Famitsu had a chat with Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto about the Japanese release of MarioKart 7 this week (December 4th here) and he had a couple of interesting things to say. The first being something that we all knew, that Mario Kart wasn’t going to be taking the riskier, more innovative approach that Super Mario 3D Land did.
Mario Kart is a pretty stable series, all things considered, so production duties were chiefly handled by Hideki Konno while I mostly oversaw the complete picture. With Mario Kart Wii, that included the idea of the steering wheel, and with this one, that included things like the idea of adding hang-gliding stuff to Mario Kart. I make the decisions involving new things to build the gameplay with, in other words.
The basic message here is ‘Mario Kart’s been powered up for the Nintendo 3DS,’ and I think the online upgrades in particular are pretty neat. A lot of time was spent on how to get all the individual components working together — Wi-Fi and Street Pass, local and Internet play.
I’ve got no complaints about this being a powered up version of Mario Kart, as MarioKart DS was my favourite of the series. However, something that’s brand new in this version is the ability to customize your kart, which I had assumed was something that Miyamoto had added himself. Apparently though, this isn’t the case.
I was actually pretty well against some of the customization features of the game, though. It can be fun to win money for racing and use it to buy parts and such, but I didn’t think that had much to do with the core fun of the series. The idea for that came from the studio staff, though, and my final response was ‘If you can build this customization on top of a solid control and gameplay foundation, then go ahead.’
I don’t disagree with him, that customization can sometimes take away from the core feel and experience of a title, but I personally think that it’s something this series has needed for years, and hopefully is something that really makes this title feel new. And what about the odd name for this game, the first with a numerical designation in the series? (Aside from MarioKart 64 which clearly wasn’t the 64th in the series)
Coming up with the title was actually a lot of trouble for us,” Miyamoto replied, “but it is the seventh game, and so it just sort of came down to what felt best. Besides, 7 is supposed to be a lucky number, isn’t it?
Sure, why not. Keep your 3DS charged and ready to go on December 4th, and check here first for my review!
