While Mario Kart World will have a much larger world for players to explore than previous games had, producer Kosuke Yabuki has revealed that, internally, the developers don’t like calling the kart racing title an open-world game. In an interview with GamesRadar, Yabuki said that the lack of definition about the term “open-world game” is what prevented the studio from using it to describe Mario Kart World.
“We, on the development team side, we don’t call this world an open world,” said Yabuki. “Because in our view we don’t feel that the term open world is clear in terms of its definition.” Yabuki does mention that there is definitely a bigger world for players to explore. “We do have this expansive world, and we’ve placed therein the Mario Kart Circuit or the Bowser Castle, or the Choco Mountain, and tried to build a new Mario Kart,” he said.
Yabuki also spoke about how giving players more freedom to explore was a major change for the Mario Kart franchise. “Looking back on the entire history of Mario Kart, we do feel that this is a major change.” He continued, saying that “we wanted to ensure that [at] its core the new Mario Kart would still retain the classic fun that you would gain from the Mario Kart franchise.”
“In this installation of Mario Kart, all of the roads are interconnected so if you were to tweak a certain route to make it easier to run through, it would impact all the other roads and routes,” explained Yabuki. “So we were aware that they’re all interconnected and we would need to be mindful of the overall balance.”
Yabuki had also revealed that the studio had discussed removing iconic items from Mario Kart World, including the banana peel and the green shell. “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?’”
The decision to potentially remove the green shell from Mario Kart World came about because of the game’s new mobility options that give players more chances to avoid getting hit by the shell. Yabuki mentioned that the studio also considered giving green shells similar mobility options, like being able 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?”
Mario Kart World is slated for launch alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 as one of the console’s launch titles. The game will feature an open world where different roads and paths can all connect up to offer more than 100 tracks, according to Yabuki.
