A new Mario Kart game was revealed last week alongside the reveal of the Nintendo Switch 2. Unfortunately, lots of salient details are missing. Not only is there no release date for this Mario Kart game, there aren’t any details at all on it. In fact, a title hasn’t even been announced. All Mario Kart fans got was a few seconds of gameplay teases, though there was plenty to dissect in these teases. For example, the new Mario Kart has double the racers of Mario Kart 8. Meanwhile, a new item can also be spotted in the brief teases. The biggest talking point though has been one minor, but controversial change made with the new release.
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Unless you’re paying attention, you probably wouldn’t notice, but the design of Donkey Kong has been changed. This was immediately caught by some fans, but missed by some because the character is only in the background for one quick shot. That said, if you freeze the shot you will notice he doesn’t look like the Rare-designed Donkey Kong design of the past two decades that has been in every Mario Kart game. Rather, the character has undergone a makeover that makes him look like more like he does in the arcade classics from yesteryear and how he looks in the recent Mario movie. Some fans, especially old school Nintendo fans, dig the change, but some absolutely hate it.
To this end, one of the top posts on the Mario Kart Reddit page this week is a post about the design change, and it has absolutely divided the Reddit page.
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“He looks more like his arcade design than the usual one. I like it,” writes one fan pleased with the change. “I actually really like this goofy design,” adds another fan in agreement.
“Looks like a cross between existing DK and Mario movie DK and I hate it,” adds a third fan, in disagreement. The only copium I can huff is that maybe, just maybe, a new Donkey Kong game is in development that uses this redesign. But I still hate it. He looks so derpy.”
A fourth fan further sums up the dislike of the change: “It’s so ugly, I hate it so much.”
Interestingly, only Donkey Kong appears to have had a design overhaul. Some characters look a little different, but that is also to be expected. This is the first mainline Mario Kart game in many ways. And the last time we got a mainline Mario Kart game, it was a Wii U game, so you’d expect things to look a little bit different a decade later.
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