Classic 1992 interview gives insight into Super Mario Kart's development

This interview comes from the original Japanese Super Mario Kart Player's Guide. It feature's an interview with the following devs.

Shigeru Miyamoto – Producer
Hideki Konno – Director
Tadashi Sugiyama – Director
Masato Kimura – Programmer
Hajime Yajina – Programmer

—Why did you choose karts instead of cars?

Miyamoto: That was our first idea, actually: a fun, lighthearted game where you zip around unrealistically in cars. It wouldn’t be the life-or-death, dangerous world of F1 racing, but more the atmosphere of screeching wheels as you zip around an amusement park. From those ideas, the concept eventually evolved naturally from cars to karts.

When people play this game, they have a big smile on their face. That was a big goal for us: a game where both players and onlookers would be laughing and smiling. It does seem like there’s a boom in the popularity of actual go-kart racing right now, but that wasn’t really related to our choice to switch from cars to karts.

—Kimura, you mentioned earlier that replicating the feel of go-kart controls was the hardest thing for you in Super Mario Kart.

Kimura: I spent a lot of time studying the physics of speed, friction, inertia, but I soon learned that if I followed the rules of physics faithfully, the controls didn’t feel like a game at all. It comes down to this: in a real car, the feel of the steering wheel is like an “analogue” device, but the SNES control pad uses digital on-off switches. Because of this fundamental difference, I had to go back and tinker with the controls over and over until I approximated something that felt right.

Miyamoto: It was an extremely difficult process. Imitating a real car didn’t work at all. The only way forward was for us to keep meeting, talking it over, and revising again and again. I’m afraid I also made matters worse with my advice that didn’t make a lot of sense. (laughs) “Oh, this part feels good here, but it’s kind of weird physics… hmm, I don’t know though, yeah, we should change it.” All that back and forth just worried and annoyed Kimura.