Mario Kart producer views playing the game like a horoscope

Sometimes it’s your lucky day, sometimes a Blue Shell makes you want to die.

Mario Kart 7’s producer Hideki Konno believes that playing a round of Mario Kart isn’t dissimilar to consulting your horoscope for the day; sometimes you get lucky and other times you have no chance with Cindy. In an interview with IGN, he said that he views Mario Kart’s best quality as being a “communication game” that everyone can “enjoy together”. When asked about the controversial abundance of rubber banding (or catch-up) items in the series’ latest entry, he reiterated the importance that winning a game shouldn’t rely on skill alone.

“We don’t want to create a game in which more experienced players will always win; we want to create a game in which when less experienced players are lucky, they can win too sometimes” he said, although he said he was making concessions to the more hardcore crowd by allowing people to turn off items in local and online matches. Speaking of balance, Konno said he wasn’t looking to reintroduce the character specific powers from Double Dash, as it made balancing the game near to impossible.

He also touched on why the series hasn’t changed much over the years: he’s worried about upsetting the accessibility of that all important multiplayer, something he stressed throughout the interview. He compared the series to a sport, where there isn’t really any need for the rules to change over time. Much like a sport, he said that Mario Kart tracks are designed for a single gameplay idea and expanded outwards, rather than being inspired by locations or concept art.

Lastly, he talked about the introduction of customisation into Mario Kart 7, which offers both “strategic layers” for the more experienced play and chance to play at “fashion” for the newer player. Indeed, although the character count in 7 is down from previous games, he believes the entire system is more robust with the customisation layered on top.

He said he was looking to expand upon the system, so watch out for the inevitable ability to doodle on your karts with the Wii U’s fancy new controller sometime in the future.

Source: IGN