According to an Ask the Developer interview, the idea behind "NPC drivers" (playable characters that also appear in the game as background elements such as obstacles) came about after a designer drew a sketch of a cow from the Moo Moo Meadows course driving a car. This led art director Masaaki Ishikawa to realize the potential for using the course surroundings as playable characters, feeling they wouldn't look out of place in the game, and Cow was added as a racer alongside other characters like Cheep Cheep and Pokey. This also inspired the idea behind the Kamek item, which turns the racers into playable NPCs, and other obstacle characters built off the design of Cow such as Camel and Giraffe. Ishikawa would later joke that "Cow is actually a pivotal character in the Mario Kart series."