The first developer interview for Mario Kart World has been published by Nintendo, sharing details on the game’s development.

According to Nintendo, prototyping for Mario Kart World started in March 2017, one month before the launch of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Development officially started in late 2017, and the game was originally being developed on Nintendo Switch.

As the scope of the game ballooned, such as increasing the number of players from 12 to 24 to fill the vast tracks of the game, the team eventually decided to release the game on Nintendo Switch 2 in order not to make any compromises to the quality of the game. The idea of moving the game to Switch 2 was first brought up in 2020. Around that time, it was also decided that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe would get a Booster Course Pass, which gave the team more time to work on the game.

You can read what the team has to say below:

So, the various courses are interconnected. Could you tell us how development for this game got started?

Yabuki: We were thinking about what to do for the next Mario Kart game even during the development of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and we began prototyping in March 2017. It was at the end of that year when we officially started work on it as a project. I felt that in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, we were able to perfect the formula that we’d been following in the series up to that point, where players race on individual courses. That’s why, this time, we wanted the gameplay to involve players driving around a large world, and we began creating a world map like this.

I’m sure you’d already been making huge efforts just to create 12-player races, but suddenly being told you had to double that… If it were me, I’d be at a loss.

Ishikawa: But I was happy in terms of the visual design because it would give off more of the lively, bustling feeling. I felt like the 12 players we had previously was a lot, but as Yabuki-san said, once players spread out, the course starts to look sparse, and the visuals give off a sort of lonely feel. So, I thought that 24 players would be better because there’d be more interaction between various players. That said, it was quite challenging once we got going and the volume of design work increased. But it was worth it. (Laughs)

Sato: When we were developing for the Nintendo Switch system, it was difficult for us to incorporate everything we wanted, so we were always conscious of what we were giving up in return. We discussed things like toning down the visuals, lowering the resolution, and we even considered dropping the frame rate to 30 fps in some cases. It was a tough situation.

What did you decide to give up on in the end?

Sato: Well…

Jikumaru: …We couldn’t give up on anything. (Laughs)

Everyone: (Laughs)

Yabuki: We worked on it while kicking the can down the road in terms of deciding what to give up on, so at some point, we knew it was going to get messy. But as we’d decided to release Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — Booster Course Pass**, we thought that would give us a bit more time to continue development. That’s when the conversation of moving it to the Nintendo Switch 2 system came up, and this suddenly opened up a bunch of possibilities on what we could do. It was truly a ray of hope.

When did you decide to move development of this game to Nintendo Switch 2?

Sato: Yabuki-san first brought it up around 2020. Back then, we already had an idea of the next system’s expected specs, but it wasn’t until a bit later that we actually received working development units. Until then, we just had to proceed with development based on provisional estimates.

You can read the full developer interview here.

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