With the release of Mario Kart World just a day away alongside the Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo has revealed that, during the development of the game, the company had considered leaving behind quite a few of the more iconic things about Mario Kart. In an interview with GamesRadar, Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki revealed that every aspect of what is usually considered a tradition for Mario Kart was questioned.
Among the things that would have potentially been cut from the game were items like the banana skin, which can cause other racers to slip off the race track. Yabuki said that the banana peel, as well as the green shell, could have been left on the cutting room floor.
“When we created this world from scratch, we re-reviewed all the elements that are included in this game, including the iconic banana skin,” Yabuki said. “We actually did go through the exercise of asking ourselves, ‘does it still make sense to include this item in Mario Kart World?’”
As for the green shell, the question of whether it should make it into Mario Kart World came about because of the upcoming title’s new ability to allow players to grind on rails in the race tracks. Yabuki mentioned that the studio thought that the green shell should also be allowed to slide over rails.
“Another example is the green shell as well,” he said. “Obviously, it’s been there for time in memoriam in Mario Kart, but when we looked at it, we asked ourselves here, ‘is it sufficient when you can just throw it over the course?’ For example, the racers like Mario and such can ride over the guardrails. Should we not enable the shell to also slide over the rails?”
“So in considering the implementation of each and every item, we’ve reviewed its specification and assessed whether they should remain the same as before or we should amend and add a different element to it.”
Ultimately, however, the decision was made to bring both the banana peel as well as the green shell over to Mario Kart World. It is worth noting, however, that with all the new mobility options that players have access to, using these items over the course of a race might end up proving much more challenging than it used to be in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or older titles.
Back in May, Yabuki had also revealed that Mario Kart World’s open world design means that the number of courses in the game could “easily exceed 100,” if the courses were to be available in a more traditional menu. He brought up that this was largely thanks to the fact that the open world design of Mario Kart World allowed the developers to come up with variations that could stitch together plenty of different kinds of tracks together.
Music lead Atsuko Asahi has also confirmed that the game will feature more than 200 music tracks in its “jukebox”, which he said are “all brand-new arrangements, and we also did live recordings. We prepared pieces from quite a wide variety of musical genres. I believe those who are well-versed in video game music as well as those who aren’t will enjoy listening to them.”
For more details about Mario Kart World, here is everything you need to know.
