Super Mario Kart for Super Nintendo was a sales success and the title that started one of the company’s most profitable sagas. So much so that we could almost say that it has become a console seller for each generation in which a new installment was launched. But did you know that the original game had a circuit editor ?
The prototype of Super Mario Kart
All video games go through a development process that involves different phases. Among them is that of prototyping, which is one of the first and serves to start creating a base on which to work. These prototypes are not logically the final version and hence there may be features added temporarily to facilitate the work of developers.
That is what seems to have happened with this special version of Super Mario Kart for Super Nintendo, a prototype that has seen the light “thanks” to the data leak suffered by the company in the middle of last year. In that version there was a circuit editor that was set up with the intention of helping those in charge of their designs. And thanks to how it worked, it could be modified and tested directly from the console itself. Saving a priori time.
Well, that leaked prototype was not executable or was not until now. Thanks to MrL314 and his work during the last months, it has now been possible to execute and verify how this feature worked that neither the original game seen on Super Nintendo nor the later versions ever had so that everyone could create their own circuits. Which now makes us think that just as Mario Maker exists, wouldn’t a Mario Kart Maker be great?
Well, continuing with the topic, MrL314 not only fixed said prototype and discovered that there was a circuit editor, but also many other features that were never used in that version. Some were quite interesting, like the graphs to see the changes of position in real time or the possibility of seeing the race from multiple camera angles, and they were used in future installments of the saga for other Nintendo consoles.
Can the Super Mario Kart prototype be played?
Surely as a fan of Super Mario Kart now you will be wondering if it is possible or not to play this prototype. Well, the answer is yes, but you will have to work it out. That is, the version repaired by MrL314 has not been made available to any user interested in downloading and running it through the Super Nintendo bsnes emulator.
However, what MrL314 has done is to make available to everyone the process that must be carried out for this prototype version to work. Information accessible through the GitHub page where everything you need to know is. So if you have a little patience and some basic knowledge you could spend this weekend creating your own Super Mario Kart circuits.
