Putting out a kart racer is problematic. I got to play an alpha POC from a fairly large studio. It borrowed heavily from Mario Kart. The physics felt right. The challenges felt right, the weapons felt right, and the balance to let underdogs still be competitive seemed great.
In the end it didn’t get greenlit. I think in the end a lot of what Mario kart has is standing on the shoulders of their IP. It’s undeniably fun It is a great party game, But cart racing isn’t for everyone and If racing isn’t your thing you can at least still identify with your favorite characters.
If you took Mario kart and replaced all of the characters with Miis, I don’t think anybody would want to play it.
Thing is, even if you look at all the Mario Kart characters, there’s only a handful that are big names. Nobody wants to play as a Shy Guy. Even Link and Zelda feel wildly out of place, although maybe they wouldn’t have done in a Links Awakening style rather than what they went for.
I think Sony could do an Astro Bot on it and put in a bunch of their other characters in there. Lego has potential if they can get a bunch of their licensed characters in there (although you know with that kind of money floating around, most of them will be DLC locked behind Harry Potter packs, etc). A horrendously expensive MCU license maybe with some chibified characters.
I think Mario Kart just has that easy “an idiot can play it” gameplay, but it doesn’t get boring once you know what you’re doing. It’s a really hard balance to get right. The only recent attempt was CTR, and it didn’t have that first factor at all, it was hard as nails.
Putting out a kart racer is problematic. I got to play an alpha POC from a fairly large studio. It borrowed heavily from Mario Kart. The physics felt right. The challenges felt right, the weapons felt right, and the balance to let underdogs still be competitive seemed great.
In the end it didn’t get greenlit. I think in the end a lot of what Mario kart has is standing on the shoulders of their IP. It’s undeniably fun It is a great party game, But cart racing isn’t for everyone and If racing isn’t your thing you can at least still identify with your favorite characters.
If you took Mario kart and replaced all of the characters with Miis, I don’t think anybody would want to play it.
Thing is, even if you look at all the Mario Kart characters, there’s only a handful that are big names. Nobody wants to play as a Shy Guy. Even Link and Zelda feel wildly out of place, although maybe they wouldn’t have done in a Links Awakening style rather than what they went for.
I think Sony could do an Astro Bot on it and put in a bunch of their other characters in there. Lego has potential if they can get a bunch of their licensed characters in there (although you know with that kind of money floating around, most of them will be DLC locked behind Harry Potter packs, etc). A horrendously expensive MCU license maybe with some chibified characters.
I think Mario Kart just has that easy “an idiot can play it” gameplay, but it doesn’t get boring once you know what you’re doing. It’s a really hard balance to get right. The only recent attempt was CTR, and it didn’t have that first factor at all, it was hard as nails.
Lego already had kart racer games! They could just revive one