Mario Kart World's Cow started as a silly sketch and grew into "a pivotal character"

When Mario Kart World was presented properly, one of the gameplay choices that really caught the attention of fans was the NPC drivers, which essentially enable players to hit the track as less established character options, like a penguin or more famously, a cow. The latter in particular is important as in a recent Ask the Developer article, it's revealed that the Cow is actually a "pivotal character" and one that opened the doors to the other NPC drivers.

Speaking about how the Cow came to be a reality, producer Kosuke Yabuki stated: "In previous games in the series, Cow was part of the scenery or an obstacle on one of the courses. But when we were working on an early version of a course in this game set on a ranch that players can drive through, this sketch came up."

Art director Masaaki Ishikawa then elaborated further: "One of the designers came up with that silly sketch of Cow cruising along, and I thought to myself, "This is it!" (Laughs) So that's when we realized the course surroundings actually contained a lot of untapped resources.

"The character designer quickly put together a prototype of Cow that could race, and surprisingly it didn't feel out of place at all. So we thought maybe we could include other obstacle characters, and decided to add Cheep Cheep and Pokey as racers. As a result, the idea of taking obstacle characters, usually found in courses in past games, and having them participate in races made sense to me in terms of an interconnected world."

Shortly afterwards, Ishikawa explains that "Cow is actually a pivotal character in the Mario Kart series," with planning team lead Shintari Jikumaru expanding on this claim:

"It was thanks to the introduction of various "NPC drivers" that the idea to have Kamek appear as an item was born. When Kamek casts a spell, the racers are transformed into playable NPCs, so one by one they might all turn into Cow mid-race. I think it turned out to be a unique item that has never been seen before. In fact, Cow is a character who's inspired a lot of different ideas, including obstacle characters like Camel and Giraffe."

The NPC drivers will add a lot of additional driver options to Mario Kart World when it arrives on June 5 alongside the Nintendo Switch 2. As per which characters will be available in-game, head over here to read more.