Mario Kart 8

“Mario Kart 8” will feature 32 courses, along with two separate versions of popular track Rainbow Road. Developers stressed how much work was done to put into the highly anticipated title.

“Game balance is a really important element of Mario Kart that we look very closely at and place a lot of value on,” Game Producer Hideki Konno sayed. “From the time we start working on development, tens of thousands of times, we adjust that balance when we’re trying the game. At the end, we came up with what we hoped and felt as a good balance. It’s our strong hope that folks would want to play with the items as we have balanced them.”

Konno also discussed the mechanics of the game. “We do hear, and a lot of people out there say it, that Mario Kart is all about luck,” he added. “That if you’re at the front then you’ll get hit with a blue shell, so it’s all about luck. That feature is not random–it does not just happen.

There is a lot of adjustment and there is a lot of thought and effort put into that system, and developing it in a way that actually promotes game balance. I would hope people understand that as well.”

“Mario Kart 8” will hit shelves on May 30 in the U.S., Europe and Australia.