From the very beginning, the goal for Mario Kart World was ambitious. A follow-up to the Switch’s (and Wii U’s) best-selling game, one that steadily grew over the years, World‘s original concept focused on two key changes: doubling the amount of racers, and creating a connected, open world for players to explore. It was so big that, early on in development for the original Switch, the team was having a hard time making it work on the hardware, and eventually it shifted to become the main launch title for the more powerful Switch 2.
But even outside of technical issues, those changes meant a fundamental rethink of many of Mario Kart‘s core elements. “We knew when we came up with this idea that it really would be a big change for the series,” says producer Kosuke Yabuki, “but we had no idea at the time how many people, how much time, and how much effort that would require to actually achieve it.”
The most obvious change is right there in the title: it’s the world. Instead of a series of individual racetracks, all of Mario Kart World‘s courses take place on the same landmass, connected by a series of routes. The game isn’t set in an existing version of the Mushroom Kingdom, but ins …
