Mario Kart 9 in Development

[Elias_]

It's a divided crowd, but I'm against adding characters from other franchises. It's supposed to be Mario Kart, but turned into '...and friends'.
If they wanna go that route they should just make a Nintendo Kart, and only offer 1 or 2 Mario characters with the rest of the roster being filled in with different franchise characters.

Agreed. While it's not a big deal, I feel that the non-Mario characters in Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe) feel a little out of place. Nevertheless, the only things I'd really like to see are a mission mode like in DS and more short cuts.

I want to say I'm excited because 8/8D were the worst especially how they treated retro stages. I can only hope this will be a good thing, they fix handling retro and the bad AI. I mean I'd rather play through any other game than these two cause they could actually respect how the old stages were, I am not fond of the total 8/8D updates and adaption. Plus 8/8D had rather boring new tracks as well, not to mention a mix between baby steps and the awful 200cc.

I liked 8, but you're right, many tracks look amazing, but aren't that special/don't stand out. They played it a little safe.

 

[Tao]

Considering it's pretty much dead and not coming back, I wouldn't mind if they stole ideas from Diddy Kong Racing such as different vehicle types more drastic than just cars and bikes. Always loved that DKR did that and that the tracks were designed for different obstacles and shortcuts for each vehicle.

Not to mention a story mode of some sort.

And Diddy Kong.

I wouldn't say no to them cutting that roster down either, or at least going the Smash route and lumping nigh identical characters together as one, such as Dry Bowser and Bowser, the Koopalings and Mario...And Cat Mario...And Metal Mario...And Baby Mario...And Gold Mario. They literally did it with Yoshi. I just hated that huge bloated roster consisting mostly of near identical characters.

As much as I always say it, I'm on the fence about whether I want MK to go the Smash route of just opening the roster to the whole of Nintendo's franchises.
- On one hand I liked having Isabelle and the Inklings in MK8 and I think characters like Pikachu or Kirby would aesthetically fit in well.
- On the other hand, I feel more 'realistic' proportioned characters look super dumb and out of place next to a bunch of Mario characters. I thought Link looked more like a fan mod than an actual thing Nintendo actually did, so I really can't imagine Samus or Captain Falcon (who would basically be a mandatory spot given he's from a Nintendo racing game).

I think that at least opening up track designs to include all Nintendo franchises (ala the Animal Crossing stage, F-Zero stages, Hyrule Castle) would be a really good way to do it, maybe as 'extra' stages rather than just rehashing old tracks all the time. Characters though, eh, to me they would have to pick and choose and they just aren't going to do that, they'll just throw in whatever character has a game out soon that needs some cross promotion.