Mario Kart World has a ton of playable characters, but they’re all strictly from the Mario universe and not from any other Nintendo franchises. If you were hoping to see the likes of Link from The Legend of Zelda or Isabelle from Animal Crossing returning from Mario Kart 8, you might be left disappointed. But according to producer Kosuke Yabuki, that was never in the cards to begin with.

Ouest-France recently spoke Yabuki and this was one of the topics that came up. He indicated that other Nintendo characters wouldn’t be the right fit and there was already plenty of possibilities with Mario alone.

Yabuki said the following (via machine translation):

“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. We inevitably wonder how players will perceive this cast. But there are so many characters and so many costumes that there’s sure to be something for everyone.”

Yabuki was also previously a producer on ARMS. He was also asked if those characters were ever specifically considered for Mario Kart World, but he quickly shot that down with a laugh.

The Mario Kart World development team previously spoke about how NPCs like Cow ended up on the game’s playable roster. In case you missed it, we have all of the important quotes here.

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