Variety within a genre is always good, and Mario Kart has singularly dominated kart racing for a long time. After becoming a Super Smash Bros. mainstay, Captain Falcon definitely deserves to get back in the driver's seat, but Diddy Kong Racing is a closer analogue to Mario Kart that provides a more directly adjacent experience.
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Whenever the topic of Nintendo arcade racers comes up, the most immediately obvious answer for a preexisting series to make a return is F-Zero.
Related: Nintendo Japan Website Updates Diddy Kong, Possibly Hinting At New Game Diddy Kong Racing (which also features Banjo and Conker) came to the Nintendo 64 in 1997, and still stands as an example of novel ideas that weren't widely adopted by the genre-leading Mario Kart. This long break between Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 9 shows there's an opportunity for competition, not only to force Nintendo's hand in development, but to provide more variety in the kart racing genre. The most recent Mario Kart is technically the new Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, but the latest traditional game was Mario Kart 8, which initially launched on the Wii U in 2014.
Today it seems like Mario Kart stands alone in the Nintendo arcade racer genre, but there used to be direct a direct competitor: Diddy Kong Racing. For nearly as long as there's been Nintendo home consoles, there has been Mario Kart, going all the way back to 1992's Super Mario Kart on the SNES. Mario Kart has enjoyed long-term success as the flagship racing game of Nintendo.