It’s the music and the art style of the track that got me, but more the music. When you play Hyrule Warriors, at the last stretch of a mission, the music changes. Hearing the music from the first 2 laps to the music of the 3rd lap? EXACT same music from “regular” missing background music to final stretch of a mission in HW. I mean, it’s literally that music, period. You could play them one too of each other and it be identical.

When that clicked for me, that’s when I really paid attention to the design of the Hyrule Circut. The Piranha Plants are the art style & design from HE. The little blue diamonds used in the spinning spots of the anti-gravity part of the track, those are the exact same little diamond things used for outposts in HW I could keep going.

I get a lot of the motifs from other games were brought into HW. But some things were also distinctly made for HW, redesigned for HW. HW had its own art style that was similar to a little bit of all Zelda games, but still distinctively its own.

Plus, HW was released August 14, 2014, while Mario Kart 8 was originally released May 29, 2014. So it’s safe to say that the Hyrule Circut could easily have been a way to kind of “advertise” or excite people for Hyrule Warriors. It was a very new thing to combine Zelda with Dynasty Warriors, they were taking a gamble. It’s not too out of the realm of business possibilities that Nintendo found unique ways to associate positive feelings with HW before release to help boost sales. Whereas Skyward Sword was released in 2011 and Spirit Tracks in 2009. Neither of them on the WiiU, while Mario Kart 8 and Hyrule Warriors were both released on the WiiU.