Mario Kart World devs had to approach track changes with the entire world in mind, but "we don't call this world an open world"

When you think of Mario Kart World, the first thing that probably pops into your head is "open world Mario Kart." Despite that, the game's developers say "we don't call this world an open world."

Speaking to GamesRadar+ Kosuke Yabuki, the producer of Mario Kart World, was asked what the biggest challenges the team faced when turning Mario Kart into an open world were. Yabuki tells us, "We, on the development team side, we don't call this world an open world."

Why? He explains: "Because in our view we don't feel that the term open world is clear in terms of its definition."

Furthermore, Yabuki adds: "We do have this expansive world, and we've placed therein the Mario Kart Circuit or the Bowser Castle, or the Choco Mountain, and tried to build a new Mario Kart."

So while the team don't consider it to be a typical open world game, Yabuki continues: "Looking back on the entire history of Mario Kart, we do feel that this is a major change." But he notes that despite the big changes, "we wanted to ensure that [at] its core the new Mario Kart would still retain the classic fun that you would gain from the Mario Kart franchise."

Yabuki mentions that adjustments to courses had to be approached differently this time around, due to having to accommodate the full world as opposed to just the map itself.

"In this installation of Mario Kart, all of the roads are interconnected so if you were to tweak a certain route to make it easier to run through, it would impact all the other roads and routes," he says. "So we were aware that they're all interconnected and we would need to be mindful of the overall balance."

Mario Kart World is definitely the biggest of all the Switch 2 launch games, but if you've been keeping up with all the Nintendo Switch 2 news, you'll know we've still got some bangers on the way when it comes to upcoming Switch 2 games.