Mario Kart designers had to rethink everything to make it open world

https://www.theverge.com/interview/678097/mario-kart-world-nintendo-switch-2-interview-kosuke-yabuki

by Tomte • 1 year ago

52 99 1 year ago

theverge.com

thr0waway001• 1 year ago

Looks cool!

Will wait for a new Zelda game before diving into getting a Switch 2.

matthewfcarlson• 1 year ago

I feel like this is the sentiment I hear from most friends. But then the preorders sell out every time. I’m confused who is buying all these switches, but perhaps my local network isn’t a representative sample.

zeroonetwothree• 1 year ago

I don’t care for Zelda and I’d buy a Switch 2 on release if I could find one.

dmonitor• 1 year ago

The Wii U also sold out. There's just a lot of Nintendo fans.

candiddevmike• 1 year ago

There's rumors that Nintendo is flooding the retailers with Switch 2 units, will be interesting to see if they sell out this time/how much the demand is.

jsheard3• 1 year ago

Scalpers will clear out the initial retail stock no matter what, the true test is whether the scalpers clear out their stock or get left holding the bag.

badc0ffee• 1 year ago

I ordered one. I'll play pretty much any Mario or Kirby game.

isk517• 1 year ago

The sales during the launch window will only make up a fraction of lifetime sales. The average person is happy to wait for more titles and a second hand market to emerge. This also becomes more true the older you get, I do want a Switch 2 but I've reached the point were I'm no longer interested in having it Day 1.

racl101• 1 year ago

Yeah pre-orders sell out cause diehards always buy anything. That doesn't tell us much.

What happens after it has been out for a year?

The real test will be if this sells even half as good as the first Switch in its first 5 years.

This could be another Wii U judging from the general pessimistic sentiment people have for the brand these days.

When the Wii U came out, people's biggest gripe with Nintendo was whether or not they could technologically compete with the like of Sony and Microsoft.

But these days most people accept that Nintendo is not even competing technology. So rather, their bigges gripe with Nintendo is Nintendo itself and the way they show utter contempt for their customers while hiking up prices. Much more is at stake this time.

mcphage4• 1 year ago

I feel like this is the sentiment I hear from most friends. [...] I’m confused who is buying all these switches

Well, Mario Kart 8 sold about the same as the 5 Zelda titles for the Switch put together (BotW, TotK, Link's Awakening, Skyward Sword HD, and Echoes of Wisdom). More than twice BotW, which was the best selling Zelda game for the Switch. So that's the bigger draw overall.

AllegedAlec2• 1 year ago

Your Scientists Were So Preoccupied With Whether Or Not They Could, They Didn’t Stop To Think If They Should.

bee_rider5• 1 year ago

This is pithy but actually I think it benefits too much from not defining with it is. I mean, it is a game, they are a game studio, if they “can” make a fun game with a reasonable amount of developer effort, they should. If they can’t they shouldn’t.

The quote relies on there being some horrible side effect of creating the thing without thinking whether or not they should do it. I think there’s no chance that this goes on to be a MOBA, which is to say I think it will never become fundamentally a force of evil.

AllegedAlec2• 1 year ago

I grew up during the age of fads, and "Open World" is very much one of them that keeps on recurring. There's no reason whatsoever for mario kart to be open world.

jsheard3• 1 year ago

I'm sure it'll be fun, but I'm not thrilled about Nintendo bumping the price up to $80 even before paid DLCs inevitably get added on top. Plus if the last Mario Kart is any indication then the price will barely get reduced over the entire lifecycle of the Switch 2.

hombre_fatal2• 1 year ago

$80 today is still cheaper than paying $60 a couple decades ago.

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Also games have only become more expensive to make since then and gamer expectations have only increased.

op00to3• 1 year ago

Games are more expensive, but the market of gamers is larger. We can do this back and forth all day! The clear fact is that when consumers are getting squeezed, there will be backlash against price raises like this. I have never missed a Nintendo console since the Wii. I won’t be buying a switch 2.

echohack5• 1 year ago

Make the price of houses $250K instead of $500K and I will gladly buy an $80 game.

moralestapia• 1 year ago

*sigh*

Could we please stop pretending that corporations do not wish to extract as much money as they can from our pockets?

jablongo2• 1 year ago

Does the price have to do w/ tariffs?

weberer4• 1 year ago

Its entirely because the value of the dollar has gone down. Inflation has happened for decades, but we've seen a noticeable, sharp rise post 2020. $50 in 2005 is worth as much as $82 today according to the inflation calculator.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

StopDisinfo910• 1 year ago

I'm sure it'll be fun, but I'm not thrilled about Nintendo bumping the price up to $80.

At that point you can live a perfectly happy life only playing games that are years old and buying them deeply discounted or second hands for peanuts.

It’s a mystery to me who spends 80 bucks on a game which is approximately the same than the previous one itself the same than the one before.

TimorousBestie• 1 year ago

Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn’t really do sales. Not at the same scale as Microsoft, Sony or Steam.

bee_rider5• 1 year ago

It is actually kind of surprising to me that the convention of dropping prices after a couple years has persisted in games. I mean, it made sense in like 2005. Back then, an older game looked much worse and every game was bumping up against the limits of what was possible on the hardware/in the engine.

Nowadays a game from 4 years ago looks ~about the same as a current one, might have the same gameplay, and doesn’t suffer as much from the constant progress in monetization strategies. Plus you know if a community will grow around it. And, relatedly, mod support has developed if it ever will.

The only reason to play a game that just came out is if you are into a specific pseudo-competitive scene; the “recently released matchmaking game” genre (and, it should also be noted that this isn’t the real pro-competitive scene, that’s MOBAs and Counterstrike).

godzillabrennus• 1 year ago

This is why physical games are so important. The circular economy lets folks buy these experiences second hand.

bee_rider5• 1 year ago

I wonder if it will be fun.

The open world Zelda game kinda made sense to me because those games have always been pretty open. You could always wander around. When I was a kid, I played Ocarina of Time as an open world game, I just wandered around and made up the NPC interactions in my head. And the 2D entries in the series had pretty big worlds.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see if the trick can repeat outside that context. The open world Pokemon was pretty bad, but that series has been resting on its laurels for longer than most of the players have been alive.

honkycat• 1 year ago

The Forza Horizon series are open world car games, and they are very fun and effective.

walthamstow• 1 year ago

A gamer friend described the new Mario Kart to me, a non-gamer, as "Burnout Paradise, but Mario Kart"

AlwaysRock• 1 year ago

Need For Speed: Underground 2 and I think a decent chunk of other NFS were open world and really fun. Driving your car around in a driving game should be fun.

badgersnake• 1 year ago

Burnout Paradise did this to Burnout and imho, it made that game worse. If you haven’t played Burnout, go find a PS2 emulator and a Burnout 3 iso and you’ll have an amazing afternoon.

jihadjihad2• 1 year ago

Burnout 3: Takedown was awesome but oh man, in 2025 my eyeballs cannot deal with the lower-res graphics/textures and short draw distance. Especially with things flying toward you at high speed!

SirFatty• 1 year ago

I first saw Burnout 3 at a family member's house. On the way home I stopped at Gamestop and bought a (first gen) Xbox and that game. What a fantastic game, the kids and I played it for countless hours. Too bad it never carried forward (Paradise doesn't count).

Still have all that gear in a plastic bin.. I think about firing it up, but maybe I should leave it alone and just enjoy my memories.

wegfawefgawefg• 1 year ago

Both scarlet/violet sold 27million copies, comparable to all the other mainline games, and legends was the most popular sidegame by far at 15 million copies sold.

I think the series is never going to not be open world going forward. It was a resounding success and most people like it.

DistractionRect• 1 year ago

Yeah, it doesn't really elaborate on why openworld might be more fun than standard tracks/cups. Sure, I can drive around in it and look at it, but what makes than fun? This article basically tells us large scale level design takes a lot of effort, but no more.

Zelda makes sense to a degree, but IMO they lost the plot on what made Zelda games interesting. Old Zelda games were kinda open, but had (mostly) fixed sequence. The games were basically lock and key puzzles with a lot of back tracking. As you went you unlocked more items (keys), but having to key wasn't enough. You had to figure out how/where to use it. The way everything layered was elegant. You were excited to get to a dungeon, they always need a new gimmick(s)/mechanic(s), you got a new toy, and two boss fights. Once you were done, you got to see how this new thing unlocked more of world.

New Zelda games have puddle deep dungeons and shrines to quickly get you back into the overworld, and you've already unlocked all the mechanics before the tutorial is over. So all that's left is exploring the overworld for the sake of exploration, which has a thousand seeds and a hundred shallow shrines to encourage you overturn every stone in it.

I get I might not be the target demographic, open world games aren't inherently bad, and the new Zeldas enjoyed great commercial success. However I do feel this shift to open world misses and loses what made Mario Kart and Zelda beloved series to begin with.

bee_rider5• 1 year ago

Actually, fwiw, I didn’t really play BotW. My non-gaming SO did, I just did the boss fights. They seemed to have fun exploring and hunting for ingredients. Although it was the pandemic so maybe standards were low.

Nowadays, I find the stagnation of open world games a little boring. But, I also enjoy steeping in a world. So I play rogue-lites, haha.

woleium• 1 year ago

i suspect it will be grand theft auto for kids

jdonaldson• 1 year ago

Zelda series has always been a showcase for great low level aesthetic gameplay design choices. I love how they handled simple things like grid-based movement : https://dev.to/robotspacefish/game-studies-link-s-movement-i...

I feel like the dungeons in BOTW all resemble the rooms in Portal. I.e. they feel highly artificial and contrived. However, this lets the player focus on the puzzle itself, rather than worry about the story at that moment. The puzzles there really force you to "get good" at a particular maneuver the game requires of the character. Rather than getting an item or advancing a world event, the player's reward is simply to suck less by accomplishing the task.

Plus, let's be honest, Zelda's story is really pretty fungible. The linear progression was mainly due to hardware limitations rather than aesthetic choice.

mcphage4• 1 year ago

IMO they lost the plot on what made Zelda games interesting

That's definitely an "IMO"—I've been playing Zelda games since the first, and Breath of the Wild revitalized my love for a series I was getting bored with. I do want to see them do something different with the next big title, but Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom kept my interest for hundreds of hours.

eochaid• 1 year ago

It's really hard to say exactly how this will land with fans. The article mentions using kishōtenketsu in the game design of the Grand Prix mode, "now players have to drive to their next race, instead of being automatically transported", and the wiki page for kishōtenketsu mentions use of that concept in game design of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario 3D World, both well received with 97 and 93 Metacritic scores respectively.

I'm sure Nintendo has put a lot of thought and effort into this. But personally I feel like most open worlds feel empty and void to me after a few hours. I didn’t play it, but that seemed to be a major complaint with the latest Pokemon game.

moepstar2• 1 year ago

Did you play Xenoblade Chronicles X on the WiiU?

That was the open world game to me, it never felt boring (although the game itself had a lot of grind) and, if memory serves me right, about 400 square km to explore.

I sunk about 300 hours in it…

…and wish they already would release X 2.

soupfordummies• 1 year ago

Sounds similar to Mario Wonder as well, where basically the world map is playable with stuff to do and find. I think I see what they're going for now. Probably some collectables, stunts, hidden levels, etc.

ethbr1• 1 year ago

There's Burnout Paradise (2008) and The Crew (2014) as prior art [0,1]. And to a lesser extent GTA 1 (1997) and Crazy Taxi (1999).

I'd be more surprised if the team manages to fuck it up, given Nintendo development's solid litmus test of "what's fun and not."

A more detailed interview with the dev team seems to be available here: https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-1... and https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-1... and https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-1... and https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-1...

Regardless, verdict will be reached in a couple days!

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_Paradise

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crew_(video_game)

const_cast2• 1 year ago

Super Mario Galaxy is my personal choice for best video game ever met. So, if they did it before then maybe they could do it again.

I thought after Super Mario Galaxy 2 that surely Nintendo couldn't meet that mark every again. And then Odyssey came out.

xnx• 1 year ago

SSX was a semi-open world snowboarding game that was truly excellent, so it's very possible that Nintendo could pull it off. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a nearly perfect game. It lends itself to getting into a heightened flow state where you're working right at the edge of your reflexive and strategic abilities and having a ton of fun.

ThatMedicIsASpy2• 1 year ago

No video game will ever get 80+ bucks from me without a physical book/guide or statue/figure.

Need for Speed Underground changed to an open world with the second release and I hated everything about it.

afavour• 1 year ago

As a counterpoint: I'd be irritated if I had to pay for anything physical with a game I'm buying. I'd perceive it as a waste of money and want a cheaper digital only version.

parpfish2• 1 year ago

Also: until you play the game, you won’t know if you’re a big enough fan to want to display some merch for it

talles• 1 year ago

Underground 2 already did open world back in 2004 and it's pretty much the norm today for AAA titles. Maybe it's the Nintendo effect here, since they have history of innovation, but MK being open world it doesn't seem that impressive at all.

MajimasEyepatch3• 1 year ago

Did you feel that way in 2005 when the Xbox 360 was released and $60 was the new standard? Because $60 in 2005 has the same buying power as $97.41 today. This game, in real terms, is cheaper than Xbox 360 games were.

thmsths• 1 year ago

I understand this, but the economics of software in general is that you have high upfront costs and then the marginal costs are minimal. Better tooling has helped keep these upfront costs from growing too much (developing a game in 2025 is MUCH easier than in 2005), the distribution costs have shrunk too and the size of the market has exploded. Given these is it really unreasonable for consumers to expect the prices to stay flat?

jsheard3• 1 year ago

Nintendo pricing is unique because they barely do sales, if a $60 Xbox 360 game was too expensive then you could just be patient and let the price creep downwards all the way to be bargain bin if desired. OTOH the last Mario Kart game from 8 years ago (which was a re-release of a Wii U game from 11 years ago) still retails for $50 to this day, even as the sequel is about to drop.

ordinaryradical• 1 year ago

Consider wage growth adjusted for inflation as well and we discover that disposable incomes have gone up 1% on average in that period.

What is a video game if not an outlet for disposable income?

os2warpman• 1 year ago

The 1993 version of Doom was $40 plus shipping and handling. Let's ignore the shipping and handling.

That's $90 today.

I don't play very many video games anymore though I did play the hell out of Doom 30 years ago.

What I have noticed, as an outside observer looking in, about people who play video games today is that they seem to be among the most entitled people on the planet who love bitching about everything.

TriangleEdge• 1 year ago

Nintendo is going to be getting 80$ from me, that's for sure. Mario games are most of the funnest games I've played. I've been playing Mario Kart since the n64, and I've liked every version since. I have high hopes.

As Peter Thiel said: if you double your price and don't lose half your customers, you're making profit.

furyofantares• 1 year ago

I think maybe the best $70 I ever spent was on Secret of Mana in 1993, or about $150 in today's dollars, after saving up the most money I'd ever saved up in my entire life for it.

barbazoo2• 1 year ago

My all time favourite game.

Same here, so expensive but it came in a larger than other games box and the book iirc.

YesBox• 1 year ago

As a consumer i don’t like price increases. As an indie game developer, i hope this raises the floor (it prob won’t) because id like to hire people locally (ie in person). Steam takes 30% and the talent are in expensive cities. It’s a tough industry :D

throw8393494• 1 year ago

You can buy physical console/PC for 80$

Pet_Ant• 1 year ago

Apparently the 1992 Super Nintendo version of Super Street Fighter 2 was $80 then. Close to $200 in today's currency.

So you are welcome to your opinion, but it's not like this is unprecedented, or even unreasonable.

atrus• 1 year ago

I see this statement a lot, but who is paying $80 for it?

You need a switch 2 to play it, and there's a bundle that includes it for $50 more.

If you can afford a switch 2, but can't afford the bundle, I kinda think you realistically can't afford the switch2. Of course there are going to be niche cases, but they're niche.

ThatMedicIsASpy2• 1 year ago

The early adopters. Even for consoles you can wait and get them second hand years later. There is no reason to chase the latest releases other than having a fetish for experiencing all the bugs/crashes/join queue/server overload on release days. PC gaming can be expensive (hardware/games) and cheap (hardware/games). Used Steam Decks and Rog Ally starts at around 300€ - a controller, screen and enough power to play with options for more (game pass/xbox & geforce now streaming). It always depends on what kind of gamer you are, what you want to play and how much you are willing to invest into the hobby.

surgical_fire3• 1 year ago

I rarely buy full priced games, full stop.

That said, I normally open an exception for Nintendo. Their games are fun, generally come out well polished (no day 1 huge patches to fix a broken release) and are void of microtransactions.

const_cast2• 1 year ago

When Battlefront (not the old one, the new one) came out, EA was charging 60 dollars for it. Okay. But the battlepass, which had a lot more maps, was 50. So it was 110 dollars total.

But don't worry, this first day DLC more than doubled the content of the game, so it was worth it! Of course... if it's a day one DLC maybe we could've just included in the base game we're releasing at the same time.

Anyway, Triple AAA has been doing this for a long time. It's just that nobody cares when EA is greedy, it's just expected from them.

rhodey• 1 year ago

First thought is maybe something like Kirby Air Ride for GameCube

uejfiweun• 1 year ago

They're making a new Kirby Air Ride too.

bigstrat2003• 1 year ago

I'm really not excited for this one. 12 racers was already too many, let alone doubling that number. And I have no desire, at all, for an open world Mario Kart. I thought that the open world Zelda games were un-fun and didn't live up to the previous entries in the series, and I fully expect that Mario Kart will fare even worse.

dragontamer• 1 year ago

A big worry from the YouTubers is the long stretches of straightaways.

Mario Kart, like any racing game, has the bulk of its strategy in figuring out corners. Do you aim for the shortest path but lowest exit velocity? Do you prefer the longer, outside line, for a higher top speed when exiting the corner?

Every turn is a major decision. Doubly so since Mario Karts drifting mechanic gives a new way to change the speed vs distance calculation.

But with a long stretch of straightaway, that's all gone. I see that Mario Kart World has added traffic, boost zones and grinding to make the long straightaways somewhat different at least, but I have doubts it's as good as the traditional corner or turn.

-----------

That being said: simplifications to kart customizations and other clear improvements shows that Nintendo truly understands the game.

But it's... Bold. To try to design levels like this. I hope it works out but there's so many issues that could make things unfun.

weberer4• 1 year ago

https://archive.is/KX4pU

Jyaif• 1 year ago

I've been wanting a game with the physics of Rocket League, but where you are just driving around in a big environment with weird architecture and completing silly objectives.

It looks like this game will be finally scratching this itch.

jeron• 1 year ago

it's not particularly novel - The Crew has been out since 2014 and we have 5 different Forza Horizons. I'm sure they just playtested that and moved over Mario Kart IP

treetalker• 1 year ago

So, the fungal fruiting body on Toad is his head, not a hat; yet in the game it sometimes becomes a hamburger, and the player should consider what it really is.

This is one of the deep secrets of the universe — and clearly the most important part of the article. More questions than answers …

orangebread• 1 year ago

Wasn't Diddy Kong racing kind of open world?

scomu• 1 year ago

More of a hub and spoke.

Mario Kart designers had to rethink everything to make it open world

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