In the first developer interview for Mario Kart World, Nintendo revealed the reason why Mario Kart World isn’t called Mario Kart 9.

According to Kosuke Yabuki, producer for Mario Kart World, the team wanted to take Mario Kart “to the next level” with an interconnected world, so they decided to drop the numbering and go with “Mario Kart World”. This was decided very early in the game’s development, as seen in early concept art for the game’s world map.

He further explained that if they wanted to just add more courses, they would have called it Mario Kart 9.

I’d like to ask about the title first. Was it always the plan to call it Mario Kart World, rather than Mario Kart 9?

Yabuki: If the idea had just been to add more courses, then I think we would’ve called it Mario Kart 9.

But, that wasn’t our approach this time. We wanted to take the series to the next level. So, we decided to drop the numbering this time and go with a completely new title, Mario Kart World. So, we’d already added “MARIO KART WORLD” to the concept art from the early stages of development.

Ah, I can see it written there. You must’ve had a consistent vision from the very beginning if the name even shows up on the concept art. By the way, where did the idea of connecting the world come from?

Yabuki: In previous Mario Kart games, after finishing a course, you’d move on to the next course. However, I thought that with modern technology, being able to seamlessly transition between courses and realize a single, vast world wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. So, with this in mind, we set out to create a new kind of Mario Kart….And that’s when all our troubles began. (Laughs)

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