Mario Kart World’s producer, Kosuke Yabuki, has finally commented on why the game doesn’t include any guest Nintendo characters like Mario Kart 8 famously did.

Undeniably, one of the best things about Mario Kart World is its unbelievably massive and weird roster. Alongside mainstays like Mario, Bowser, Peach, and a redesigned Donkey Kong, we’ve got a bunch of playable side characters like Wiggler, Cheep Cheep, and, of course, the fan-favourite Cow.

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While Mario Kart World’s enormous roster is a massive boon for the game, and it almost feels greedy asking for more, there are some notable omissions. Diddy Kong is perhaps the biggest of the bunch, but World is also lacking any kind of guest characters from other Nintendo series.

Mario Kart World’s Weird And Massive Roster Is Why Other Nintendo Characters Aren’t Included

Cow Or Link?

Back in the Mario Kart 8 days, we saw a few surprise guest characters including Link, Villager, and Isabelle. This spelled some hope that future Mario Kart games would go all Smash Bros. and include even more guest characters, but that isn’t the case at all in the final game.

As pointed out by My Nintendo News, Ouest-France recently had the chance to sit down with Mario Kart World’s producer, Kosuke Yabuki, and ask him about why the game doesn’t feature any Nintendo characters outside of Mario. The answer is pretty simple – the roster is big enough on its own already.

Yabuki noted that it seemed “incongruous” to add characters from other games into Mario Kart World since the team already had plenty to do with all the Mario characters. Yabuki does say that the team still “inevitably” worries about how the roster is going to be perceived, but that there’s so much there that everyone should be happy.

As developers, it would have seemed incongruous to add characters from other games to this universe. And it didn’t seem necessary, given everything we could already do with Mario. – Kosuke Yabuki

That sadly doesn’t give us any hints as to whether guest characters might be added later down the line, but it does at least explain the game’s glaring omissions at launch. Here’s hoping we get some Booster Course packs in the near future to keep things fresh and crossover-y.