Mario Kart World was meant for the OG Switch, here’s why it’ll never grace it

Nintendo has revealed the forthcoming Mario Kart World game would have graced the original console had the hardware been capable of achieving the vision.

In fact the new version of the racer, which launches with the Switch 2 on June 5, was planned to be a follow-up to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the first-generation Nintendo Switch.

The revelation comes from the game’s programming director Kenta Sato who said that, while Mario Kart World had been in development since around 2018, the decision was made in 2020 to hold it off for the next-generation console.

“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,” Sato told Nintendo’s Ask The Developer series (via VGC).

“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.”

As a result the original Switch never got its own mainline Mario Kart game because Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was an enhancement of an existing Wii U game. Even still, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe comfortably sat among the best Switch games.

Sato goes onto explain that the game existing in a World where drivers make their way between tracks rather than standalone levels made it more difficult to work within the confines of the first Switch console.

He added: “I was involved from the start of the Mario Kart World project, and at the time, there were a lot of games out there set in vast worlds. I’ve seen and heard about the difficulty of developing such games, so I was feeling the pressure and wondering if we could really do that with Mario Kart too. Also, we’ve always considered it important for the Mario Kart series to run at 60 frames per second, and we believe split-screen multiplayer* to be an essential element.”

Ultimately, those compromises made it impossible to live up to the vision while including the Switch 1.

Opinion

So, if you were upset that Nintendo held off Mario Kart World for the new console, now you know why. It wasn’t a marketing tactic, it was just a case of Nintendo not being able to achieve the vision on the original hardware.

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