Mario Kart World's Weird Problem
Hello you exceptionally awesome Patreon people!
I hope that all of you are doing the best you ever did, that all your dreams come to fruition within the next 73 hours and that all your Pokemon attacks end up hitting critical for the rest of your playthrough!
The two Mario Kart videos are out and I’m quite happy with how they turned out!
At the end of the challenge run I teased that there was a terribly paced part, originally part of the script that I ended up cutting - due to its terrible pacing - from the final video.
I am happy to share this exceptionally ill paced part now with all of you in all of its terribly paced glory!
I’ll let some challenge run footage run in the background so that we all have something nice to look at while we drive through the script at an exceptionally bad pace!
So here’s the thing.
There is something that I find exceptionally strange about Mario Kart World.
Something that Nintendo in my humble onion messed up with the game and something they haven’t messed up before.
Something related to information.
But to understand what the weird thing is that has me so baffled we first have to quickly establish some-thing.
Actually we have to establish five thing.
So thing first - the mirror cup.
The mirror cup is an additional bonus cup with a long history in the Mario Kart franchise.
In the mirror cup we race through all the stages once again, but with a twist.
This time we race through the levels backwards - which is a really interesting change to the usual structure and offers a nice change to the usual gameplay.
Awesome! Thing two: The coins.
As it turns out the evil coins in Mario Kart World are not only a challenge to be avoided but for some strange people they are actually a treat to be collected.
Whenever we pick up a coin our kart becomes a tiny bit faster.
Because of this it is often optimal to take small detours to pick up coins while driving
because then our kart becomes faster.
Cool.
Thing three - The star achievements.
You see, while Mario Kart World may not feature a dedicated single player mode, there is still a small system in place that is at least comparable to a single player mode.
The star system.
When driving through the stages in the grand prix mode or when racing a knockout tour we can actually unlock small star achievements that are shown besides the cup symbol afterwards.
Unlocking those stars is actually the closest to an actual single player mode that Mario Kart World ever gets.
Hoo and ray.
Thing four - the unlockable characters and the skins.
In Mario Kart World the only way to unlock certain drivers is via the Kamek item.
Whenever a driver uses a Kamek item, all racers on the track are transformed into a random enemy.
If we are transformed into an enemy that we haven’t unlocked so far, the game then unlocks this enemy permanently as a driver.
Some of those transformations are rather rare - for example I still haven’t unlocked the fish bone driver, even though I played the game for dozens and dozens of hours as of now.
The character skins are unlocked using a different system.
Those are unlocked by eating certain foods that can only be found in certain regions while driving as a certain character.
Which already brings us to thing fifth and thing final.
A thing that we actually discussed in the challenge run.
The character selection and the stats shown when picking a driver.
When picking a driver kart combination the game only ever shows us the combined stats of the kart and the driver but never the stats of the kart and the driver alone.
Hooray!
So why do I bring up those five seemingly unrelated things?
What do the mirror cup, the star achievements, the character selection, the coins during the races and the character unlocks have in common?
Well … something simply surprising!
Something Mario Kart World is surprisingly bad at.
All those things are designed around hidden information that is not visible to the player in any reasonable way.
The game just never explains to us that coins make us faster and they certainly don’t explain how exactly they make us faster.
Is it a linear system where each coin makes us faster?
Is there one breakpoint at 5, or 10 or 15 coins - or are there several breakpoints?
Is there a maximum amount of coins, after which we do not get faster anymore?
You know, all this information is hidden from the player.
The same is true from the information on how to obtain three stars.
For the knockout tour for example, we have to clear every single checkpoint in first position during a race to unlock it … this information is nowhere in the game.
Even stranger, the game never tells us how to unlock the mirror mode.
Which is doubly weird because the requirements to unlock it are oddly specific - we have to complete ten p-switch challenges, race through all the stages in 150cc once and have to have found 10 hidden question blocks and peach medals.
Peach medals, question blocks and p-switch challenges are open world content.
The mirror cup however, is a racing cup in the grand prix mode and not related to the open world.
If a player doesn’t care for the open world and only races through the grand prix mode, they will never unlock the mirror mode.
They actually might not even know that the game mode exists, since the game never tells us about it.
And when it comes to unlocking the skins and different racers - well the game doesn’t tell us how to do this as well.
Figuring out that skins are unlocked by eating region specific foods, or that racers unlock when a Kamek item hits, is not really intuitive.
Most people probably had to look up how to unlock all the skins and racers, which isn’t ideal is it?
Or in other words: Tons of systems in Mario Kart World are not communicated to the player.
Which isn’t a big deal in that game, but it’s strange, isn’t it?
If someone were to theoretically interact with the game without ever looking things up then this person may never figure out what coins do.
This person may never figure out how to obtain three stars in all game modes.
They may never figure out how to unlock all skins, that different drivers have different stats and weirdest of all, they may never unlock the mirror cup.
Which is just strange.
It’s Nintendo making strange choices on a meta layer once again.
Most recent Nintendo releases have absolutely nailed their core gameplay, yet somehow managed to stumble in another area somehow.
Be it the user interface, be it the controls, be it Nintendo forcing a certain experience on the players or be it a lack of communicating how the systems in the game actually work.
So many of Nintendo’s recent games struggle to get the basics down.
And it’s not just how Mario Kart World communicates its systems that is a bit weird in that game.
There are two other systems in the game that are incredibly weird as well.
The character selection and the mini map.
Mario Kart’s character selection screen is utterly terrible - not just because it hides information from the player.
For whatever reason Nintendo decided to display each and every single skin as a separate character with the result being … well … with the result being that there are way too many options to pick on this screen.
To make matters even worse the screen sorts racers from top to bottom instead of ... you know - left to right.
Left to right is the direction most people in the world read.
It is how most people try to read interfaces - making it even more difficult to navigate to the character we actually want to play as.
Even worse, the interface features more space horizontally then it does vertically, making the choice to sort vertically even more nonsensical.
Just take a look at this.
This is a sorted interface.
It’s a total mess.
I find it baffling that Nintendo settled for this system, especially since they themselves already came up with a perfect system for such a situation decades ago.
Super Smash Bros. also features tons of characters with different skins, yet there the interface works perfectly fine.
Which already brings us to the final weird stumbling in Mario Kart’s UI.
The mini map.
I unironically think that Mario Kart World’s minimap might be the worst mini map ever made for a serious game.
It’s way too big, taking away almost a sixth of the screen space while at the same time showing us … well, literally what we are seeing right in front of us.
The minimap just renders a picture of the environment we are seeing right in front of us.
It barely shows us anything we can’t already see.
It’s just utterly useless.
To make matters even weirder, it also is lacking a compass.
Something that would actually be useful in the gigantic open world of Mario Kart - I guess they used up all their compasses in Super Mario Odyssey or something.
It’s just … so absurd, they use up all this space, to show us the very same thing we are already seeing.
Just to be clear here.
None of those things make the game worse.
Mario Kart isn’t a worse game because it hides some information like how coins work from the player - it isn’t a worse game because the character selection is terrible or because the minimap is useless.
If anything, those things are funny - but that’s not why I always bring these things up.
The reason I always bring these things up is because Nintendo clearly lost talent on that front.
And this makes me extremely nervous.
Because at some point of the console generation Nintendo is likely going to release a third Mario Maker game - and for that game to be great it is absolutely crucial that they nail the user interface.
I’m really worried that they currently don’t have the talent to design a usable level editor, given that the character selection in Mario Kart already seems to confront them with an unsolvable problem.
Hooray!
What’s next?
Well next we are going to have a bit of a Donkey Kong Bananza focus.
There are two videos I’m currently messing around with about Bananza.
One is a quick and short one on the gaming channel about how the Bananza speedrun is turning out - because the current speedrun is already utterly insane and the leaderboards haven’t even opened yet.
The second thing is a big critique of the game on the perspective channel.
The video about the speedrun will probably go live in two weeks, the critique will probably take three to four weeks after that.
You can expect the next patreon update once the critique goes live!
Awesome, that’s all I wanted to share for now!
Before we wrap this up - as always - a huge and gigantic thank you to all of you for your support.
You folks are all collectively (and individually) awesome and totally rock!
Thank you so much for your support! <3
Patreon Update - Missing Information in Mario Kart World (YouTube)
Comments (7)
People can defend Nintendo’s decisions all they want. I can definitely see where people are coming from, especially the comments of this post right here. However, the game is $80. For this price, along with the price of the console, along with the fact that this is the first major Switch 2 game, I simply cannot look past its flaws. For an $80, there is a level of polish and care that should go into crafting this experience that is not entirely present here in my opinion. Love your videos man, keep up the good work 🙏
You know, I'm like 90% convinced that every little thing that people say "how did Nintendo not think about this" or "Nintendo sure lost talent on this front" about are actually things Nintendo DID put a lot of thought into and very consciously designed like that. It's just that the reasons they have for these things, what they want players to feel and experience, often doesn't perfectly align with what we consciously seek out of their games. I'm pretty sure for most of these "missing information" things, the answer is as simple as "Nintendo wants people to explore and figure it out themselves" or even "Nintendo wants people to talk about it and share that information amongst one another". It makes perfect sencse in my eyes, since Nintendo, like no other game developer, are always pushing the social aspects of their games (even in single-player experiences). Now for the character selection UI, another YouTuber I watch brought up the idea that it was most likely designed to be confusing and shitty on purpose so that when people try to navigate it, they'll very regularly stumble over characters and skins they've completely forgotten about and be like "oh yeah, I haven't picked this one in a while". As much as this sounds like a horrible reason to design the UI like that, I have to admit that it absolutely works on me. Already found myself stumbling over characters I had forgotten about many times while trying to navigate to a different character, and then often ended up picking one of them up. Some people actually theorize that it was for this exact same reason that the UI in Echoes of Wisdom turned out so badly: So that when people navigate that long-ass selection menu to the echo they actually wanted to use, they'll accidentally stumble over one they completely forgot about and maybe pick that instead. As for the minimap, I'm quite convinced it isn't even supposed to be a minimap at all and that Nintedo, in fact, intentionally decided not to have a minimap or a detailed map in the game. I'm guessing the only real purpose of that view is to show players what's above them, since very often collectibles like question marks or Peach coins are hidden in high places and can't really be seen with the regular camera. The reason I think they intentionally left out a minimap is that it perfectly fits the vibes that I think the game is going for and that are, in fact, the main reason I love it so much: I'm pretty sure Nintendo wanted the game to have some kind of "live in the moment" feel, and they didn't want players to obssess over collectibles and completion in it. That's why they intentionally track almost none of the content on the minimap. It's my firm believe they want Mario Kart World to be some kind of "cool if you stumble over it, but don't sweat it" experience. It's worth noting that I'm not necessarily saying I agree with Nintendo's decisions here, or that I don't think they should've prioritized some other things for some of those examples. Just saying that every thing that baffles us about their games was almost certainly a very conscious design decision. I'm pretty sure pride also plays a big part in that, as is very prevelant in Japanese companies. Basically, Nintendo are of the opinion that the way they create games is the "correct" way for them, and that what they want players to experience from a game is more important than what players themselves want to experience. These two views are very often at odds with one another, and that's why for most gamers, Nintendo games wil always have that little "why?" factor.
The thing with "what the devs want players to do is more important than what players want to do" only really works when you're not also trying to throw the widest net possible with your game. MKW is supposed to be the ultimate widely appealing game on the new console, and being so prescriptive about it doesn't help with that.
I hope my attacks don’t crit! I just want the Pokémon on low HP, not to murderize it lol
MK World was my first Mario Kart since... Double Dash, I think? And when I started playing it, I seriously had the thought that I had somehow gotten a beta or unfinished copy of the game due to the lack of any sort of introductory material for new players. The fact that the open-world mode is utterly directionless - that it just stuck me in a random spot in the world with no purpose or goal or indication that there was content to interact with beyond driving around collecting food from drive-thrus that seemingly were just a speed boost made it feel like I was playing a proof-of concept build instead of a finished product. I'm just baffled. It would have been so easy to use the open world as a framework for tutorials: start at Mario Circuit, Mario teaches you the core controls, you drive a mini 1v1 race, and then he tells you to drive to the other tracks to learn more from other characters - and to look out for p-switches along the way to test your skills. Then you have the same thing occur at each of the other tracks, with different ones teaching you about drifting, wall-riding, unlocking characters and outfits, etc. Like it's not groundbreaking design or anything, but it's way better than nothing! All that said, I'm really looking forward to your Bananza critique. I really enjoyed it but wish there was a little more challenging content that really made me engage with the mechanics. They made "monkey smash!" fun enough to carry the game but in retrospect I feel they could have added a little more depth (pun not intended). Credit where it's due though: Bananza might have the best ending sequence ever for a Nintendo platformer. The last 2 hours are a roller coaster. And a skill tree!?! Permanent power progression and extrinsic motivation?!?! In a first-party Nintendo game!?!? Holy fuzzy what is the world coming to?
Totally aggreeing on that "Bananza might have the best ending sequence in a Nintendo game ever" part. I definitely thought the same thing. The last hour or so had my cry, like, at least three times - not even from any particular bit of story, but simply from being moved by some little touch or idea Nintendo decided to put into the game. It felt like they were speaking directly to my soul!
I 100% agree- as much as I absolutely love Mario Kart World it is baffling that these aren't included. Furthermore though, I think the problem goes even deeper, to stuff like controls. Stuff like wall riding, rail grinding, and heck, even drifting, are never explained directly. If a player is completely new to the racing genre, like a younger player (who Nintendo even tend to target), they are left to figure out how these work on their own. Furthermore, vehicle stats are also never explained, it's never directly stated anywhere that different vehicles and characters have an effect on how they control, or what each stat actually means. Stuff like this was actually also a problem in Mario Kart 8, it still baffles me that there isn't a tutorial on these things in either game. As someone who's tried playing mario kart with my far, far more casual family before for fun, we've never been able to properly race as there isn't simple explanations for simple things. Mario Kart World just amplifies this and makes it so much worse, so I haven't even attempted to introduce it to my family yet haha. As for Kamek, I think it's one of the most stupid ways of unlocking new characters I've ever experienced. It's such a weird game, my favourite mario kart because I love exploration of any kind in any game, but so strange simultaneously. Can't wait to see what you think of DK Banana, I love the game personally but I'm curious to hear your take.