Mario Kart World was originally intended for Switch 1, Nintendo reveals
Nintendo says getting Mario Kart World to work on Switch 1 was “a tough situation”
Mario Kart World was originally in development for the original Nintendo Switch, Nintendo has revealed.
As part of Nintendo‘s latest Ask the Developer interview, Kenta Sato, Mario Kart World‘s programming director, revealed that the next Mario Kart game was originally planned for release on Nintendo Switch before development transitioned to Nintendo Switch 2 in 2020.
“When we were developing for the Nintendo Switch system, it was difficult for us to incorporate everything we wanted, so we were always conscious of what we were giving up in return,” he explained.
“We discussed things like toning down the visuals, lowering the resolution, and we even considered dropping the frame rate to 30 fps in some cases. It was a tough situation.”
Development of Mario Kart World began around the time Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was released on Nintendo Switch, Sato said. The decision to move development to the Nintendo Switch 2 was made in 2020, 5 years before the game’s release.
“We worked on it while kicking the can down the road in terms of deciding what to give up on, so at some point, we knew it was going to get messy,” explained producer Kosuke Yabuki.
“But as we’d decided to release Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — Booster Course Pass, we thought that would give us a bit more time to continue development. That’s when the conversation of moving it to the Nintendo Switch 2 system came up, and this suddenly opened up a bunch of possibilities on what we could do. It was truly a ray of hope.”
“Yabuki-san first brought it up around 2020,” added Sato. “Back then, we already had an idea of the next system’s expected specs, but it wasn’t until a bit later that we actually received working development units. Until then, we just had to proceed with development based on provisional estimates.”
Mario Kart World will be released on June 5, alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 console. It will be available as a standalone release, and as part of a bundle with the console.
“When we were developing for Nintendo Switch, we often worried whether we could find the right balance between planning and performance,” Sato continued.
“Of course, the Switch system’s performance is sufficient for developing different kinds of games, but if we had included everything we wanted to in this game’s vast world, then it wouldn’t have run at 60 fps and would have suffered from constant framerate drops.
“I think there were a lot of people on the team who were worried about whether we could really manage it. But once we decided to release this game on Switch 2, we expected our worries to evaporate all at once. I remember being overjoyed when I discovered we could express even more than we’d originally set out to.”
