Nintendo has mentioned Mario Kart World's fan-favourite new character, Cow, and proven off the piece of idea artwork that secured her place in the game as a playable character.
Speaking as half of a fascinating Ask the Developer interview, the Mario Kart World improvement crew revealed their "silly sketch" that satisfied the game's improvement crew to improve Cow from a background character to a fully-fledged half of the game's roster.
"In previous games in the series, Cow was part of the scenery or an obstacle on one of the courses," producer Kosuke Yabuki stated. "But when we were working on an early version of a course in this game set on a ranch that players can drive through, this sketch came up."
The sketch, which exhibits a smiling Cow driving a truck and looking out like she doesn’t have a care in the world, was instantly seized upon as inspiration for Cow to grow to be Mario Kart's subsequent playable character — and led to different background NPCs turning into playable, too.
"Each new Mario Kart game features new characters to race with, but since we added so many to the previous game, we wondered where we could go from there," artwork director Masaaki Ishikawa continued.
"And then one of the designers came up with that silly sketch of Cow cruising along, and I thought to myself, 'This is it!' (Laughs) So that's when we realized the course surroundings actually contained a lot of untapped resources."
Cow's addition to the Mario Kart World roster was shortly adopted by Cheep Cheep (the purple fish Mario usually has to dodge) and Pokey (the smiling, wiggling cactus character) additionally turning into playable.
"It was like, 'They're NPCs, but they're playable? Which is it?'" Yabuki continued. "It's pretty funny to see a four-legged Cow holding onto motorcycle handlebars with her front hooves."
"But when she jumps, she strikes a proper quadrupedal pose," Ishikawa added. "So I'm pretty sure Cow is still in touch with her animal nature. (Laughs)"
Elsewhere in the similar interview, Yabuki confirmed that Nintendo had the title Mario Kart World in thoughts "from the early stages of development" when the game's open-world nature was already being labored on.
"If the idea had just been to add more courses, then I think we would've called it Mario Kart 9," Yabuki stated. "But, that wasn't our approach this time. We wanted to take the series to the next level. So, we decided to drop the numbering this time and go with a completely new title."
Finally, the improvement crew mentioned Mario Kart World's addition of unlockable character costumes, discovered by snacking on meals at Yoshi's drive-thru eating places in numerous in-game areas.
Each area will unlock its own costumes, and offer its own meals varieties. One instance given is a Yoshi's drive-thru in a volcano area promoting sizzling soup impressed by Bowser.
Originally, Nintendo says it hadn't linked its concepts for unlockable costumes and meals collectively, with the former merely being deliberate to be purchasable from in-game store areas. But stopping at these interrupted the game's open-world driving expertise, builders stated, and anyway — didn't Mario magically remodel costumes already when he devoured meals up?
"The question came up: 'Does Mario, in fact, eat mushrooms?'," Yabuki laughed. The question prompted Mario Kart World's improvement crew to hunt down Nintendo legend Takashi Tezuka, and get his verdict.
"Tezuka-san [answered], 'Yeah, he is'," Yabuki confirmed. And thus, Mario Kart World's costume-producing meals was born.
Perhaps the greatest shock to come out of the interview was the revelation that Mario Kart World began development on Nintendo Switch, before performance concerns led to the game being delayed for launch on Switch 2 as an alternative.
Mario Kart World, and Cow, will arrive on Switch 2 on the console's launch day — June 5, 2025.