Other Franchises in Mario Kart - Should they keep adding more in the future or not?

[solrocknroll]

The majority of gamers know who Link is.

This is not true for any Mario character that has yet to be in Mario Kart.

diddy kong is not in mario kart 8 so this is incorrect

[Magical Glace]

diddy kong is not in mario kart 8 so this is incorrect

I think he meant the series as a whole, which Diddy has made appearances in.

[Anacybele]

The majority of gamers know who Link is.

This is not true for any Mario character that has yet to be in Mario Kart.

I never said they didn't? I said that I don't think the majority of people that buy Mario Kart buy it for the guest characters. I would think that a vast majority buy it for Mario characters and racing.

[Ema Skye]

I never said they didn't? I said that I don't think the majority of people that buy Mario Kart buy it for the guest characters. I would think that a vast majority buy it for Mario characters and racing.

You'd need to look at DLC selling rates and copies sold after the DLC announcement to prove this.

People would buy it for Mario Kart and racing, obviously. But a whole lot more people also bought it because Link was in the game.

People can have multiple reasons for buying a game.

diddy kong is not in mario kart 8 so this is incorrect

Diddy has been in Mario Kart.

I'm talking about series newcomers.

[Samias]

I'd be down for more franchises being in Mario Kart, if only to stop the rosters from the kind of padding Mario Kart 8 suffered from. All the baby characters were super boring. They could really take a page from Sonic here and do some kind of "Mario and All-Stars Racing", where the focus is mostly on Mario but still celebrates all of Nintendo's franchises. I'm sure a fraction of people would be upset with the removal of Baby Rosalina if we got Kirby or Fox instead.

[Jave]

This is how I see it.

In Smash Bros, I'm fine with 3rd Party guests as long as the roster is MAINLY Nintendo.

In Mario Kart, I'm fine with other Nintendo characters as long as the roster is MAINLY Mario.

[Refa]

I've wanted Kirby in Mario Kart ever since I got bait 'n' switched with that Rosalina reveal trailer for Smash 4 (to say nothing of what a PITA she is to fight against).

Edited January 15, 2017 by Refa

[Zera]

If Nintendo is not going to make non-Mario racing games, they may as well put their other IPs in it. It'll be like Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

No. It's Mario Kart, not Nintendo Kart. If they keep making it more of a "Nintendo Kart" thing, then they're gonna have to sacrifice Mario characters to put more non-Mario characters in, and then I think some of the charm will be lost. I love racing as Koopa Troopa and Boo! A guest character here and there is fine, but...c'mon. Don't go overboard.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The majority of gamers know who Link is.

This is not true for any Mario character that has yet to be in Mario Kart.

Counterexample: goomba.

Not that I really care about a playable goomba, and you can argue whether or not it counts as a "character" (though Koopa Troopa was on the original roster), so I'm mostly just having fun.

Anyway I'd be quite happy with the game becoming Nintendo Kart, it's not a big deal for me either way. It's still going to be a fanservice racer with some unique and rather good mechanics and a staple multiplayer experience.

On the note of Nintendo racers I really hope we get another F-Zero soon.

[Zera]

No. It's Mario Kart, not Nintendo Kart. If they keep making it more of a "Nintendo Kart" thing, then they're gonna have to sacrifice Mario characters to put more non-Mario characters in...

Just like how characters were cut from Smash Bros to put in Dr. Mario and Lucina, right? In all seriousness, the effort it takes to create a MK character is infinitely less than a Smash Bros. character. Aside from weight classes, they have absolutely no effect on gameplay, whereas in Smash Bros, each character added creates 40+ distinct fighting games that must be balanced (not that Nintendo succeeded here). If F-Zero GX on the GameCube can have 40+ unique characters with fully voiced interviews and distinct animations, there's no reason why Mario Kart can't have 50+.

[MissShake]

I dunno, I kind of agree with OP on this one. I understand maybe having guest characters as DLC, but since the name is Mario the main focus should be on Mario. I understand that my opinion doesn't really change that Nintendo's crossover is one of their biggest IPs though, so it makes perfect sense as to why they added the guest characters. (At this rate they should just change the name to Super Smash Kart.)

[Fire Emblem Fan]

On 1/15/2017 at 1:56 PM, Zera said:

No. It's Mario Kart, not Nintendo Kart. If they keep making it more of a "Nintendo Kart" thing, then they're gonna have to sacrifice Mario characters to put more non-Mario characters in...

Just like how characters were cut from Smash Bros to put in Dr. Mario and Lucina, right? In all seriousness, the effort it takes to create a MK character is infinitely less than a Smash Bros. character. Aside from weight classes, they have absolutely no effect on gameplay, whereas in Smash Bros, each character added creates 40+ distinct fighting games that must be balanced (not that Nintendo succeeded here). If F-Zero GX on the GameCube can have 40+ unique characters with fully voiced interviews and distinct animations, there's no reason why Mario Kart can't have 50+.

Congratulations on completely missing the point of what I was saying and assuming I thought characters were cut for Doc Mario and Lucina. Zera's crappy snarkiness strikes again.

[Booton]

The only non-Mario series character that I think is missing from Mario Kart 8 is Captain Falcon. They have two F-Zero tracks as it is and the Blue Falcon, when considering it has been a very long time since the last F-Zero title, they should at least add Captain Falcon as a character. As much as I love the Inklings, I was somewhat disappointed to see that they left such an obvious choice out once again.

Other than Captain Falcon, I really don't think Mario Kart needs anymore guest characters. They should just make a Nintendo Kart at that point.

Edited January 18, 2017 by Booton

[Sweet_Basil]

I would prefer it to be Mario Kart and completely Mario related but these new additions really added much needed originality. Things were really getting out of hand with the Baby-Metal-rehash/clone plague going on. I mean there's five different Princess Peach clones and five differerent Mario clones, that's very redundant. I would rather they give the lesser known Mario characters the favor but I don't know why they don't. I think these non-mario characters are ok but I'd rather have a Nintendo Kart as a separate series, but I think that's not going to happen now.

Edited January 18, 2017 by Sweet_Basil

[Reality]

I'm thinking what would happen if they went really nuts with minor charathers- but how far would that go? Side games, minor enemies? Would people like Fawful and Geno get in? Or would you mine the likes of monty mole, angry sun, noki, pianta, sidesteppers, raphael the raven, Fuzzies, Magikoopa, buzzy beetles, etc etc.

At some point you would be using characters less iconic than stage hazard/item charathers like chain chomp/ bullet bill / thwomp. 

And I can see turtles becoming a problem, bowser, koopa troopa, bowser jr, koopa kids, kind of block out the likes of hammer bros, koopatrol, boomerang bros, paratroopa, boom boom, etc due to similarity in design, it would could get just as annoying as baby/metal characters after a while. 

Edited January 18, 2017 by Reality

[Samias]

On 1/18/2017 at 11:30 AM, Reality said:

I'm thinking what would happen if they went really nuts with minor charathers- but how far would that go? Side games, minor enemies? Would people like Fawful and Geno get in? Or would you mine the likes of monty mole, angry sun, noki, pianta, sidesteppers, raphael the raven, Fuzzies, Magikoopa, buzzy beetles, etc etc.

At some point you would be using characters less iconic than stage hazard/item charathers like chain chomp/ bullet bill / thwomp. 

And I can see turtles becoming a problem, bowser, koopa troopa, bowser jr, koopa kids, kind of block out the likes of hammer bros, koopatrol, boomerang bros, paratroopa, boom boom, etc due to similarity in design, it would could get just as annoying as baby/metal characters after a while. 

I mean some of those enemies are better off as stage hazards like Monty Mole but there's no reason why characters like King Boo, Petey Piranha, Il Piantissimo, E. Gadd, Goombario/Goombella, Spike and a few other notable characters couldn't become consistent racers over Baby Daisy and Pink Gold Peach. Also having Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong seems natural as Donkey Kong and Mario are interconnected franchises and Donkey Kong is a regular racer. So even without dipping into other Nintendo franchises there are still a lot of characters they could pull out from the Mario universe without being too generic. Although a lot of Nintendo fans would still probably be happy to see some crossover with franchises that don't stray too much from the Mario artstyle. No one has ever been up in arms about the inclusion of DK characters, and having Link, Isabella and Villager went over a lot better than Pink Gold Peach and Baby Rosalina. I also don't think the Inklings really break the aesthetic either. On the other hand I probably wouldn't want to see Samus or a Fire Emblem character hop into a kart.

[Dai]

To be honest, I'm really kind of surprised Pikachu hasn't already been put in.

[kingddd]

51 minutes ago, Dai said:

To be honest, I'm really kind of surprised Pikachu hasn't already been put in.

Well you have to remember Mario Kart is mostly developed by their Internal EAD studio and Zelda, Animal Crossing and Splatoon are their few internal EAD made studio IPs that they have.  So chances of EAD studio developed games characters and IPs are most likely be promoted more than say Intelligent System, the Pokemon Company/Game freak and Monolith in Mario Kart.

[Water Mage]

13 hours ago, Dai said:

To be honest, I'm really kind of surprised Pikachu hasn't already been put in.

Frankly, Pikachu or any Pokemon character for that matter has incredibly low chances of appearing in Mario Kart. In my opinion Bayonetta and Cloud have a higher chance than a Pokemon character. 

I mean, there's reason why Pokemon barely in any crossovers at all, and when they do, it is extremely limited, for example, in Super Mario Maker, the Pokemon sprites are one only that doesn't have special sounds. 

Game Freak is extremely overprotective of the Pokemon IP, even by Nintendo standards.

[CrimeanRoyalKnight]

No.

First, I want to drive beautiful Mario locales and see how Mario's world is much more than abstract places. Driving in Nintendo places would be cool but we would be left with the usual iconic places instead of getting representation of stuff like, I dunno, Machbeth (Starfox) or Pendrana Rifts (Metroid). We would be getting Corneria and Brinstar's Depths, for example.

Second, I think if they want to do a crossover racing game, it should have different mechanics.

Third, underdogs like Waluigi would be replaced by more famous Nintendo characters.

Fourth, it would give them more excuses to not release any new F-Zero games, and I don't want that.

Edited January 23, 2017 by CrimeanRoyalKnight