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Sumo Digital explains how they've pushed the kart racing genre forward

by rawmeatcowboy
10 December 2012
GN Version 4.0
A portion of a Marios-Hat interview with Sumo Digital Producer Steve Lycett...

MH: In a previous interview which has become well-publicized, you mentioned that you would like to see Mario Kart “take a leaf from our game for their next Mario Kart.” Personally, I’d have loved to see them adopt the SEGA Miles system, among a few other things. But is there anything in particular (besides expanding beyond the Mario universe, which they’ve expressed no desire to do) you would like to see them utilize from your game?

SL: Me and my big mouth! I’ve a huge amount of respect for the Mario Kart series, indeed I’ve owned and enjoyed every single entry in the series. However, I think we’ve done a number of things that do push the genre forward.

The land, air and sea play allow us to make tracks that are very dynamic. You’re not simply racing three laps with a few tweaks to the track as you go. Instead, you get a race that can completely change on every lap. It’s allowed us to work in elements such as racing through asteroids, through a volcano on lava, and on tracks where the players can actually change the route of the race too.

Plus, we’ve really pushed the local multiplayer and GamePad use too. You can play almost the entire game with 5-player splitscreen, work together co-operatively to run through an extensive World Tour campaign as well as asymmetric modes – and also take you 5 local players into online races too.

Breaking out of just the Sonic universe has also meant we can really go to town with variety too. I’d actually love to play a “Super Smash Bros. Kart” and escape the Mushroom Kingdom.

Weapon-wise, we’ve shown you can have an alternative to the blue shell, one that still can be avoided with skill but will allow trailing players to catch up. I like to think we’ve shown that weapons can impact on a race, but not dominate it.

When you look at the whole game as a package, I think Transformed has set a really high bar, especially on Wii U, and I’m excited to see what Mario Kart can do to raise it!

Full interview here