Nintendo explains why Mario Kart World isn’t called Mario Kart 9

In a new interview issued today, Nintendo commented on why Mario Kart World isn’t called Mario Kart 9.

Before the game was unveiled, there was plenty of speculation about what the name would be. Many thought that it would be Mario Kart 9 as that makes sense to follow up on Mario Kart 8 / Deluxe. On the other hand, some fans also argued that Nintendo could skip to Mario Kart 10, given that we saw Mario Kart Tour in 2019. It turned out that the company went in a different direction, and that’s where we ended up with Mario Kart World.

Speaking about the Mario Kart World name, producer Kosuke Yabuki commented in the interview:

“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.”

Yabuki also spoke about where the idea of connecting the world come from. Regarding that, he shared:

“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)”

The same interview also touched on the origins of the project and we now know that development started in 2017. Read about that here.