Nintendo has revealed that Switch 2 launch title Mario Kart World was originally in development for the first Switch, and that the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe‘s Booster Course Pass DLC is the reason the game ended up on Switch 2.
The Japanese gaming giant’s latest Ask the Developer article is all about the new Mario Kart game, which launches alongside the Switch 2 on June 5th. It turns out, though, that Nintendo began prototyping Mario Kart World all the way back in 2017.
According to producer Kosuke Yabuki, work on Mario Kart World began in March 2017, a month or so before the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Programming director Kenta Sato says the original plan was to develop for the Switch, but that this threw up a lot of technical issues.
Specifically, Sato says there were doubts about whether the original Switch was capable of accommodating Mario Kart World‘s 24-player limit. The team discussed various solutions, including “toning down the visuals, lowering the resolution, and…dropping the frame rate to 30fps”.
Yabuki says that the team “kick[ed] the can down the road” while trying to work out what to compromise on for Mario Kart World, but that when Mario Kart 8 Deluxe‘s Booster Course Pass DLC was released, it gave the team “a bit more time to continue development”.
During that time, the development team discussed moving Mario Kart World to the Switch 2, which became, as Yabuki puts it, “a ray of hope”, opening up “a bunch of possibilities” and removing the need to compromise on performance or visual fidelity.
Mario Kart World will launch for Nintendo Switch 2 on June 5th. It’s just one of the games that will be available for the system on release, alongside the likes of Split Fiction, Hogwarts Legacy, and the bafflingly paid-for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour.