What Could Come To Mario Kart Next?

Now that Nintendo has finally shed some light on more DLC for Mario Kart 8, it makes me wonder why it took them this long to reach into other series.

I have never thought they would go out of their way to make a Legend of Zelda Kart, or Pikmin Kart; but why they could not use those characters in Mario Kart before. Over the years we have seen countless attempts from other companies to create the next Mario Kart, something which few have even come close to achieving. The most recent attempt came from Sega in the form of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, a long winded title, but sums up the experience you are expecting to get.

Since the very first Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo back in 1992, we have been treated to a stapple of common place Mario characters, including the brothers, the princess, bowser and more. But as the games have come back each time with a new core feature, we have always been given what could be considered the core racers and each game adds and removes players pretty much at random. Donkey Kong Jr was a racer in the original game, but has not made a return visit since then, just as the Koopalings made their debut in Mario Kart 8, though no-one knows if they shall return in the next game.

So now that Nintendo has finally moved onto including characters from other Nintendo series, gamers everywhere are going to start requesting their favourite characters, levels from games and even items/weapons to be included in the game. So I thought I would get in now and propose a few characters/locations that I would like to see included.

Samus Aran / Metroid

Everyone should be aware of Samus Aran, interstellar bounty hunter and all around awesome. Well bringing Samus into the fold would provide the designers with the option to include her ship as a vehicle that can be used and with no need to attach wheels onto it. Also bringing Samus in would also bring in a host of new environments as well, such as Tallon Overworld from Metorid Prime or the Planet Zebes from the original game.

Pokemon Trainer

This one is a little bit of a cheat, because it could just be your Mii dressed up as a Pokemon Trainer here, but if you bring that world into the fold, you are going to get some amazing places to race around. Through the almost two decades of Pokemon games, there have been dozens of locations that can be used as tracks, how about driving around the inside of Mt Moon from the original red and blue games or the island from the Nintendo 64 classic, Pokemon Snap.

Paper Mario

Well when you think about it, every other version of Mario has appeared in the Kart series at some point. Mario, Baby Mario and even Metal Mario, so why not the Paper variant. The characters move very differently in three dimensions than the normal characters, which would be very fun to see but again the locations that are on offer are impressive. Just thinking of the courses that could be designed in 3d, but keeping that 2d paper look is awesome, seeing that actually happen would be impressive.

Of course, there are many more characters that we might see brought into game now that this has occurred, but does this mean we will see them. Who knows, Nintendo does things their own way and this could just end up being a once off and never happen again.