A recently translated interview reveals that Nintendo had an alternative version of Mario Kart: Double Dash in Development presented by Karts of a single driver.
The main trick in Mario Kart: Double Dash, which was launched in Gamecube in 2003, is that the players choose two characters instead of one. Both characters then set up the kart together, one in the front and one on the back, alternating between driving the kart and activating the weapons.
However, according to a 2003 interview in Nintendo Dream magazine, which has recently been translated by Shmupations, the two passenger trick almost did not happen, since Nintendo was secretly working in a separate version of the game with the typical karts of a single passenger seen in the previous entries of SNES, Nintendo 64 and GBA.
“Since Mario Kart has always been more a party game, our starting point for development was to think about which new multiplayer game mechanics we could add, and specifically what new mechanics we could add if the Karts had two drivers,” said producer Shinya Takahashi in the interview. “Another problem for us was how to innovate without destroying what makes Mario Kart unique. That was a monumental challenge.”
“Yes, so you have all these expectations,” added producer Tadashi Sugiyama, “and you have to add something new. The concept of” two pilots “, therefore, was something that we reached at the end of a very long process of rain of ideas. However, we were a little worried about it, so we were developing a single driver, in parallel also with the development of two driver.”
Takashi joked that this alternative version of the game was considered the “emergency escape hatch” of the team, since it allowed them to get rid of the idea of double driver and change to the version of a single passenger if it did not work well enough.
“But in the end, due to most of our staff who really wanted to do something new, we consolidate the development in the concept of two drivers,” said Sugiyama.
It was also revealed that the game was originally going to have motorcycle style Sidecars for the second characters, instead of being in front and the backward, but that the idea was discarded by how the races would have affected.
“Normally, when one thinks of two people in a car, you think of a driver and passenger seat next to each other,” said Sugiyama. “But for Mario Kart, that would end up making the karts too broad. Can you imagine 8 massive karts aligned like this?”
While the solution was that the second character travels behind the first, Sugiyama said: “Unfortunately, that led to another problem.” I can’t see the driver in front! “Our solution to that was to allow him to change the drivers at any time.”
Mario Kart: Double Dash has never relaunched since its initial launch of 2003, but the addition of Gamecube games to change 2 means that it could eventually reach the newest Nintendo console.
