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Kosuke Yabuki

Mario Kart World Diddy Kong

Mario Kart World has a ton of different characters – both new and old – but there’s a notable absence as Diddy Kong doesn’t appear to be on the roster. While IGN recently attempted to get some clarity from the game’s producer, it seems Nintendo is keeping quiet at the moment.

Diddy Kong originally appeared in Mario Kart: Double Dash on the GameCube. He’s been featured in other titles since then, including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe through the Booster Course Pass.

Mario Kart World features a big map that players can full explore, with many fans describing it as an open world. However, Nintendo itself isn’t big on using that term as a label for its Nintendo Switch 2 racer.

Speaking with The Washington Post, Kosuke Yabuki said that the “open world” term is “just a little bit too ambiguously defined.” That’s why we’ve seen Nintendo refer to the explorable map as “Free Roam” instead.

Mario Kart World 200cc

At least at launch, Mario Kart World will not include a 200cc mode.

200cc was introduced for the first time with Mario Kart 8. However, it was actually available immediately in that title either – Nintendo brought it to the game later on as an update. 

Mario Kart World concept art

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:

Mario Kart World was originally planned as a game for the current Switch, Nintendo has revealed.

That piece of information comes from an official interview that went live today. The team was finding it a challenge to incorporate everything it wanted to do, including ramping up from 12 racers to 24 players. Programmer Kenta Sato said various sacrifices were considered, including “toning down the visuals, lowering the resolution, and we even considered dropping the frame rate to 30 FPS in some cases.” However, the move to Nintendo Switch 2 allowed for everything to be kept intact.

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.

Nintendo has spoken about the origins of Mario Kart World, revealing that the project started developing in 2017.

According to producer Kosuke Yabuki, the team first began prototyping in March 2017 following the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch. Production then moved forward officially by the end of that year.

mario kart 8 deluxe booster course pass interview kosuke yabuki future

Following the announcement and initial release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s Booster Course Pass DLC, producer Kosuke Yabuki spoke to Japanese publication Nikkei about the design philosophy behind the retro course remasters and how the team expects to handle the series going forward.

In particular, Yabuki and the team want to honor former president Satoru Iwata’s mantra of making as many games as accessible to as many people as possible. 

A translation of Yabuki’s comments can be found below.

mario kart 8 deluxe sales popularity

Mario Kart 8 has seen the longest tale of any entry in the series, with support for the game continuing eight years after the initial release on Wii U (and five years after Switch) through the recently announced Booster Course Pass. Producer Kosuke Yabuki recently spoke to Japanese outlet Nikkei about the game, admitting the team didn’t anticipate the incredible sales of Deluxe for Switch. He believes the breadth of its appeal was likely a big contributing factor, as well as the fact that the Joy-Con make every Switch a potential 2-player console.

We’ve prepared a translation of Yabuki’s full comments below.

ARMS - Kosuke Yabuki

Nintendo has published a new video discussion with ARMS producer Kosuke Yabuki. In it, Yabuki offers a behind-the-scenes look at the game’s development and some gameplay advice. We have the full video below.


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