Mario Kart World is an open-world racer in which you can literally drive from course to course and nearly everywhere in-between. But the only thing fans wanted to talk about after the Switch 2 exclusive got its first trailer was a cow riding a motorcycle. As it turns out, Mario Kart World’s roster is full of random characters, and it all started with one Nintendo developer’s adorable little Moo Moo sketch.
“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,” developer Masaaki Ishikawa said in a new Nintendo roundtable interview. “And then one of the designers came up with that silly sketch of Cow cruising along, and I thought to myself, ‘This is it!’ So that’s when we realized the course surroundings actually contained a lot of untapped resources.”
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and especially its DLC, blew the doors off its traditional roster of racers, adding everyone from Link to Petey Piranha. So Mario Kart World has had to dig deep to expand that roster even further, and has looked mostly to former enemies and background props for inspiration. In addition to Cow, who was previously an obstacle in Moo Moo Meadows, Mario Kart World also adds Goomba, Hammer Bro, Coin Coffer, Conkdor, Chargin’ Chuck, Snowman, and lots of other minor characters to its playable cast.
“The character designer quickly put together a prototype of Cow that could race, and surprisingly it didn’t feel out of place at all,” Ishikawa said. “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.”
Cow didn’t just immediately transform into Mario Kart World’s breakout star, however. It also led to lots of philosophical debates internally, as well as ideas for completely new game mechanics. “It was like, ‘They’re NPCs, but they’re playable? Which is it?’” said producer Kosuke Yabuki. “It was thanks to the introduction of various ‘NPC drivers’ that the idea to have Kamek appear as an item was born,” developer Shintaro Jikumaru added. “When Kamek casts a spell, the racers are transformed into playable NPCs, so one by one they might all turn into Cow mid-race.”
But making Cow and other obstacles into full characters also required getting creative with the acting performances. “We were conscious of depicting the personalities and characteristics of ‘NPC drivers’ in a way that doesn’t look inferior to classic characters like Mario,” developer Atsuko Asahi said. “The voice team members went through a lot of trial and error in the pursuit of the ideal sound.”
So it turns out Mario Kart World’s Cow isn’t just a fun online meme, she was also an integral catalyst for what sets the new game apart from earlier entries (and is even responsible for cow-themed side-quests in the open world). “Cow is actually a pivotal character in the Mario Kart series,” joked Ishikawa. Top-selling franchises have to find inspiration somewhere.
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