Famitsu recently conducted an interview with Nintendo's design cheif, and video game legend, Shigeru Miyamoto regarding his thoughts and opinions on the upcoming Nintendo 3DS title Mario Kart 7. Surprisingly Miyamoto was very open about compromising with the development team in allowing some of the customisation features, as long as the core gameplay experience did not diminish. Translated by 1UP, he stated:

"I was actually pretty well against some of the customisation features of the game [...] It can be fun to win money for racing and use it to buy parts and such, but I didn't think that had much to do with the core fun of the series [...] The idea for that came from the studio staff, though, and my final response was 'If you can build this customisation on top of a solid control and gameplay foundation, then go ahead.'"

Miyamoto also talked about his firm belief that this new installment to the Mario Kart franchise did not need much altertation or work in order to adapt it to the 3D capability of Nintendo's latest handheld console: "Sometimes people yelled at me to look at things more closely, but like I said, the core of Mario Kart is pretty solid by this point and I think it's safe to have it evolve in a pretty staid and traditional manner [...] The basic message here is 'Mario Kart's been powered up for the Nintendo 3DS,' and I think the online upgrades in particular are pretty neat." 

He also discussed some of the new features Mario Kart 7 will bring the table in stating, "a lot of time was spent on how to get all the individual components working together - Wi-Fi and Street Pass, local and internet play." On the subject of new in-game additions, Miyamoto touched on gamers' ability to now pilot a hang glider as well as the faithful karts. "The way the gliders fly isn't particularly faithful to real life, but I think it feels pretty good in action."

 

 

In his closing statement the gaming guru revealed the apparent trouble the team had in coming up with the fairly boring and unimaginitive title. "Coming up with the title was actually a lot of trouble for us, but it is the seventh game, and so it just sort of came down to what felt best. Besides, 7 is supposed to be a lucky number, isn't it?" I'm not sure if seven is a lucky number but it has had many gamers out there baffled. Technically this new game is the ninth in the series however the reference to it being the seventh is due to the Mario Kart titles which have had home releases, therefore excluding Mario Kart Arcade 1 and 2 ...a nice bit of Mario Kart history to end on.

Mario Kart 7 races into the pit-shops ("groan" - Ed) 2 December 2011. 

 

[Source: 1UP]