic adds a new layer of complexity and strategy when competing against the 23 other players hoping to place first during a race. When players are on a straightaway, they can hold down the ZR button to begin a charge, signaled by the racer leaning into their vehicle and sparks flying from their wheels. When released, the racer and their kart will jump into the air, allowing them to avoid obstacles in front of them, and give them a slight boost when they hit the ground again.
The charge jump is how players can initiate stylish new moves like driving on walls and ability to grind along rails, powerlines, and other narrow structures. The feel of these new mechanics is something to get used to; I botched a fair amount of my wall ride and grind attempts starting out. And hopping from rail to rail where applicable was something I only ever did unintentionally. But in my five hours or so with the game, it was clear that those who master these mechanics will have more opportunities to pull ahead when they’re behind.
“[Players may] learn as they see other people doing interesting things,” he says. “They may have jumped at just the right moment to avoid a shell and suddenly, for the first time, realize that that’s a technique. We need the freedom for players to have different play styles and to learn over their long experience and also because we know that people will spend a long time at the game.”
The charge jump will be as integral to high-level play as drifting.
Doing so will let them better understand why courses and parts of the open world are laid out the way they are.
“There's a great opportunity for the way that they view the world itself to change,” Yabuki says. “They may see a guardrail as an obstacle in the beginning, but as they play more and become more experienced and learn different moves, they’ll learn that they can use it to rail ride and all of the things that they can do using those obstacles in new ways.”
Mario Kart’s approachability and high skill ceiling are a big part of what’s made the series so popular over the years. In fact, Nintendo’s head of gaming software product development told Inverse it’s the main reason the company decided to bundle Mario Kart World in with new Switch 2 consoles.
Mario Kart World is sure to be a big hit for Nintendo. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which was released just a month after the original Switch back in 2017, has sold over 68.2 million copies according to Nintendo and is the console’s biggest hit.
