Then we noticed that it looked neat if you stopped one car and looked at the other car flying by. It was just two karts moving around freely. Miyamoto: At first, no racing was involved. Konno: It was about three to four months after we started development, when we had created a prototype involving two karts racing simultaneously. Iwata: How long was it before Mario himself actually appeared in the karts? Miyamoto: For F-Zero the characters were seven heads tall, but for Super Mario Kart, we decided on three heads tall characters in order to suit the design of the karts. Konno: Sounds like Mario, doesn’t it? It wasn’t like I forgot to put Mario’s beard on him or something, though… (laughs) Iwata: Wait just a minute! I can’t let that slip by.
Konno: Well, in the very first prototype, there was a guy in overalls sitting in the kart. Iwata: Why did you decide on using Mario? Konno: With more than one player, it would have been impossible to illustrate the high speeds of F-Zero. We set out to make a game where we could display the game screen for two players at the same time. Miyamoto: Just so there’s no confusion, however, I should point out that we didn’t set out to create a two-player version of F-Zero. Konno: Originally, the development of Super Mario Kart began with the idea of creating a two-player racing game in contrast to the single-person gameplay of F-Zero. In an episode of Iwata Asks, we can read that: In an old magazine, MathUser has even found a couple of screens that show a different design for one of the tracks, maybe an early version of the Mushroom Cup Round 2, as Madou has wrote in the HPZ Forum Huge props to van_halen for sharing these images! At the Digital Press Forum, van_halen has posted some photos from a prototype version of Super Mario Kart, a “beta” with some interesting differences, like early version of some of the sprites, different layout and music in some levels, different title screen, select screen and “choose-your-driver” screen, missing “black X” from the Lakitu’s flag (when you drive in the opposite direction), a flying Super Koopa and missing reward cups in the ending scene.