Mario Kart Worldhas been a hit launch game for theNintendo Switch 2and will undoubtedly be something millions of us are playing for years to come. It’s far from perfect, though, and it sounds like kart racing competitorSonic Racing: CrossWorldswill intentionally try to improve on one of the areas of Mario Kart World players have been complaining about most.
Legendary Sonic producer Takashi Iizuka spoke withGamesRadarabout CrossWorlds, going into specific details about item use in the game. I’m sure there are some of you out there who would prefer your kart racers without items, despite them being a cornerstone of the genre. Well, there was a period during the game’s development where that was the case for CrossWorlds.
To make sure CrossWorlds is competitive, the devs tested it without items to make sure it was balanced and fair. Only once that had been established were items then introduced, and even then, the idea of keeping the game as balanced as possible remained paramount.
Anything that was very stressful for players, anything that always allowed people to come back from behind and win all the time needed to be removed from the concept. - Takashi Iizuka
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If an item was deemed too powerful by the CrossWorlds team, as in something that would aid a player in propelling themselves to the front after falling way behind, it was scrapped. That presumably means we won’t be getting the Sonic equivalent of blue shells and Bullet Bills in the hedgehog’s kart racer when it launches this September.
By the time CrossWorlds and its items, some of which we will presumably never know about, had been playtested over and over again, Iiszuka says the team atSegasettled on “the right amount of chaotic”. With Mario Kart’s lobbies doubled to up to 24 racers in World, many would argue the new game has gone well beyond the right amount of chaotic.
Mario Kart World’s item drops are so chaotic that two weeks in,the latest meta when playing online is to purposefully fall to the back of the pack towards the end of the race. That way, you will be rewarded with some of the game’s more powerful items that can then be used to propel you to the front just as the race is coming to an end. Between broken methods like that andMario Kart World not having crossover characters, unlike CrossWorldswhich will get Minecraft Steve and SpongeBob, Sonic might get one up over Mario later this year for the first time in decades.
