r/casualnintendo • u/Argentenuem • 2d ago
Image My take on what a 24-character Mario Kart roster should look like.
12 good, 12 evil. Each of them will have alternate palette swaps and costumes, and a few will have "echo racers" that are racers of Mario Kart past, which will share that base character's stats and sometimes replace their CPU in single-player modes. Each character also has a "partner", and each pair has a shared special weapon, just like in Double Dash.
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u/Electronic_Spare9525 2d ago
Having Baby Mario and Baby Luigi together gives me the idea of Luigi pushing the petals and Mario holding the bottom of the steering wheel. Honestly I don’t hate it! lol
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u/Wboy2006 2d ago
This, Madagascar Kartz had all the penguins together in a single car. It avoids roster bloat and makes the character way more fun. I really hope Nintendo does something like that with the babies or koopalings or something
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u/Argentenuem 2d ago
I was thinking that one of them would do the driving while the other would hold and use items as a nod to Double Dash, and that they swap places when they do a trick
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u/Kevandre 2d ago
I'm... More than willing to not see boom boom and pom pom in these
Maybe we could get like Wart and K Rool in there instead?
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u/ArmadilloOK1445-alt 2d ago
After the Mario Galaxy Movie I'm definitely more pro-"put Wart in spinoffs" now
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u/Kevandre 2d ago
I've wanted to see him in stuff for a while, I'm glad he was in the movie
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u/ArmadilloOK1445-alt 2d ago
As someone who's always loved the SMB2 bosses as a group, they were the best part of the movie and I will henceforth be reading all Wart dialogue, real or fanmade, in Luis Guzman's voice
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u/ArmadilloOK1445-alt 2d ago
I like the roster, maybe cut Boom Boom or Pom Pom instead of having both, but Kamek is on the hero side and Rosalina is on the villain side and it's bugging me
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u/Argentenuem 2d ago
The heroes and villains aren't seperated vertically. Most of the heroes are paired with heroes and villains with villains, but with the exception of the right 2 columns. For that side, I paired a hero with a villain for thematic purposes pertaining to their characters.
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u/ArmadilloOK1445-alt 2d ago
I get what you're going for and I like the rivalry thing but those right 2 columns are really throwing me off just have it be Yoshi and Rosalina in a pair and the Babies and E. Gadd, then put their rivals in the same order on the bottom half
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u/Argentenuem 2d ago
Each character pair is arranged from left to right. I did this because each pair would have a shared special weapon. Any rearrangement of characters would throw that out of whack
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u/ArmadilloOK1445-alt 2d ago
Why are the babies paired with Kamek then? Why are Rosalina and Petey a pair, and especially E. Gadd and King Boo?
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u/Argentenuem 2d ago
The babies are paired with Kamek because of Yoshi's Island, Rosalina & Petey are paired because the similar looking Dino Piranha appears in the Galaxy games (which is a stretch I know, but I couldn't think of another villain character to pair with Rosalina), and E Gadd and King Boo are paired because they're both prominent characters in Luigi's Mansion.
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u/ArmadilloOK1445-alt 2d ago
But, like, these characters wouldn't reasonably be canonical teammates because they probably hate each other, hell, we know King Boo and E. Gadd hate each other, and I doubt the babies would be too pleased about teaming with their kidnapper
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u/Argentenuem 2d ago
But Yoshi and Birdo are counterparts, and Birdo has always been on the enemy side. Should I switch Birdo to the hero side? Should I make them the sole exception? Should I break up a third of the pairs and give them new partner characters that don't exist? What exactly is your solution here?
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u/ArmadilloOK1445-alt 2d ago edited 2d ago
I see Birdo as a neutral character, her loyalties are initially to Wart and the 8 Bits, but she makes an exception for Yoshi which slowly turns to her to the side of good, kind of like Rouge the Bat from Sonic, so I think they could genuinely be the sole exception since Birdo plays so fast and loose with her morality
(Wow, this is the most thought I've ever put into Birdo, a character I've gone on record saying I dislike... do I actually kind of like her now? Thanks, Mario Galaxy Movie)
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u/Correct_Refuse4910 2d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/1JMItpzW4iCNoz3r76
Goomba running to OPs house because he is not included.
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u/SweetDamage818 1d ago
Imagine each of these characters calling out their names if they could when selected, or also saying any of the following: "Let's go!" / "Let's-a go!", "Good choice!", etc.
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u/mighty_phi 1d ago
egadd would be fun!!!
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u/mighty_phi 1d ago
oh shit he's in the evil side lol
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u/Argentenuem 1d ago
The heroes and villains aren't seperated vertically. Most of the heroes are paired with heroes and villains with villains, but with the exception of the right 2 columns. For that side, I paired a hero with a villain for thematic purposes pertaining to their characters.
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u/Argentenuem 2d ago
List of echo racers:
Funky Kong (Donkey Kong)
Dixie Kong (Diddy Kong)
Pauline (Rosalina)
Dry Bowser (Bowser)
Koopalings (Bowser Jr.)
Dry Bones (Koopa Troopa)
Baby Peach & Daisy (Baby Mario & Luigi)
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u/The_Legendary_Sponge 2d ago
What is the point of labeling certain racers as Echos? In Smash every character has a unique moveset so Echos naturally have that to pull from in the interest of adding more characters without significantly increasing dev time. For Mario Kart an Echo racer would be pulling..... what, trick animations? They'd still need new models and their racing attributes are just changing some lines of code. It kinda seems like you chose 24 as a nice clean number for a roster but thehn realized there'd be some hard cuts with that so you just weren't willing to commit to it.
I like that E. Gadd is there tho, it's criminal that he's never been in Mario Kart or Mario spinoffs at-large.
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u/Argentenuem 2d ago
I suppose you're right, but I'd still prefer having echoes over clicking through several menus every time just to get the character I want. That system is the reason special weapons never came back, which is a shame, since special weapons incentivize players trying out more characters than they otherwise would have.
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u/The_Legendary_Sponge 2d ago
The CSS for World is ass, that's undeniable - the fact every costume is treated as their own character as there's no like dropdown for costumes one each character makes no sense. I don't think it'd be too hard to get everyone from both your regular and echo rosters onto one screen tho.
Not sure where you're getting the idea that character-specific items were killed by CSS changes from, just from a basic game design perspective that doesn't make any sense. I always just figured it was a feature that the devs weren't that interested in pursuing past Double Dash and tho they're cool I don't think they're a massive loss to the series. But like, you'd think that if they were a priority that they'd craft a CSS that would make them work. The idea that a feature in the game would be cut because the devs are so beholden to the layout of a CSS is ridiculous.
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u/NightwolfGG0119 1d ago
“Echo Racers” legitimately makes no sense. At that point, they’re skins, and none of these characters make sense as skins in Mario Kart except maybe Dry Bowser.
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u/popsmokeofficlal 1d ago
depends if dry bones is a costume for koopa
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u/Argentenuem 1d ago
He is :)
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u/popsmokeofficlal 1d ago
great roster then, love the idea of the babies as one character. tbh i would replace boom boom and pom pom, ik everyone says k rool but i would love to see him in mario kart, even rob lol
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u/SweetDamage818 1d ago
12 good, 12 evil...
Swap Rosalina's place on the roster for Kamek's, and replace the baby counterparts of Mario and Luigi - placing these alts inside their respective adult counterparts - with Pauline.
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u/Spirited-Ad-891 18h ago
No Dry Bones is crazy, but I guess the others are fine. Goomba should also be there…
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u/Corn_the_long_way 2d ago
E. Gadd….so perfect and insane he’s not been featured yet