Nintendo Patents Watch

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Knowledge-based discourse

Ranking Racers in Mario Kart World

Since Mario Kart World is open-world, racers can drive off-road. This makes precise ranking difficult. To solve this:

1. Assign a value btw 0-1 to intermediate points along a route

Drawing from patent US 20260061310: FIG. 12 is an example non-limiting diagram showing an example of an inter-base route R having branches between a starting point and a goal point

2. For any point off-road, a value is calculated based on closest intermediate points

Drawing from patent US20260061310: FIG. 14 is an example non-limiting diagram showing a third step for generating intermediate data and the state where the values of the determination parameters are set for points in a runnable region 51 other than the road 50

3. Using this method, a grid of values for the map is generated pre-race

Drawing from patent US 20260061310: FIG. 8 is an example non-limiting diagram conceptually illustrating determination two-dimensional data M

4. When a racer is off-road, their ranking is calculated based on nearby pre-generated grid values

Drawing from patent US20260061310: FIG. 9 is an example non-limiting diagram for describing a method for calculating the degree of progress of a player object 31 based on the determination two-dimensional data M

This way MKW can accurately grant Blue Shells to lower-ranked players. Source: patent application US20260061310

[Originally posted on 2026-03-06 Pacific Time]