The Future of Mario Kart

     In the year 1992, Nintendo released a little game called Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo, and unknowingly began an entire genre of new games. The game was a huge success and ended up being the fourth best selling game for the console, which is a big deal when you think about the competition, with Super Mario World, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, and Donkey Kong Country all releasing for the system. Nintendo had discovered the "Kart Racer," and even though the series has changed a lot in the 28 years since the first entry, it's amazing just how much they got right in the first attempt. There's a reason that there have been so many competitors and copycats for this genre, everyone from Sonic the Hedgehog to Crash Bandicoot has had a "Mario Kart" attempt in one way or another, but the platforming plumber always takes the cake. The most recent traditional game in the franchise, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, was actually a re-release of a Wii U title, but is still the best selling game for the Switch, even though the game is now over three years old. People love Mario Kart in almost every form, but I think there could be some excellent tweaks to the systems put in place by Mario Kart 8, and Nintendo may already be planning to implement a lot of these.

    People love new characters to play as. Whether it's the most recent Smash Bros. or a new Mario Kart, people are always wanting to play as some of their favorite characters. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has a lot of good choices for racers, with some of the stand outs being downloadable content (DLC) for the original Wii U game, Link from Legend of Zelda, and Villager and Isabelle from Animal Crossing. The Inklings from Splatoon were brought in for Deluxe, making this game feel almost similar to a racing version of Smash Bros, especially when you have tracks inspired by F-Zero, Excitebike, Animal Crossing and Zelda. Unfortunately, all of the characters aren't this good or inspired. For some reason, Nintendo added all of the Koopa Kids as racers, with them taking up the entire bottom row, even though they probably could have been different skins for the same character slot. The character that confuses me the most is Pink-Gold Peach, a character that has never been seen and they made up for this game to be a counterpart for Metal Mario, who returns from Mario Kart 7. It's Peach, and she's made of Pink Gold, that's about all I have to say about that. Mario and Peach are actually represented three different times in this game (four if you count the baby versions), with Mario, Racoon Suit Mario, and Metal Mario, then Peach, Cat Peach, and Pink Gold Peach. It seems silly with all of the different characters from the Mario franchise, they couldn't think of anything better than all of these variants of the same characters. It is certainly better than having Honey Queen as a playable character though, as she was in Mario Kart 7 after her break out role as a giant bee in Super Mario Galaxy. All of these different character variations have been done well in some cases, and I believe that it's going to continue.

    Slightly over a year ago, in the Fall of 2019, Nintendo released Mario Kart: World Tour, a mobile game that simulated Mario Kart with touch controls and a whole lot of microtransactions. For those not in the know, microtransactions are miniature paywalls, usually tied to cosmetics, that are prevalent in almost every mobile phone game. This is where companies like EA, Ubisoft, and Epic (creators of Fortnite) have made most of their money for the past three or four years at least. While these microtransactions were an issue, and a major turn off for most people, you can play the game for free, though it will be harder to get that character that you want. In order to sell this concept however, they created all new character models, such as Rosalina dressed as a witch for the Halloween event, Peach and Mario wearing Kimonos for an event set in Japan, Waluigi in a kilt for the U.K. event and driving a double decker bus, the list goes on and on. By having all of these characters in different costumes, it could feel like completely different characters, and wouldn't feel nearly as cheap as Metal Mario or Pink Gold Peach, who have the same character models, except they're shiny and all one color. In addition to these ideas, the mobile game also added all new characters, such as Pauline fresh off her Super Mario Odyssey redesign, who also got new costumes. I really hope that Nintendo will keep these ideas in their mind when making Mario Kart 9, though I certainly hope they don't try to pull the same gacha mechanics of the mobile tie-in, or at least I hope they don't use real currency if they take that route.

    Starting with Mario Kart 7, they included the idea of changing each individual part of your car. You could change the body, the wheels, and the glider that you equipped in order to put more of an emphasis on control. You could make the car faster, but handle worse by adding different parts to it, though once again I think Mario Kart: World Tour had a better idea. You pick your character, then the kart as a whole, then the glider. Some people may have liked choosing their tires in 7 and 8, but I felt like it was kind of a waste. It didn't add much to the gameplay, and cosmetically, some tires just looked really strange along with some of the bodies. The idea of picking the whole kart together is a better experience, though I can understand people wanting to customize their car. I think that could still be attainable though, as Mario Kart: Home Circuit just came out in the last few months and had a similar approach to customization as World Tour. For those not familiar, Home Circuit is an Augmented Reality (AR) racing game, with an actual Remote Controlled car. The car has an AR camera mounted on it, and can interact with the Nintendo Switch to play an actual game of Mario Kart inside your house. It's a pretty amazing idea, though a potentially difficult one to set up around the house. Customization wise, however, it works very similarly to World Tour, with the ability to change your kart, the costume that Mario or Luigi is wearing, and the horn of the car. Of course, the actual character or the car in the real world isn't going to change, but on screen, you can see Mario driving around in a miniture airship in his Mario Maker costume, or driving a bulldozer dressed as an astronaut. It's a really cool idea that I would love to see implemented in a future game. Perhaps there could be a screen where you choose the costume that your character is wearing, the kart that you're driving, and the glider that you want to use. No matter what they decide, I'm sure that Nintendo will make a lot of interesting tweaks to the Mario Kart formula when making the inevitable Mario Kart 9, and let's all just hope that they will be for the better.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I hope you like my ideas/predictions of what Mario Kart 9 could potentially be like. Let me know in the comments if you have a favorite character or an interesting idea for a character for this franchise. Thanks again, everyone, and I'll talk to you next Friday!