Mario Motors (lost build of unreleased Nintendo DS racer; early 2000s)

A screenshot of Mario Motors, featuring Mario and an unknown character.

Status: Lost

Mario Motors was planned as a Nintendo DS racer in the Mario Kart series. The game was the brainchild of Yoot Saito, who previously created such games as Seaman, SimTower, and Odama.

History

In the early 2000s, Saito was good friends with Shigeru Miyamoto and the late Satoru Iwata. All three would usually meet up and chat over tea, usually about game ideas. At one meeting, Saito was asked by Iwata on what he was interested in lately, and he answered Iwata with sculpting chunks of metal. Saito then explained his "crazy idea" to Iwata and Miyamoto while they sat in silence. In the end, both Iwata and Miyamoto said that the project sounded interesting and said that they could give it a try. The development of this title is unknown, as is the fact too when the title got cancelled, as Saito said he couldn't give an exact reason on why the game got cancelled.

Gameplay

The main concept of Mario Motors was that players could build engines (and presumably, other parts of vehicles) out of chunks of metal. For example, a player could shave and sculpt metal into a cylinder which could be added into an engine and decide the ability of said engine. There was also a plan to add blowing the DS mic into a part of the game that teaches acceleration, but that was canned because of the fear of a child losing breath. No tracks were ever announced and the only two characters known to be in the game are Mario and what looks like to be some sort of scientist.

Gallery

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