Prerelease:Super Mario Kart

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Super Mario Kart.

To do: Compare prerelease images with final screenshots Initial development information: Official Super Mario Kart Strategy Guide interview, Mario Kart Wii Iwata Asks interview, SNES Classic interview, and files from the 7/25/2020 source code leak.

Internal Material

On July 24, 2020, a vast amount of source code from Nintendo's early consoles surfaced as well as prototypes and assets from games such as Yoshi's Island, Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and more.

The leak included Super Mario Kart's source code with previously unseen assets, tools and probably everything the development team used back then in the early 90s.

Internal Material It started with a guy in overalls.

Development Timeline

After the success of the futuristic racing game F-Zero, Nintendo wanted another racing game but with the ability to play with two players at the same time. When development began, the team realized very early, that due to the technical limitations of the SNES very large maps like in F-Zero wouldn't be possible since the maps have to be rendered two times for both players. The first ideas included car races with more focus on zipping and turning on tracks with many twists rather than full speed races. In a 1992 developer interview, Miyamoto, who was the producer of the game, mentioned the idea of "a fun, lighthearted game where you zip around unrealistically in cars. It wouldn’t be the life-or-death, dangerous world of F1 racing, but more the atmosphere of screeching wheels as you zip around an amusement park. From those ideas, the concept eventually evolved naturally from cars to karts." In early alpha versions of the game, there were only generic guys with big helmet in cars and also hovercrafts machines, before there was even plans to place Mario in a kart to take a race.

• 1990
  • Autumn - Early experiments were done.
• 1991
  • April - Initial development began.
  • April-July - Early tracks and alpha versions were created, that included, besides Kart racing (named "CAR" in the alpha) also the idea of hovercraft machines
  • November - A prototype was created, that included many early ideas and experiments with various tracks, objects, 3D like decorations and many early ideas for battle mode such as a Coin Collection and a "Machine-Gun" Mode, as referenced in this developer interview.
• 1992
  • February - Another early prototype was created. Battle Mode was completely removed due to memory limitations the team had at the time according to Hideki Konno, who was one of the directors of the game.
  • April - Early prototype was created. Some tracks and graphics were almost done but there were still many differences. Gameplay was different and drifting worked different. Many tracks still looked pretty different compared to the final game.
  • May - Another prototype was created. Some tracks were almost finalized and the final drifting style was implemented. The game was shown off at the Summer CES '92 event at the end of the month.
  • June-July - The game started to being in a finalizing phase.
  • August 27, 1992 - Super Mario Kart released in Japan
  • September 1, 1992 - Super Mario Kart released in America
  • November 21, 1992 - Super Mario Kart released in Europe

Images

Computer + Videogiochi Article

These photos were published in a CES '92 article in the October/November 1992 issue of the Italian magazine Computer + Videogiochi (CVG). The layout is very different than the final, and the track is an early version of Donut Plains 1. It should also be noted that the player has 5 lives, which is impossible to have in the final.

Video Games Article

The August 1992 issue of the German magazine Video Games showed another shot of the early Donut Plains track, as well as early versions of Bowser Castle 3 and a Ghost Valley track.

Early '92	April 13 Proto

The Bowser Castle 3 track features multiple platforms at the upper side of the track with three of them removed in the final, and the small straight away before the platforms was extended later on. This track predates the April 13, 1992 prototype, so these screenshots are possibly from an even earlier, unknown build, presumably from in the first quarter of '92. The platforms at the top can be seen in the Oct 1991 map.

Nintendo Power Issue

Issue 38 of Nintendo Power shows two more shots of the early Donut Plains 1 track as well as an early character select screen, which appears to have a different order than the final, and an early Choco Island 1, which is missing the puddles on the bottom portion of the track.

These screenshots appear to be from the April 13, 1992 prototype.

Package Screenshot

Seen on the back of the North American and European package for the game is a screenshot showing a later version of Donut Plains 1. The layout appears to be identical to the final, except that the walls inside the track have no diagonal sections.

This screenshot appears to be from the May 18, 1992 prototype.

Consolemania Article

Issue #12 of the Italian magazine Consolemania shows an early Choco Island battle course not present in the retail game.

Micom BASIC article

An August 1992 issue of the Japanese computer magazine "Micom BASIC" shows a few screens of the game when it was shown at the Summer CES '92 event several months prior. The characters appear to be in their final arrangement on the driver select screen, so these screens appear to be from a nearly identical build to the undumped prototype.