Nintendo shares Mario Kart World concept art, talks about adding NPC drivers

Coming from today’s Mario Kart World interview, Nintendo has shared concept art for the game and has spoken about including NPC drivers.

The roster has some unconventional picks, including Cow – who has quickly become a fan favorite. Cow is actually a part of a group that Nintendo labels “NPC drivers”. 

Nintendo’s Kosuke Yabuki, Masaaki Ishikawa, and Kenta Sato shared in the interview:

Now that you mention it, some of the new characters in this game seem like unlikely picks. I was surprised to see Cow as one of the playable characters.

Yabuki: That’s right. In previous games in the series, Cow was part of the scenery or an obstacle on one of the courses. But when we were working on an early version of a course in this game set on a ranch that players can drive through, this sketch came up. (Laughs)

Oh, I thought Cow was just on the back of the truck, but she’s actually driving it. (Laughs)

Ishikawa: Each new Mario Kart game features new characters to race with, but since we added so many to the previous game, we wondered where we could go from there. And then one of the designers came up with that silly sketch of Cow cruising along, and I thought to myself, “This is it!” (Laughs) So that’s when we realized the course surroundings actually contained a lot of untapped resources.

The character designer quickly put together a prototype of Cow that could race, and surprisingly it didn’t feel out of place at all. So we thought maybe we could include other obstacle characters, and decided to add Cheep Cheep and Pokey as racers. As a result, the idea of taking obstacle characters, usually found in courses in past games, and having them participate in races made sense to me in terms of an interconnected world.

Sato: We called these types of characters “NPC drivers.” In other words, non-player character drivers.

Yabuki: So it was like, “They’re NPCs, but they’re playable? Which is it?” (Laughs) It’s pretty funny to see a four-legged Cow holding onto motorcycle handlebars with her front hooves.

Ishikawa: But when she jumps, she strikes a proper quadrupedal pose. So I’m pretty sure Cow is still in touch with her animal nature. (Laughs)

Mario Kart World hits Nintendo Switch 2 on June 5, 2025. You can find other noteworthy tidbits from the interview here, here, and here.