Super Mario Kart with circuit editor: discover many discarded features in a prototype. A modder has been the one who has managed to access the files of this prototype from 1991.

Almost 29 years have passed since Super Mario Kart, the first title of the franchise that today is among the most successful of Nintendo. With more than 41 million units sold worldwide of its latest instalment, Mario Kart 8, we learned that it had managed to establish itself as the best-selling racing game in the history of the United States. With this success, it is not surprising that you keep trying to find out more about the saga and the instalment that started the success.

The latest news about this first instalment comes from the hands of modder MrL314, who has spent the last year trying to repair a prototype version of the Super Nintendo title dated November 1991, nine months before its original premiere in Japan. The modder has shared on his Twitter account how he has repaired the prototype and the original files and the many curiosities that this version included.

Super Mario Kart November 1991 Prototype!!

After 9 long months, my repair of this prototype can now be experienced! This build contains a TON of really cool, unused, and never before seen features!

Download and check out the repair here:https://t.co/Q11J0AgblV

Have fun! 😀 ? pic.twitter.com/7Y7Fxqqu6U

— MrL314 ? (@LF_MrL314) July 28, 2021

Without a doubt, the most striking feature of this prototype is that it has a complete circuit maker. Although it could be thought that this feature was included as one more game mode, it was a tool for those programmers who worked on the development of the game. However, we have also been able to find other characteristics that could have been discarded ideas.

The prototype included a sidebar with the faces of the characters in which you could see the change of position in real-time, different cameras including an overhead very similar to the one we would see later in Mario Kart DS, very different versions of some classic maps, in addition to some 3D elements that were finally discarded. The battle mode was also found as initially conceived, with projectiles instead of random aspects of the career mode. The developers themselves already named this game mode in an interview in 1992.

In an interview with MrL314 in VGC magazine, the modder has recounted how he got the prototype to work, sharing the instructions so that anyone can do it. These discoveries tell us about how the industry worked at the beginning of the 90s and allow us to see some of the tools with which they worked on titles that today are a legend. We know that some of you have imagined from the beginning what a new instalment of Mario Kart with a circuit creator would be like. Could it be a feature that Nintendo includes in the next instalment?

Source: Video Games Chronicles