A gamer has found a copy of an infamous, unreleased Mario Kart game called Mario Kart XXL that previously has been only available as a demo video. The copy has been made available for all to play and gives a good look at the unofficial Mario Kart game that was never given the green light from Nintendo.
Mario Kart is one of the best-selling gaming franchises in the history of video games, and its handheld versions have been popular since the Game Boy days. The series started as early as on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in 1992 and found its way to the Game Boy in the early 2000s. A total of eleven Mario Kart games have been released on all Nintendo platforms since the franchise's inception, with the latest being Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit for Switch.
The game in question was received by an unnamed gamer and given to a Nintendo-focused website Forest of Illusion. A YouTuber by the name of Hard4Games took it and reviewed the game. It is a racer that was developed after the first handheld Mario Kart game and carried the name Mario Kart XXL. The game is a simple demo version, probably intended as a pitch for Nintendo. It was developed by none other than Manfred Trenz, an influential game developer for the Commodore 64. He had worked on some of the most famous video games in the late 80s and early 90s, including The Great Giana Sisters, Turrican, and R-Type.
Mario Kart XXL was reportedly developed a couple of years after GBA's Mario Kart: Super Circuit and could've been an effort to get a deal with Nintendo for the next handheld console. In fact, Nintendo released Mario Kart DS a year and a half after this demo was dated. The Mario Kart XXL V1.0 demo is very rough on the edges and clearly not meant for release. The gameplay is lacking and animations are nearly non-existent. However, it does have an interesting camera-panning feature and floating levels.
The origins of this game have previously been presumed to be a version of the developer's PC kart racer Moorhuhn Kart XXL, which it had similarities with and borrowed music from. Instead, it was revealed that it started as another game demo called R3D-Demo. This game looks curiously a lot like the legendary kart racer series Micro Machines, developed by racing game studio Codemasters. Incidentally, Trenz had also created the GBC version of the Micro Machines V3.
The R3D-Demo borrowed a similar floating-level 3D effect from Micro Machines, and, interestingly, the music included a track from Second Reality by Future Crew, a demo scene favorite from 1993. However, nothing came of Mario Kart XXL. Trenz did work on another finished GBA racing game project, the Crazy Frog Racer. However, that game would probably not scratch the itch of playing a proper Mario Kart.
Source: Forest of Illusion