It’s hard to imagine, but Mario Kart: Double Dash’s two-player driving mechanic almost didn’t happen!
As I am sure you know, in Mario Kart Double Dash, rather than only choosing one character to plop into a kart of your choosing, players instead select two characters to ride in a kart together, with one at the back and one at the front.
However, Nintendo was anxious about introducing this mechanic into the Mario Kart series, so also worked on a “single-driver version” in tandem with the doubled-up driver version we all know today.
That’s according to a 2003 interview with Mario Kart: Double Dash’s developers, which first featured in Nintendo Dream magazine but has been freshly translated by Shmuplations. Within this interview, producer Shinya Takahashi explained that “Since Mario Kart has always been more of a party game”, the team’s “point-of-departure for the development was thinking about what new multiplayer gameplay mechanics we could add, and specifically what new mechanics we could add if the karts had two drivers”.
However, the Double Dash team wanted to ensure it was innovating the series, “while not destroying what makes Mario Kart unique”. The producer added this was “a monumental challenge” for those working on the game. Fellow producer Tadashi Sugiyama added Mario Kart had already turned into a “flagship title for Nintendo”, and “each console has to have its own Mario Kart” title.
“Well, of course it’s going to sell big, it’s Mario Kart! – that pressure is huge,” Sugiyama said, noting creating a game like this comes with “all these expectations” and the team had to “add something new” to the formula.
“The ‘two drivers’ concept, therefore, was something we came to at the end of a veryyy long process of brainstorming. We were a little worried about it though, so at first we were developing a single-driver version too, in parallel with the two-driver development,” Sugiyama revealed, with Takahashi joking this was the Double Dash team’s “emergency escape hatch” should all else fail.
“But in the end, owing I think to the majority of our staff who really wanted to do something new, we consolidated the development into just the two-driver concept,” Sugiyama said
That isn’t to say it wasn’t still challenging to implement, and according to chief director Kiyoshi Mizuki, the best part of a year was spent working out that two-driver mechanic. “We tried all sorts of stuff,” Mizuki said.
One idea floated around for a while was to include sidecars, which immediately made me picture a Wallace and Gromit/Two Fat Ladies racer, which is perhaps making me show my age. Anyway, back to the interview in hand!
“Normally when one thinks of two people in a car, you think of a driver and passenger seat side-by-side. But for Mario Kart, that would end up making the karts too wide. Can you imagine eight massive karts lined up like that,” Sugiyama quipped.
Takahashi added the developers “messed around with the positioning a lot”, and eventually settled on “having them ride behind you” but this led to another issue – not being able to see both drivers. The solution? “To let you swap the drivers at any time,” Sugiyama closed, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Mario Kart reign remains strong, and with the arrival of Nintendo Switch 2 will also hail in the latest series entry: Mario Kart World. Unlike Mario Kart games of old, World will include the ability to drive basically anywhere and a whopping 24 drivers can compete in a race.
Our Tom has already taken the upcoming game for a whirl, calling Mario Kart World “undoubtedly Switch 2’s killer app” and one he can’t wait to play more of.
“Mario Kart World’s reinvention of the series may be a gamble, but it’s absolutely one I think will pay off. With a web of possible routes and hours of time likely to be spent exploring every corner of its highways, deserts and mountains – or racing to stay ahead of the competition in Knockout Tour – it’s just as well the game’s a Switch 2 launch title,” he wrote in Eurogamer’s Mario Kart World preview.
