There's no denying that Mario Kart World packs a pretty impressive roster of racers (come on, 50 characters, plus costumes ain't bad), but we'd be foolish if we didn't pour one out for the familiar faces that were lost along the way. We're talking, of course, about the Koopalings wider Nintendo characters that got cosy in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but missed out on the starting line this time around.
Link, Isabelle, the Villagers and the Inklings no longer grace the character select screen in World, and in a new interview with Ouest-France, producer Kosuke Yabuki explained why (thanks for the heads up, Nintendo Everything).
According to Yabuki-san, the Mario Kart World development team felt the line-up was already beefy enough, without Link and co. in tow. "As developers, it would have seemed incongruous to us to add characters from other games into this universe," he told the French outlet (via Google Translate), "And it didn't seem necessary to us, given everything we could already do with Mario".
A recent Ask the Developer interview gave us some insight into how excited the developers were to add the likes of Cow to the game, so it makes sense that the team would want to keep going with as many Mario regulars as possible. We'd be on that character select screen all day if they started adding lil guys from every Nintendo franchise, after all.
And, let's admit it, we've all gone crazy for some of these newbies, regardless of where they came from. "The reception has been so warm that it surprised even us," Yabuki-san told Ouest-France, "It definitely exceeded our expectations".
"We inevitably wonder how players will perceive this casting," Yabuki-san concluded, "But there are so many characters and so many costumes that every player is sure to find something to suit them".
Part of us assumed that Mario Kart would balloon into some sort of Smash-style 'Nintendo Kart' for the next entry, so it's actually pretty refreshing to see the Big N go in the opposite direction. And besides, who's choosing Link over Monty Mole?