With less than two months until the release of the highly-anticipated Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U, it’s time to get excited. We heard about new items and moves earlier in the week, and today we have some more details about the improved high-definition graphics that we can expect from Mario’s latest racing outing.

Gamespot reported on some key graphical features being discussed by the game’s director and producer. Mario Kart 8 producer Hideki Konno says that the game is “very pretty”:

We’re working with HD for the first time, and we really wanted to take advantage of that. The last console version was Mario Kart Wii, which was released in 2008, so it was about six years ago. And during those six years, we were able to incorporate a lot of technology in our development process, but especially on the graphics side. So we put a lot of effort into making this a good looking game–it’s a very pretty game.

Slower frame-rates for muliplayer races will no longer be an issue:

This time with the power of the Wii U we really made an effort to keep that graphic quality high regardless of how many ways we were splitting the TV into.

Konno also spoke about the high level of detail we can expect on the Wii U:

We’ve also been able to show movement on the [karts and bikes] that we haven’t seen before. We’re seeing bounding, we’re seeing different parts of the kart move, we’re seeing dirt on the tires, we’re seeing skidmarks left on the course–again I think we’ve done a good job of utilizing that graphical power.

Graphically speaking, the developers are simply confirming what we’ve already seen in the beautiful trailers that have been released, but this game is certainly shaping up to be a visually stunning treat for fans.

Do these comments made by the developers make you more excited to play Mario Kart 8? Let us know your thoughts below.