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It takes a strong willed fellow to stand up to the mighty Shigeru Miyamoto, but that’s exactly what happened in the development of 3DS racer Mario Kart 7.
"The way the gliders fly isn’t particularly faithful to real life, but I think it feels pretty good in action," he told Famitsu, as translated by 1UP. "I was actually pretty well against some of the customization features of the game, though.
It can be fun to win money for racing and use it to buy parts and such, but I didn’t think that had much to do with the core fun of the series. The idea for that came from the studio staff, though, and my final response was ‘If you can build this customization on top of a solid control and gameplay foundation, then go ahead’.
"Sometimes people yelled at me to look at things more closely but like I said, the core of Mario Kart is pretty solid by this point and I think it’s safe to have it evolve in a pretty staid and traditional manner.”
Miyamoto also revealed the reason behind the decision to adopt a number system in the game’s title, ditching the subtitles used in every previous iteration.
"Coming up with the title was actually a lot of trouble for us," he admitted. "But it is the seventh game, and so it just sort of came down to what felt best. Besides, 7 is supposed to be a lucky number, isn’t it?"
Mario Kart 7 is out in the UK on December 2nd.
