'Mario Kart 8' News: Will Nintendo Take Out the Blue Shell From the Game?
"Mario Kart 8" director Kosuke Yabuki and his team tried taking out the fiendish blue shell from the party racing game, but it didn't just feel right, as he revealed in a recent interview.
The spiny shell has been a staple of the party racer since its introduction in the "Mario Kart 64" in 1996, and the game has not been the same ever since. The pickup item has been a boon for race leaders, homing in and almost always knocking out first place racers out of the running.
Eleven years later, gamers are still on the lookout for the nefarious item in "Mario Kart 8," whether they're out in front or behind the pack. It's been a major part of every race that a question came up again in one of Yabuki's recent interview. Why is that thing in the game?
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"Something I personally really consider is the human emotion element of the play experience," the director of "Mario Kart 8" said in an interview with Eurogamer last Friday, July 21.
He went on to describe how the team weighed the pros and cons of including the item in the new "Mario Kart" games. It was something that people can just pin down with a set of guidelines, the director admitted.
In the end, the team has tried to see what it is like to race in "Mario Kart" without the spiny weapon. "We're always experimenting with what new elements to introduce or what elements can be removed," he stated.
"We have tried - or we are trying - to see what the game's like without the blue shell. When we've experimented without the blue shell, actually it feels like something's missing," Yabuki noted, as quoted by IGN.
Their decision, for now, is to keep it in. Blue Shell haters, meanwhile, can rest assured that Yabuki and his team are always looking hard at whether to keep the missile in the game or ditch it for a change of pace.
"You know, sometimes life isn't fair," the game director noted about their decision.
