The lovable classic Super Mario Kart for the SNES started life out as a two-player version of F-Zero, according to the devs.
In an interview with original designers Tadashi Sugiyama and Hideki Konno, Nintendo discovered the story of Shigeru Miyamoto asking the pair to make a version of the company’s flagship racing game F-Zero with multiplayer.
Given the console would have two pads, they wanted a two-player game to go with it but the game’s high-speed and very straight sections of tracks posed massive problems.
“Due to hardware constraints, it was impossible to display tracks with long straight lines in two windows on the screen,” said Sugiyama.
“If you look back at the Super Mario Kart tracks, you'll understand,” said Konno. “Instead of tracks with long straight lines, the track designs are compact, with lots of twists and turns so they fit well within a square.”
Game dev secrets and more lurk in the full interview with the two, which you can read on Nintendo's website.
