Development of the game began with the idea of making a two-player racing game following F-Zero, which only had a single player mode. The game's prototype originally only had a generic "guy in overalls". The decision to include Mario characters was made roughly three to four months into development after the developers decided to add Mario driving one of the karts because they were curious about how the game would look. They ultimately decided the game looked better, and thus made the game a Mario series title.