Yeah, you people must be thinking I've gone crazy. But still, hear me out for a second...

So, after getting MarioKart8-Deluxe last year, it has by far become my favourite MarioKart yet, and also one of my favourite racing games of all time.

However there is one fatal flaw that always irks me.....that god awful roster of characters.

Right out of the gate, out of that 42-man roster, 12 of those offer notihing of substance and are just clones of each other. Fuck the koopas. Sometimes and seems the spotlight is on them, because majority of the spots in a race are taken up by them. Get rid of those stupid baby designs as well. Get rid of all that useless filler. I would go on to say the roster would be BETTER without them, even if we're left with less characters. Heck even Metal Mario/metal peach along with tanooki mario/cat peach as well. If anything, they should be skins for the normal characters, and not their own characters. That really leaves like what, 20 signifiant mario characters that should be in there? And even then its still debatable if dry bowser should be its own thing.

Since the MarioKart brand is known universally, keep that name, and have a two/thirds  of the focus on Mario characters. One of things I liked about the game were the dlc characters from different franchises. Have a bigger focus on that, like about a third. Bring in characters like Fox and Wolf, king dedede, tom nook, diddy/dixie kong, and whatever else can fit into mariokart, and also have courses set in their universes. To add a bit of personality, add a special meter, that slowly increases if you perform well, and when it fills up you can perform a special unique to that character.

And there should also be DLC for third party characters, just like Smash has.

What do you guys think?

So you want Smash Kart? That sounds fun, but only if it is fundamentally different than MK. Like, if it is mainly about destroying each other in karts (and not completing races), then we could have a new ip. If we just make it Nintendo Kart then it won't sell as well as MK though.

Mario Kart 8 already had guest characters as DLC, so we've sort of seen that already. I know you address that in your post, but I wanted to re-iterate that as that doesn't make it as surprising/crazy of a suggestion as you state at the beginning. I don't know if I want that myself, but if it does happen I won't be surprised.

I feel like that is the road it is going on already as well.  Much like Smash started bringing in 3rd party fighters, Mario Kart is becoming more of a Nintendo racer than a Mario Racer.  I think the next game will only solidify that fact.

So, it's going to shift from Smash being the video-game all-stars title while Mario Kart is Nintendo all-stars instead?

Well I mean they brought over Cloud, who isn't even on a Nintendo console.  Then there are multiplat characters as well.  I will give Bayo a pass for obvious reasons, but Sonic, Mega Man, and Ryu for example suggest that as long as it is on a Nintendo console it is fair game (but again...Cloud?).

Now we have Crash coming to Switch.  AllStar Smash seems like a fitting term at this point.

As for Mario Kart...we already have Link, Inklings, and Animal Crossing.  So what is keeping them from adding Kirby, Rex, Pikachu, and others to the next game as well?

So to answer your question, yes it would seem so.

I actually think Cloud was on Nintendo consoles beforehand, in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy.

Ok well that just shows how far they will stretch it to add a character lol.  Make way for Doom Guy, Duke Nukem, and Crash next!  ;)

I'd rather still have it be called Mario Kart, but include guest characters from other series.

Great idea!!! Id like to have it include capt. Falcon so i can pretend its the new fzero