Topic: Suspicious appearance of "Mario Kart 8: Add-On Content Trailer" on eshop

^I like the Koopa kids but they do take up a lot of spaces on the roster. I'm hoping for Diddy Kong to come back.

I'd rather have more Mario characters! Bowser Jr., Dry Bones, Diddy Kong, Birdo, Petey Piranha, King Boo, Funky Kong and Kamek are more than enough "new" characters. And sorry, but I'd rather have all 8 Koopalings (7 + Bowser Jr.) and Kamek than more Nintendo non-Mario characters, after all this is Mario Kart!

P.S.: of course, if you mean "group the Koopalings and Bowser Jr. in a single slot covering all the weight classes, in a similar way as it is done now for Villager", I am all in! No point in not grouping them on the character select screen!

No, the Koopalings need to say. I love all of them very much. Why can't we just keep all the characters?

This is a very interesting question. After Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, that had all the characters of the previous Mario Kart games (even though that Donkey Kong/Donkey Kong Jr. case really isn't solved...) the developers had more and more problems in keeping the roster without making cuts. While in the case of the portable games this can be understood, in the case of the home console this generated much disappointment and hatred toward the new characters (and in the case of the Koopalings this is a particularly sad thing, as MK8 is the first game they were playable in since they were introduced 25 years earlier!). I'd rather have Nintendo focus on having the MK8 roster while filling at least the important holes (read: lack of characters that appeared in at least two previous Mario Kart games, plus maybe at least Funky Kong who is the most used character in online MKW races even now) for the next Mario Kart.

@Mister_Wu: I agree. I could live with the MK8 roster + important missing ones just fine, mainly Diddy and Junior. Birdo, King Boo, Funky, Dry Bones and maybe Wiggler, too. The only newcomer I'd really need to see is Dixie, honestly. Outside of that, I wished they'd do more with the color variations. Like have differently colored Toads and Birdos but also something like a Fire Mario skin for Mario or Ice Luigi for Luigi, too. These can't take up that much time, right?

@DarthNocturnal: So are the Goombas supposed to use their psychic abilities they've used in Mario Baseball? ;p

Every time anyone mentions Half Life 3, Gabe Newell delays it by one week.

...Dammit.

I'm sorry, I disagree on the point that the Koopalings aren't different enough one from the other and from Bowser Jr. and Bowser and that therefore don't create diversity! We can agree though on other points, and I also agree that their presence shouldn't be instead of veterans or ignored characters, but with them!
You're right on Kamek, he was going to be a playable character in Mario Kart 64 but then was axed, this is why I mentioned him.

I said it before and I'll confirm it: absolutely yes, after Villager this is not even a point of arguing. One slot, possibly along with Bowser Jr. (because this happened in the meantime: http://oi65.tinypic.com/20swpj4.jpg)! No need to have a roster occupied by them when they were grouped together in the first place! The comment was about the characters, not about the crazy situation of MK8 roster!

Which made up characters do you mean? Which "important ones" are you referring to?

I'm pretty sure they're already working on the next MK title. Nintendo's dev teams usually directly start with the next installment of a big title. They just don't have a public development journal.

That said, I still wish to get a Doubledash DLC for MK8. If not, they totally missed out on a great opportunity (for making money and expanding the game in a useful way), we need the DD-mode back!

Which other important characters? I see everyone here complaining that some major characters would be missing but I don't see any. And I disagree with everyone that wants to get rid of the Koopalings. Although I always drive with Metal Mario, I would totally miss Iggy and the others. They're some of the most important and coolest characters of the Mario 2D series!
We don't need Samus, Kirby, Pit, Fox, Pikachu, Inklings or whatever, in my opinion Link shouldn't be the pandora's box that got opened, Link should stay an exception. I even could've done without him in MK8. The Goombas can also stay out of MK as they are random mindless beings without character (the red and green koopa might be too, but at least their color has a meaning and their shells are part of MK).
However, I would welcome the addition of Captain Falcon as his stages are already in the game. And I would be glad if King Boo would make a return. Diddy not so much, because he's the mascot of Diddy Kong racing. That's as if Mario would be a character in Diddy Kong Racing. No-go!
But all in all, I'm against MK taking the same route as Smash and including all the Nintendo characters there are. The roster would become arbitrary and lose some of its charme.

But why? It's called Super Mario Kart, not Nintendo Allstars Kart!

Well, having them cover almost all weight classes led to funny experiments with them like these:
http://mkboards.com/forums/threads/a-systematic-evaluation-of...
http://mkboards.com/forums/threads/the-tiering-and-duration-o...
http://mkboards.com/forums/threads/a-qualitative-comparison-o...

Well, roster is a problem of modern Mario spin-off games in general, as Ultra Smash showed us. Was it a bold idea to include the Koopalings? Probably yes, because introducing seven new characters require development time, and many aspects of Mario Kart 8 seem a bit rushed, including the roster, so it looks like they ran out of time before making a proper roster.
Was it overdue? In my opinion yes, regardless that you like them or not. First of all those were SMB3 bosses, Dry Bones was just one of the enemies of that game, and still I don't see many people unhappy about his inclusion in many spin-off games, which I find right. He's an interesting enemy. He even has his own section in the Official Nintendo UK Store: http://store.nintendo.co.uk/cool-stuff/characters/dry-bones.list
But the Koopalings were even more than bosses: they were Bowser's children (even in Japan: http://s1295.photobucket.com/user/SuperMarioBros3-Famicom/med... and http://s1295.photobucket.com/user/SuperMarioBros3-Famicom/med... so they actually were major characters back then (featured in the Amada anime series, so not only in the West). I can understand that having all seven is going to cause trouble for any development team, but still their absence from spin-off titles was also quite sad (and by the way, yes, I think that Boom Boom too would need some love!).

@DarthNocturnal: Let me guess, Super Mario World and/or Super Mario Bros. 3 wasn't part of your childhood? I don't know how else anybody could dislike those awesome characters that much. They're my favorite Mario Kart characters - especially Ludwig & Larry, so I hope they're not going anywhere! In fact, I hope that in addition to the Koopa Kids they'll put baby versions of the Koopa Kids in Mario Kart 9 just to spite the haters.

Mainly, Baby Rosalina and Pink Gold Peach. Baby Daisy to a lesser extent, too, but she has appeared in other Mario spin-offs in the meantime, too. Those just don't need to be there and could very well be replaced with missing veterans. By important ones, I mean characters that just have to be there in a Mario spin-off game, veterans to the series, like Diddy Kong. Bowser jr., Birdo ... maybe, Dry Bones and King Boo. A lot of people want Funky to return, too.

Also, I agree, I don't want to have any more non-Mario characters in MK. If they wanna make a Nintendo-themed racer, they have all the licenses to do so and I'm sure many people would be on board with that. Just not in Mario Kart, please.

@shani: While it wasn't me who suggested more non-Mario characters, it would be fine for some more provided the important Mario charactesr like Diddy Kong, Bowser Jr., etc. are added (I'm also hoping the Master Cycle from DLC pack 1 ends up canon in Zelda U). Although it would never happen, it would be hilarious if Shrek was playable in MK9 (Shrek was clearly the true ballot winner in Smash but got ignored).

Well, at least Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam did that, I agree that, after being reintroduced in NSMBW and before MK8 and M&L:PJ they weren't used very well (bosses who didn't talk, were easy to beat and tended to be involved in less creative battles than other bosses, furthermore Larry's model and moveset being recycled in three different games is one of the worst examples of aggressive recycling, and SSB4 didn't have the right proprotions for them...). I understand that the new gamers (those who started with the Wii) might not find any particular appeal with them except with their design. I must also say that I was particularly lucky to have seen the best in-game depictions of them before seeing the other games: SMB3, SMW, M&L:SS, MK8 (my Wii U was a gift received at the end of 2013, and I didn't have a Wii or DS/3DS before, only a GameCube and a GBA). I just hope that AlphaDream develops them more because so far, the others didn't develop the characters that much (maybe Koizumi would be the right person for the job at Nintendo, but now he's mainly a producer and not a director). Also, Intelligent Systems never introduced them in a Paper Mario game, although a line in Paper Jam suggest that might change (but again, seeing what happened to Bowser in Sticker Star, I'm not holding my breath...).

Of course, I just meant that I skipped the NSMB games and so when I saw them in MK8 I referred to their old depiction, in which they were, as I said before, Bowser's children, interesting characters with a personality. The NSMB (and Puzzle & Dragons and SSB4 as well) depiction make them interesting in NSMBW, but then recycled and used without going into the deep of their personality or of anything about them, including their jobs and hobbies (let's just remember that MK8 and M&L:SS revealed those, as well as M&L:PJ recently). I think it's more of an issue with Nintendo's current approach with the Mario universe's characters, as Bowser in Paper Mario:Sticker Star revealed. The Koopalings became the symbol of this attitude, more noticeable because they have great potential, in my opinion, and because the main boss battles in New Super Mario Bros. were likely more creative.

@Grumblevolcano: Ehm, since when is Diddy Kong a Mario character? ^^
And what, Shrek was in the ballot? Lol, I wonder how people get these ideas. Shrek in Smash? Come on, that makes absolutely no sense!

@shani: Well DK, Wario and Yoshi gets considered Mario characters so just overall consider characters/enemies from the DK, Wario and Yoshi franchises as part of the Mario franchise. As for the ballot, there's a reason why Sakurai said "Out of the realizable characters" regarding Bayonetta winning so of course the real winners were joke characters like Shrek and Goku.

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