Full disclosure of video-game-journalistic integrity: I have been in love with Mario Kart 8 for close to ten years. I think it is one of the best video games ever made, sheer perfection that would be impossible to surpass with a Mario Kart 9 - hence why I have been banging the drums of DLC for this masterpiece for a long time. My review of these eight courses is extremely prejudiced by the fact I am just happy to be booting up Mario Kart 8 and seeing something that I haven’t already seen 10,000 times. But is it possible to add to something perfect without making it not perfect?? Without further ado, let’s review each of these courses in unnecessarily exhaustive detail:

Paris Promenade: If you browsed the video game internet in the mid-2000s, you’re likely familiar with this advert. I think it is one of the greatest video game adverts of all time, and most people who posted on video game message boards in the mid-2000s thought so too. If you posted on the Nintendo Official Magazine UK Official Forums, as I did, at least four dudes in every thread would have an avatar or at least a signature that referenced this advert in some way. It was the shit. Just funny as hell, and it also perfectly captured the excitement of finally being able to play Nintendo games online. Don Draper wishes he could've made it. I’m not one of those Ricky Gervais Jordan Petersen Richard Dawkins “cant say that these day” whatever-the-fucks but it does feel like an advert you could not do today and I am sad about that because I am currently envisaging a 2020s version of the advert for Mario Kart 8 that includes more good-naturedly outrageous cultural stereotypes and it’s super funny, dude, just trust me, honestly, please, it’s not offensive at all. Bro. Please. Anyway, as I was about to say - this course really reminds me of that advert and I get a real kick out of that, a sort of personal-liminal cyberspace, a private joke between me and my own Nintendo history, riding my little Donkey Kong motorbike around the Champs-Élysées (which is in itself pretty fucking funny imagery) and laughing to myself, having a good time.

As far as technical analysis goes - there are, in my opinion, two types of Mario Kart course: player-competitive courses and course-competitive courses. Course-competitive courses are primarily battles between the players and the environment - taking tight bends round steep cliffs, avoiding stage hazards, anticipating the movements of Goombas and Monty Moles. Other players are still an ongoing concern, of course, but they’ll also likely be too preoccupied by giant lava Bowsers and rain-slicked roads to give you their full attention. These kinds of courses usually serve as the finale of a cup, such is their intense make-or-break nature; a Survival Mode of sorts that rewards players who commit the fewest unforced errors (A Smash Bros-style stock battle for Mario Kart where you try and Death Race 99 other racers round a tough track would be so fucking sick dude, like honestly, just think about it for a minute) Player-competitive courses are, naturally, an inversion of this paradigm. With simple wide raceways and few hazards, if any, players are focused a lot more on each other and how they’re doing - expect green shell snipery, a focus on clean driving lines and a lot more counting of passing seconds. The bread-and-butter of Mario Kart, the sort of courses your gaming-illiterate little brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers probably prefer; the type of course your average anime-avatared Twitter luddite will probably call “mid and basic” because their TikTok-addled synapses require constant multicoloured stimuli in order to feel anything resembling satisfaction.

As you might have already worked out, Paris Promenade is a player-competitive course. Don’t get it twisted, though - “player-competitive” isn’t just some dogmatic mind palace I’ve created to justify the paucity of a simplistic Mario Kart course. There are bad player-competitive courses out there - take the mindless Grand Old Duke “marched them up, marched them down” tedium of 8’s GBA Mario Circuit, for instance - but Paris Promenade isn’t like that at all. It has branching turns, cute little roundabouts and a brand-new hyper-literal interpretation of “player-competitive” - the ability to drive head-first into the oncoming traffic that was bringing up your rear only a few seconds ago: a tense series of who-dares-wins moments where the leaders can fuck up the losers and the losers can get a far more visceral shot at the top than the game usually affords.

One of Mario Kart 8’s few flaws is that it’s quite easy for the podium-position racers to distinctly disparate themselves from the pack - strong defensive play leaves 4th-thru-12th to fight amongst themselves for scraps of coin and redshell, but folding the racing line back in on itself and forcing the tops/bottoms to go brave-or-grave is an ingenious little noteless balance patch that’s contained to a single lap of a single track, a very Nintendo solution to a very Nintendo problem that I’d like to see spill out entirely across the next instalment of the franchise. Paris Promenade is a track of deceiving simplicity that we’d all do well not to dismiss as “an asset flip” (curse the YouTuber who taught 11 year olds this phrase), it could well be the blueprint for more Karts to come.

Toad Circuit: Mario Kart 7, the hardworking Josephian father who helped give birth to the Christ-child Mario Kart 8, will always have a special place in my heart. In 2011, it helped form the bedrock of at least twelve friendships I still maintain to this day, its surprisingly robust online multiplayer providing a great opportunity for one of life’s most underrated means of forming a human connection - being absolutely fucking awful to other people via the medium of video games, strangers hurling “FUCK YOU BLUE SHELL PRICK” messages at each other via group DM until the ironic venom hardens in the veins of their hearts and forms the bonds of friendship.

Toad Circuit was one of my favourite courses in Mario Kart 7 because it played a sort of upbeat funky version of the game’s main theme and my brain naturally built neural links between that music and being online with my online friends playing Mario Kart online and having fun online. Sometimes it’s enough just to drive three laps to some music you enjoy and think about your friends. Who cares that the grass texture isn’t well-defined enough for you? You don’t have any friends because you’re comparing screenshots of Mario Kart grass on Twitter.

Choco Mountain: Super Mario Kart defined almost every element of the Mario Kart iconography/featurology that we know and love today, but I think it’s fair to say that Mario Kart 64 was the progenitor of the “fucked up little weird place that doesn’t really have anything to do with Super Mario” trend that has followed Mario and his friends all the way to Twisted Mansion and Sweet Sweet Canyon. The original Choco Mountain leveraged the Nintendo 64’s smudged-signature fog effects to create a terrifying Silent Chocolate Hill, and it’s unfortunate that Nintendo have chosen to prioritise things like “visuals” and “performance” over “looking like shit in an endearingly eery way”, perhaps traumatised by anime-avatared Twitter luddites who called the Switch port of Ocarina of Time “mid and basic” because their favourite YouTuber told them that the fog effects were wrong, totally trust me bro, I know you hadn’t been born yet and your dad was still in middle school but it’s all wrong man, go reply to @NintendoAmerica RIGHT NOW when you’re done talking about Mother 3 and Geno in Smash, man. Anyway, removing the creepy lag fog from the peaks of Choco Mountain is a besmirchment of Mario Kart’s legacy as a horror game; they added a cave, but forgot to make it scary. It’s still fun, though!

Coconut Mall: The Wii era of Mario Kart more or less passed me by because Mario Kart Wii came out at a time when I thought getting called “a feckless little irish cunt” (I’m not Irish) in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2’s Xbox Live lobbies was a preferable multiplayer experience to this. I do remember the majesty of Coconut Mall course quite well, though, because I was old enough to do Serious Babysitting when Mario Kart Wii was huge, and I spent a lot of time observing my little cousins and their horrible little friends play it all the time, maintaining a safe distance that afforded me plausible deniability if ever seen in the vicinity of Baby Daisy instead of a virtual M4A1. Undoubtedly a missing link in Mario Kart 8’s chain that has now finally been restored, albeit as a weaker polygon-carbonfibre replica of the Wii’s solid steel original. (Though shouldn’t we have cause to return to the old games now and again?) This broken circle now only awaits Waluigi Pinball.

Tokyo Blur: An unfortunate salvo of ammunition for the people who rightly or wrongly accuse Nintendo of hiring Miyamoto’s work-shy grand-nephew to drag and drop mktour3.track into the Mario Kart 8 codebase and call it a £30 product. There isn’t all that much to remark on here, I think - the course transforming on each lap isn’t all that impressive when it’s done off-screen, and we already know the game’s track designers can do cool revolving-set shit that evokes Prey’s opening level. I’m sick of driving under thwomps! What do thwomps have to do with Tokyo, anyway?! I know Nintendo love to represent their home nation in their work, but wouldn’t it be cool if, idk, they reproduced Barcelona or Budapest or Bangkok or something other than the usual New York/Tokyo/London/Paris real-life fare?? I just wanna do a bike flip over the Dublin Dracula Museum or the Potsdam Hanging Rhino…

Shroom Ridge: Course-competitive courses that seek to emulate the feeling of player-competitive courses are nothing new (Toad’s Turnpike, Mushroom Bridge, Moonview Highway), but I feel like this one is special because it also uniquely emphasises some course-competitive elements, like sheer cliffs, and puts you and some cars next to them like you’re a henchman driving in the second-act chase scene of a James Bond movie where he’s trying to overthrow the Mushroom Kingdom’s leadership on behalf of MI:6. The traffic is enjoyably dense, forcing players to sometimes choose between weaving and bending knife-edges and cartoon fenders (try it in 200cc time trial!) and you can even try for a mushroom-jump off the back of a moving car and over a crevice, which is surprisingly daredevil for a game that is usually one step away from putting giant flashing neon signs labelled SHORTCUT over their shortcuts. I’m now hoping for a course with cars and trucks that can actively fight back instead of passively crushing you by merely existing.

Sky Garden: lol u just gotta love it. Has three of my favourite Mario Kart 8 tropes in one neat package: the random copy-pasted Koopa Troopas floating in unison at the starting line like busted Disneyland animatronics begging for mercy; Nintendo blatantly going “ehhhh the o.g. track sucked” and just ‘remaking’ it by doing a whole new tangential optioning of another course (in this case, Cloudtop Cruise); and of course, everyone’s favourite -  busted-ass giant-ass leaves and fruits that serve as quintessential Mariokartian devil’s shortcuts that give you like a 33% of getting thoroughly fucked in the abyss if even one tire isn’t aligned right, only a step removed from just watching Bowser Jr. spin a Russian Roulette revolver and press it to his scaly little temple before pulling the trigger. Apparently this one was in Mario Kart Tour too, but who played that game after launch week? Nintendo, there’s no need to tell on yourself by acknowledging that game in any way - we’ll forgive you, like we always do.

Ninja Hideaway: This fucking Wanokuni-ass shit right here!!! I have no idea why Nintendo thought it was a good idea to package this directly in a cup with the relatively-unremarkable Tokyo Blur - while Hideaway perhaps leans a little too heavily into every single “omg cool japan” design trope ever committed to cartridge, it is undoubtedly a far better advert for Edo-Nihon-Nin-Nin-Nintendo culture than anything else I can remember them making - and Nintendo fuckin love doing Edo-Nihon-Nin-Nin stuff. How good was Bowser’s Castle in Super Mario Odyssey, folks? Yeah!! How much time do I have left to talk about the music that brings this all to life? Funny to think that most people who originally played this course were looking at it on their iPhones with their sound off while riding the subway. Is it any wonder Nintendo wanted to free these little masterworks from their skinner-boxes and let normal people play them?

Let’s take a deep breath now and turn the other blind eye for a moment, pretending once again that Mario Kart Tour didn’t happen, and this course is brand-spanking new (which it will be to 99% of players). Operating on the exciting assumption that this is the logical next gameplay step for Mario Kart 9 (it won’t be called that, I hope!!) will take in 2025 or 2026 or whatever unfathomably far-off date that Nintendo decide to make a new Mario Kart game, is this an example of the “u can go anywhere!” design principles that Nintendo have been toying with in Breath of the Odyssey: Arceus’s Fury, now applied to a driving game?? Could the next Mario Kart be an off-road jam, finding new, personal routes through sprawling open Horizons or maze-like spaces? C’mon man, that would be kind of cool, man!! Mario Kart 8 is the apex of the traditional kart game - so how do you improve on that? Maybe, just maybe(!!!), the next Mario Kart isn’t going to be on a traditional track…?! Are we going somewhere where we don't need roads?

Some might argue that Ninja Hideaway’s exceptionally tight turns and freeform movements are more a consequence of this trying a straight transplant of Tour’s invisi-barriered track design tenets to the high-octane world of Mario Kart 8,  but I see it more as a prototype, accidental or otherwise, that addresses another of Mario Kart’s few flaws: that even in 150cc, the game often doesn’t require you to think all that hard about how you’re driving. See bend, take bend. See ramp, do trick. You might, at most, have to apply a slight brakepadding on a wet Neo Bowser City hairpin, but even then, that’s usually just a wrist-slapping punishment for favouring the kinda-broken top-speed big-boy builds. 

200cc is an admirable quick-win solution to this problem, but you can’t play 200cc with your grandma. And if your grandma can’t play Mario Kart, you’re not playing a Mario Kart game, right? It’s almost impossible to broach the skill canyon that exists between your grandma and proverbial snakers who pick the optimal weight class, but what if this is what the Booster Pass is intended to explore? Are there ways to make Mario Kart equal for all again after creating an essentially perfect game? With the last pack not coming until the end of 2023, this is a two-year experiment in the future of a game that has sold 35 million copies. I’m excited to see where it goes.

Half the score for half the effort. Actually unreal people are defending the Tour maps when they either have horrid signage or none at all (Paris???).

Most of the tracks fail to do anything that makes them feel like MK8 content, these would be right at home in MK7 and- oh wait some of these already had community-made versions in CTGP-7. These would be bottom tier even in MK7 and low-tier in CTGP-7.

I also remember now that I'm playing it that it has my 2nd least favorite item meta only behind 64 which is unfair since 64's literally is broken, as in nonfunctioning, on half its courses as well as AI softlocking themselves.

But hey at least it costs less than an actual new Mario Kart would for almost the same amount of content, who cares if it's microwave slop some 16 year old outdid a decade ago with janky level editors made for a game nobody has access to the source code for.

The actual original tracks or any that saw more than a finger lifted to refit them are unsurprisingly the best in the pack so far. Others like Coconut Mall are strict downgrades over their originals.

I dunno. I fell off of 8 and especially 8D at points in my life where I should have sunk my teeth into them until I was splitting bone, for a variety of reasons too long to fit here but I may elaborate in the main game page for MK8/MK8D.

But hey it's a party game, I should just shut up and enjoy the slop because Nintendo put in Birdo so my queer ass can go "so true bestie" every time she honks.

Nintendo doesn’t have a strong track record with DLC, but even I couldn’t deny that 48 courses for $25 sounded like a great deal. Now that every course is out, I am happy to say the Booster Course Pass gets my personal recommendation, with two minor caveats. First, some waves are better than others and I will briefly discuss each one below. Second, the visuals. While I don’t really care about graphical fidelity, some of the DLC courses have a cartoony art direction that clashes with the realistic style seen in the base game. The fact Nintendo couldn’t be bothered to reuse nicer assets in certain courses reeks of laziness. With that out of the way, let’s dive in!

Wave 1
— Cups: Golden Dash & Lucky Cat
— Score: 5/10
— A very rough start. With one exception, the courses from Tour are quite boring. Cocount Mall was also downgraded compared to the Wii original. The escalators have obvious arrows telling you where to go and the cars at the end move less dynamically. These remove a lot of player reactivity and turn a great course into a merely decent one.
— Worst: Toad Circuit Overly simple track layout and aesthetic. Its “grass” is better described as lime concrete.
— Best: Ninja Hideaway The multiple paths, variety of obstacles, and great theming cement this as one of the best and most creative courses in the whole series. The fact it was from Tour still blows my mind.

Wave 2
— Cups: Turnip & Propeller
— Score: 8/10
— The tracks still don’t look the best, but they are much more interesting than Wave 1. Picking a favorite of the bunch was tough. I love the penguins in Snow Land, the bouncy mushrooms of Mushroom Gorge, and the train in Kalimari Desert.
— Worst: SNES Mario Circuit 3 I still enjoy this course for its music and sharp turns, but it is simple and less engaging compared to the others.
— Best: Waluigi Pinball Dodging pinballs while making sharp turns is a blast and the exclusive sound effects are a nice touch.

Wave 3
— Cups: Rock & Moon
— Score: 7/10
— I’m indifferent to half of these courses, but Peach Gardens, Boo Lake, and Maple Treeway are great. Bit of a letdown that the Wigglers in the latter are very easy to avoid compared to Wii.
— Worst: Merry Mountain Nice theme, but feels lacking in obstacles.
— Best: 3DS Rainbow Road The road looks more blue than rainbow, but the multitude of turns, obstacles, and setpieces make this a very memorable course. Easily one of the strongest Rainbow Roads in the series.

Wave 4
— Cups: Fruit & Boomerang
— Score: 8/10
— Originally, I thought this would be my favorite wave, but on further reflection, I think its on par with Wave 2. There are a couple duds like Riverside Park and DS Mario Circuit, but the rest are mostly bangers.
— Worst: DS Mario Circuit Textbook example of unremarkable. Doesn’t attempt anything unique and the layout is very flat.
— Best: Yoshi’s Island Favorite course in the DLC. The remixed music, obstacles, and exclusive sound effects make for an excellent tribute to a fantastic game.

Wave 5
— Cups: Feather & Cherry
— Score: 6/10
— Feather Cup is good, but Cherry Cup might be the weakest in the game. Even Koopa Cape is lukewarm, particularly with its pipe section lacking the water current and electric fans from Wii. This course also alerted me to how terrible the camera can be when tricking off half-pipes.
— Worst: Sunset Wilds The music and dancing Shy Guys are the only positives. Take these away and you’ve got one snoozefest of a track. The sky no longer changing with every lap is a huge slap in the face to Super Circuit fans. If Deluxe’s lighting engine really couldn’t support this effect, why is the course included?
— Best: Squeaky Clean Sprint Driving through a giant bathroom is novel. Couple that with great music and a huge alternate path at the end, and you have a track that begs to be replayed.

Wave 6
— Cups: Acorn & Spiny
— Score: 7/10
— The other waves had higher highs, but most of these courses are solid, if not great. Special shoutout to SNES Bowser Castle 3. On top of being fun to race through, it looks MARVELOUS. I was in awe my first run through it.
— Worst: Madrid Drive Indistinguishable from the dozen other city tracks in the DLC. Rome Avanti’s roundabout turns and Chain Chomps in the Coliseum give it a slight edge.
— Best: Wii Rainbow Road I have a ton of nostalgia for this one, but can you blame me? It was amazing on Wii and this HD rendtition is no exception.

Overall, the Booster Course Pass is a great addition to the best-selling Switch game. This brings the total number of courses to 96. Mamma mia! I honestly have no idea how Nintendo is gonna come close to that number of courses in the inevitable Mario Kart 9 without several years of development and a $70 price tag. However, if we end up having, say, 48 original courses and some major, interesting tweak(s) to the gameplay for $60, I won’t mind. For now though, have fun with more Mario Kart, and if you want to race with me online or just be friends, please send me a friend request on Discord. See bio for more information.

Man, I don’t think ANYONE saw this thing coming when it was first announced.

So it’s basically 48 tracks ported right over from Tour, meaning that the graphics aren’t all there, but I never found it as bad as people said it was, they at least put in the effort of tweaking the lighting some. The track selection is, honestly, pretty good! Didn’t get everything I personally wanted (Mushroom City, please come home) but I think it’s a mostly decent selection all around.

Except they didn’t bring back Figure 8 Circuit. They had a second chance to do the funniest thing ever and they missed it. Fair enough, now I never want to see that track again as long as I live.
Also weird that they skipped on exactly one Tour original track. I think I could’ve slept just fine knowing SNES Mario Circuit 2 didn’t get ported over.

Oh yeah, and we also got new characters in the back half! Diddy bros, we are so back.

So overall, $25 for 48 new (to this game) tracks, 8 new characters, about a zillion Mii costumes and a sound test is a great deal in my eyes, shoots some life into a game that is somehow almost a decade old and reminds me that time is crumbling all around us. How’d that happen?

Now that that’s over I want 9 on my desk by 2026. And Kirby better be in it this time, I still feel ripped off.

After playing through every course released so far, the returning tracks here feel like the retro tracks from older Mario Kart Games. Before Mario Kart 8, retro tracks were just slightly enhanced versions of the original track. Mario Kart 8 completely changed that, look at Wario Stadium (DS), it has a crazy different vibe in 8 than in DS. They didn't just port the stages, they redesigned them to fit Mario Kart 8's style. They didn't do that here really. At least no big changes. There's hardly any anti gravity areas, the stages graphics are clearly downgraded from the base stages. But it's still Mario Kart, and the stages aren't bad, they're great. And 25$ to double the tracks is a great deal to me. It's variety, and until we get a new Mario Kart game, these will tide me over for a while.

𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖----------------------------------------------------------------------------
My biggest issue with the DLC (so far ) is that these don't really feel like Mario Kart 8 retro courses. The base game retro tracks felt really different from other retro tracks in other Mario Kart games. That's because they changed the stages up, they added anti-gravity and made them extra detailed, they added things to the stages to make them different from their original counterparts, so why didn't they do that with these stages? They didn't change these courses enough to make them different or unique, they're pretty much the same as their original counterparts stage design wise.

From middling to a decent package. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Booster Course Pass is Nintendo's five-year late response for DLC for the most successful Mario Kart. It started off underwhelming with the first wave with subpar tracks, or classic tracks that have been butchered like Coconut Mall. But as every wave released, the better the Booster Course Pass got with more fan-favorite tracks and new characters that satisfied fans. Wave 6 is the best in the package as they brought in the most meat compared to every other wave prior, and not only this was a great sendoff to the Booster Course Pass, but to almost ten years of Mario Kart 8. It's crazy to think that one of my favorite Wii U games will be turning ten in 2024, and I'm glad this game got a second chance on a more successful console. It's not amazing, but for $25, I think this is worth it.

Didn’t have the best of starts, but ended up turning out very solid. I played it all at once and thus, it felt like I was playing an entirely new game. Great roster additions, so now it’s got all the missing characters people wanted except for ROB and the fetish bee, and even Pauline and new colors for Birdo. It definitely isn’t as pretty as the base game, but god. It’s fun. And for its price? It’s a hell of a lot of content, and while I think they could have lightened on the Tour content, it’s also content I never got to play as I didn’t touch that game. So, yeah. I would say it’s pretty damn good for what it is. What started slightly rough evened out in the end. Rosalina’s Ice World still sucks ass 12 years later though.

Let's be honest, the DLC had a very rough start, with stages essentially ported from Mario Kart Tour and only given new music, but as time passed the next waves became way closer to the ones present in the base game, this meaning ACTUAL grass textures, more attention to detail and even bringing brand new balance changes and features to the table. Here are a few of my favorite tracks in the whole pass:

- Ninja Hideaway
- Waluigi Pinball
- Berlin Byways (BANGER OST BTW)
- Rainbow Road 3DS
- DK Summit
- Yoshi's Island
- Rainbow Road Wii

Also the new characters added are great too: Petey Piranha, Birdo and Wiggler are back again, Kamek finally gets his chance to shine as part of the roster, Diddy and Funky Kong make this game three times better by themselves and even Pauline is an awesome addition to the cast!
Although, I will say this: I never really understood the hate towards Peachette, she literally did nothing wrong y'all 😭

Detouring a little here, we also got some extra thingies as well: Mii Suits with their own stunts, a jukebox, customizable random item mode, the balance changes making the meta stray very far away from the Wiggler Waluigi combo days. The list goes on, it's actually pretty nice QoL stuff all in all.

Oh and a huge RIP to Piranha Plant Pipeline (Tour), the only stage that will become lost media as of now, in case MKT ceases to exist :(

I'm usually not an early bird gamer, but for me, the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass was a no-brainer that I just had to preorder and play instantly the second of its release. Judging from about a minute of struggling to contact the server for activation I'd say I wasn't alone.

After the official release announcement by Nintendo, I've read the average mixed opinions online and that is something I'd like to address here, being neither fanboy nor hater, rather observing from my very own subjective perspective, which in this case includes an affinity towards Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, that actually pulled me back in the franchise after I thought it had lost its course.

So, you've got to have in mind I haven't played most of the reused tracks too often, but would on the other hand fancy my good old flat SNES Mario Circuit or Ghost Valley. But exactly because we all have favourite designs we'd like to play in Mario Kart 8 is another good reason for Nintendo to include all of them.

There have always been remakes in new Mario Kart games and the design elements are part of the identity. There's always a good chance they'd be criticized just the same for too much innovation. Even if I try to stay open minded, the impact the original Super Mario Kart had on me makes me a bit conservative on this topic as well.

But I've also read people bragging about expecting a Mario Kart 9 and I must admit, I don't see why this would have been customer friendly.
Sure, I'd be happy to play another great Mario Kart, especially after trying some underwhelming Mario Kart Tour to research for this review. But the Booster Course Pass in general was also a statement by Nintendo to expand the lifetime of the Switch at least to the end of 2023.

Considering the situation of the pandemic world not only short on electronic parts, but now also on the edge to a global war, I think that's the best way to handle. I wouldn't pay the scalping prices, that get asked for the rare new Playstation or Xbox machines these days. And why would anyone want those, if there's not enough specific software anyway?

Why shouldn't there be a Mario Kart 9 on the Switch then? Well, Nintendo's console hybrid isn't famous for its computing power. Strength of the small machine is portability whilst being usable on the big screen as well. And of course, aside from opening up to the indie market and having the exclusive franchises, it's older generation games receiving a second chance on the Switch.

I understand if you bought both Mario Kart 8 and the DLC for WiiU, that it felt weird to start off new in pretty much the same game. Maybe some of you did never go that route, still hold a grudge and would now have to buy the Deluxe version just to get access to the Booster Course Pass.

But in my opinion, in 2022, that's the least possible collateral damage, taking WiiU sales and age of the release into account. It's rather a good way from preventing the same happening during the transition to a new Nintendo console generation, supposedly announced in 2023 and maybe released in 2024 (my speculation after Nintendo Direct 2022).

It's probably my personal problem that I did not like Mario Kart 8 on WiiU and could first start to familiarize myself once it was out on the Switch. For me, that was a transition in itself, from being almost exclusively old-school to opening up to a new era of gaming. So I can't say it was the game, it could have been me.

But as far as I understand the game works a little better on the Switch on one hand and on the other it's a bestseller for years now, the question is, can they really create a Mario Kart 9 that is technically superior? I certainly hope so, but if they do, wouldn't the effort be better invested in the starting grid of a next generation rather than a console with a remaining lifespan of maybe two additional years?

It's not that they didn't try something new. There was Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit with the technically interesting concept of augmented reality and the chance to sell peripherals. I couldn't care less though for exactly that reason.

And then, there was Mario Kart Tour targeting a completely new generation of mobile gamers. Did they like it? I don't know. I prefer a racing game that I have in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe already and all I need are more courses.

I've read that selling new tracks as a season pass is not family friendly. Really? What they could have done, of course, is sell us each cup for 2,99€+ individually instead of 2,09€ retail (ca. 1,66€ via keyseller) with the pass.
Or even sell basically the same game as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe minus connection to an existing online community with just the 48 new tracks at 59,99€. How would that be better?

Nintendo is observing the market. They're into micro transactions already, targeting the mobile gaming section, a business a lot more lucrative than all consoles together. If they gave away new courses for free, as some seem to think would be reasonable, they would try to get your money another way.

And don't you think if they wanted to, they could've duplicated FIFA sale strategies? That means the same game with tiny adjustment every year full price just to buy new booster packs on top?

In a world where this seems to be widely accepted and enough whales are backing those systems, isn't Nintendo giving up a lot of dough by doubling the tracks for an admission of a third of the initial retail price?

Aren't they even redirecting players from their potential moneymaker by including Mario Kart Tour courses? To me that sounds like to Nintendo, the Switch is the main business model (and I hope they're not luring players in to have them accepting future micro transactions on the console). To me that sounds like maxing out one of my favorite games for a reasonable price, so shut up, Nintendo take my money, right?

But now towards the tracks. A couple of days in, what do I think of the two new cups in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass? Usually, I wouldn't write a review on an unfinished game, but usually I also don't buy season passes, at least not before season is over. So if everything goes as planned, I will expand the review wave by wave and add a final conclusion.

When the Booster Course Pass was activated, we played for about half an hour online to enjoy our first impressions together. Those initially were, despite surprises like directional change on Paris Promenade, that both Golden Dash and Lucky Cat Cup are entertaining but fairly easy, except for Ninja Hideaway maybe.

Then I went on and beat all Golden Dash Cup classes with three stars on the first try, except the reversed one that required a second attempt. This isn't supposed to be boasting. I think of myself as a motivated average player and I'm used to getting my arse kicked online, because I need to really work on my defense.

Once I was feeling dizzy, release was at midnight, I at least had beaten a few staff ghosts at Time Trial and got gold for the 150ccm Lucky Cat Cup. At that point I had loosely played for about five hours and wasted most of it for Time Trial, which I usually finish before starting 150ccm.

At first, I felt underwhelmed, but after a few hours of sleep in this event I had planned for, I picked up the Switch controller again to perceive I wasn't playing an advanced add-on to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
There's a reason they divided Booster Course Cups as a similar structured roster from the original ones. If these two cups are equivalent to Mushroom and Flower Cup, it all falls into place.

And actually it is Time Trial where I can spot a difference. As easy it seems at first to finish gold in Grand Prix mode, finding the ideal line appears to be more challenging or at least the Nintendo staff ghosts make it feel like it.
Doing so however led to a significant advantage against other experienced players who did not spend as much time with it yet.

There is a racing potential in those tracks, that will unfold with training and that way probably will resonate best with the less arcadey, not so casual players.
I appreciate that a lot as a reward for spending time with a game. Slingshooting lazy gamers forward at all cost is something I despise. A game is balanced, when you win after doing homework. You lose, you analyze, you work on it.

At this point, I don't regret a Cent spend on the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass. But it is hard to mess up the delivery of 48 tracks for just about 52 Cents a course (or even less if you bought a key elsewhere) to an already great game, innit?
Though I share an empty feeling, missing the opportunity to play all new tracks at once, I think Nintendo made a wise decision for the online community they did not sacrifice for the sake of releasing a new game.

Imagine the split if it were two different programs! Instead, you get access via DLC Season Pass or as a Nintendo Switch Online + Expension Pack member, if that's your preference. And if you can't or won't invest into any of them, you're still able to enter any online competition and ride the new courses if an opponent has the access. How isn't that inclusive and user friendly?

As exceptional it is to have a game sell that well and have players return to compete online for years, releasing new tracks will increase the number of competitors and naturally will decrease with freshness fading, independent from the number of courses released. So by dropping six waves over two years, the online community can only benefit, whilst 8 tracks in two cups is enough to keep you occupied a while until perfection of you racing them.

Wave 1

Golden Dash Cup

Paris Promenade

This course confronts the player with two things. I've not played Mario Kart Tour until a few days ago, but I cannot deny it was awkward enough to shy away from a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe remake. Another issue could be trademarks. I don't even know if they ever touched real places other than augmented in Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit.

Not caring for the authenticity of the city design and rather happy about a new course to play though I enjoyed the long drift passage and surprise element, when route changes in third lap, so that possibly some players still drive opposite your direction.

It's really an incorporation of elements taken from multiple Mario Kart Tour Paris Passage tracks, one of them acting as a short cut, if I understand correctly. Some use of pipes and a piranha plant or the glider passages help to not forget it's a Mario Kart game. It's fun. And of course it plays a lot better with a pro controller than swiping your mobile screen.

Toad Circuit

It's maybe odd to include a course to the second slot, that was clearly designed to be the opener of Mario Kart 7, very much in the tradition of the first Mario Circuit. However, as I love the plain perfection of the SNES inspiration, I'm totally up for pure racing on this course.

Here, it's simple enough that items of course play a role, but the driving requires more than avoiding traps and shots to win while staying on track. If you don't find the ideal line and don't make use of cuts, you must be very lucky to win against advanced players here. That's probably why they decided against the addition of more laps to this rather short course.

It's the first track where a difference in textures really caught my attention. There's enough happening on Paris Promenade and you could observe the greenery there as an individual art style, but even though they've blown up and reworked graphics since the Nintendo Direct trailer, the grass on Toad Circuit for instance is just plain green.

On the other hand, I've seen critique that the tires had the same problem, and I just can't remember if I really saw the same on release day. I know they felt odd. But when I checked specifically after that review, the tires had profile textures and a shade, missing in that critique's footage. Was there a patch?

Yes, that's the beauty of technology, they could update those graphics easily, if it was just because they've been in a rush. But even if they didn't and the Booster Course Pass will act more as an exploitation of leftovers, do you really have your eyes on the green while driving? That's for the backseat.

It would be interesting though, if there's a pattern of courses from Mario Kart Tour to find the way to the Booster Course Pass roster, as Toad Circuit is one of them as well.

Choco Mountain

Another one of those Tour ports is Choco Mountain, first appearing in Mario Kart 64. I must have played the first incarnation a ton as despite I never really liked Mario Kart 64 for several reasons, we played it just as often at a friend's place as we did Super Mario Kart.

I don't recall much though, because that was totally last century, a millennium ago. I'm not even sure if I had more problems with the boulder dropping passage than on the Booster Course version.
I also had to read up that there's a curve now having a banister present all the time, whilst the N64 version only had it on 50ccm and Time Trial and Mario Kart DS omitted the banister completely.

Maybe for that reason Choco Mountain doesn't feel very challenging in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
In this case though, having had it in Mario Kart Tour before, where a cave passage with bats was added, might actually be an enrichment.

Choco Mountain plays alright and it has just enough variation including good drifting passages and few jumps to keep you busy in tournaments. But other than cutting a corner via an acceleration item, I didn't find any twist to make the track stand out a lot.

Even though the original music hurts, I'm not sure if the remake is better. But I would prefer an off switch anyway, so I can listen to the latest Mostrich Mixtape. Until then, I think any soundtrack from the Pass is quite alright.

Coconut Mall

Originating from Mario Kart Wii, Coconut Mall back in the day was one of those examples of overcomplicating course designs, one of the reasons I turned away from the franchise.

However, despite still having mixed feelings about design choices, I got more used to lavish layouts and can accept them better with the positive gameplay evolution in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Being the first track not having an appearance in Mario Kart Tour, Coconut Mall seems to also have the purpose to compensate for the lack of height difference so far in the Golden Dash Cup.

You start with stairs and escalators to a race on different levels of a shopping mall offering multiple opportunities for tricks and shortcuts. Once you've oriented, you will find your preferred path including acceleration through a shop.

It is challenging to combine tricks with entering drift passages, forcing you to brake if not in line perfectly, either. It's also one of the few courses in this wave that don't get just even better on 200ccm.
Again though, the true potential isn't found in Grand Prix mode as the computer isn't very hard to beat.

I appreciate in this mostly cosmetically remade adaption there's no additional confusion like trains hitting randomly in Super Bell Subway for instance, one of my lesser favourite tracks. for me it's probably helpful the cars near the finish line don't move like on Mario Kart Wii. That way, Coconut Mall isn't my preferred choice, but something I can practice enough swiftly to be on par.

Looking back at the Wii version though I understand the critique on the visuals here. How can the palm trees look better in the original? And those escalators! They've been gorgeous! But I'm also grateful I can see which direction they're going now. Flooring? Couldn't care less, but If you played it for ages it maybe is essential to you.

I can say Coconut Mall plays good on the Switch from my perspective, but yes, a cosmetic makeover would be a nice gesture towards customers who actually bought the pass and don't just use it as a bonus to the online upgrade.

Lucky Cat Cup

Tokyo Blur

The Lucky Cat Cup starts with just another one of those urban Mario Kart Tour courses. If I looked it up correctly, each of the three laps is modeled after one of the first three Tokyo Blur tracks in Tour, though like on Paris Promenade the biggest noticable change happens in third lap when you pass a gate to a very long mostly driftable passage with coins and item boxes.

Just like the rest of this course, if it wasn't for some Thwomps and a lot of the coins placed oddly off what I consider an ideal line, Tokyo Blur could be purely high speed.

The first two laps even feature a ramp you can easily use on 200ccm without sacrificing a mushroom. I think this is a good development for gameplay, though. Looking back, many courses in Mario Kart 8 were clearly not made with 200ccm in mind, at least if smooth driving was intended.

Tokyo Blur however isn't as entertaining as its city counterpart in the Golden Dash Cup to me, but of course offers another advantage to those who work on mastering the layout.

And even though the last player has now realized there's not a single anti-gravity or underwater section in this wave, I can only appreciate the focus on actual driving skill independent from surviving hazards and dodging items.

I don't know why exactly Nintendo withhold on placing landmarks more prominent on Tokyo Blur, just like they did with the Arc de Triomphe, Eifeltower or Café for instance. You can spot quite some characteristic elements in the background if not driving yourself, but at the wheel, despite maybe for that shrine like section, the track could be almost anything.

Perhaps it's because a japanese company doesn't look at their place like tourists, maybe they have more respect for the environment. From a western perspective, how great would it have been to pass some distinct landmarks, especially an otaku district of course, more directly?

Like going down the escalator to a train station and there pass shops and vending machines. Take it to the extreme and enter a maid café, where you enter the sewers via a giant japanese toilet in the restroom. You exit towards a view of Fuji-san just to find a Kaiju Bowser attacking Tokyo as a Gojira substitute when you return to the city.

I get you, that doesn't sound like me as a player, but from a design point of view, something like that would make the course more characteristic and memorable.

Shroom Ridge

Surprisingly, quite a few players seem to hate the concept of this Mario Kart DS course, which is a bit of a bastard child of Toad's Turnpike and Yoshi Circuit, looking at it from a Mario Kart 8 perspective. So cut away the fancy wall driving, jumps or piranha plants and place racing amongst public traffic on a narrow mountain ridge with sharp and often blind turns. How isn't that exciting?

It's not so much learning the patterns of traffic, it's about controlling your drifts, so you can slide wherever the flow takes you.
However, already more difficult on 150ccm, Shroom Ridge will require you to work heavily on your breaking technique on 200ccm. But that's something Mario Kart 8 Deluxe should have confronted you with earlier.

I would love to be able to compare this second course not imported from Mario Kart Tour with its original incarnation on the DS, actually playing and not just watching a video.

I would love to know how much of a difference it makes to have one lane of cars actually moving towards you instead of both lanes going your direction. Imagine someone who can't stay on track with the Switch version, what level of rage would be reached with the original then?

After the mixed reactions I understand why they chose to exclude this feature even though it's in the same wave, on Paris Promenade, where you can crash directly into your opponents, possibly causing a massive twist to the results.

They even seem to have been adding guardrails to some of the Shroom Ridge turns, just as if the kids 17 years ago had been hardcore driving dinosaurs. But seriously, I appreciate the challenge as much as balancing the course a bit for 200ccm.

Reusing cars from Toad's Turnpike is fine by me. Why not use something existing if it's more appropriate visually, especially if it's an element not already overstrained.

I did not have the time yet to familiarize with the shortcuts yet, I must admit. In this case I'd say it only speaks for their placement a lot less prominent as usual.
Give Shroom Ridge a chance, it's not at all that bad.

Sky Garden

If you've read my raving review of Mario Kart: Super Circuit, you might expect me to rant about how different this Booster Course Pass version is from the original. But if I wanted to play exactly the same game, I would wheel out my trusty GBA or ask for an emulated version to be released on Nintendo's Switch.

Well, maybe it's because I don't have that strong connection to the original course or the remake is more like a new undulating interpretation of the theme related to Cloudtop Cruise, that I totally feel at home on Sky Garden. I like the smooth drifts and small break ups via jumps like on a mushroom trampoline. Usually I avoid the leaves though, it might be a shortcut, but too big a chance of falling.

Speaking of shortcuts, they removed quite some for the remake due to design, but just like the donut from Sweet Sweet Canyon, you can also cut through a beanstalk here.
Again released for Mario Kart Tour before, in this case it was as far as I know included in the mobile game between the Nintendo Direct announcement of the Booster Course Pass and the release of Wave 1, so it's relatively fresh in both formats.

I think it's a good balance between concentration on racing and not getting into the zone too quickly. It is one of those tracks however I can play for eternities on Time Trial and just forget the world until I finally hit another record.

Ninja Hideaway

As a grande finale Nintendo decides to unwrap another original course from Mario Kart Tour, although this time they forgot to mark it in the select screen. So without better knowledge I actually thought we got an exclusive track with the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass.

But let's focus on what we actually have. Besides the Asian flavor of a chinese themed Dragon Driftway and a more modern yet less characteristic Tokyo Blur, we now finally have a more historically inspired japanese course around a ninja dojo, that clearly shines with its alternate routes.

There are several sharp corners to master in this mansion, but as much as I hated getting stuck from the first lap on, it matches the design and acts as an actual challenge, rarely seen in Booster Course Pass so far. On 200ccm Grand Prix I could only finish first yet, when I fell back to second place on a course before. As much as it bothers if you're about to rush through the wave, a challenge like this is actually needed, so it requires you to try more often until you ace the cup on three stars entirely.

Possibly the placed iconography is as random as some people think. I'm not familiar enough with the current lore to distinguish how much this is accurately a Wario course or not. I don't care much though, because compared to most other tracks in this wave there's quite a lot happening to keep me occupied with finding my way through the labyrinth.

It's a bit like a wooden Bowser Castle with its turns, spikes and jumps. You can take a lower route or decide to drive up a ladder to pass girders and an elevator before you fly over to the rooftops. It's a wild ride, especially compared to the remaining lineup of this Wave and yet I don't think it is unfair. It's got to be mastered.

I'd like refer to letshugbro's review on Backloggd here with the idea this Season could be a testing phase where to go with Mario Kart in the future. Now, we all hope it will be at least as good as now, but what I'm not convinced of yet is his idea of Mario Kart Mayhem.

I don't know, if, where I go, I won't be lost without roads. It is true that Ninja Hideaway doesn't exactly have a defined course, but somehow it does. On one hand it's not much more than the alternate routes in early Bowser Castles, innit? I wouldn't call a number of options within an imperative connection between point a and b open world yet, on the other hand I'm not sure expanding any further than Ninja Hideaway would be my thing. I'm still acclimatizing to this much.

Around the millennium I had my phase of Formula 1 games for a reason. Just as much as I preferred T.O.C.A. 2 about Ridge Racer or Grand Turismo. The games I liked were a lot more realistic and in that sense unforgiving.

You might take from my review so far, that I'm a big fan of the simple courses and the original Super Mario Kart, so contradictory to me saying the Booster Course Pass was mostly too easy, I actually enjoy the majority of the added tracks and will be fine if it stays with designs like that, except that I feel a break in continuity visually with the new art style, if it's really on purpose.

But on the other hand, I did love the game Driver back in the day and I'm still thinking about catching up on Burnout Paradise, which is already offering multiple choices of how to ride. I don't know, what would you think would be an appropriate continuation of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe?

It sure isn't a mobile game, though I think the Mario Kart Tour courses aren't bad per se. But would it be interesting to expand the world and options? Maybe in an MMO rally format? Something taking place in an individual career alongside everybody else and rather concentrated on how you work on set obstacles than race cups?

If it's going to be less casual then, I probably would enjoy real racing weekends much more. Training, qualifiers and then about 64 laps of racing on one course with legendary sections like the Miyamoto Switchback everybody hates when it's raining.

But that's neither the anything can happen I take from Ninja Hideaway nor any of the other Booster Course Pass tracks so far. I rather see a continuation of non-similar laps in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, just as we got with courses like Mount Wario or Merry Mountain from Mario Kart Tour, that I could imagine being ported for a Christmas wave.

If there's one conclusion so far, I'd say we can expect more Mario Kart Tour and as much as we like to play something new, we're not too keen on change, but might have to get used to a new art style which is just cosmetic, as the courses play great.

We'll see if Nintendo is going to cave in and submit a patch based on textures and shades already existing in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It's not going to have an effect on the overall racing experience though. Toad Circuit is just going to look more in line with Mario Circuit for instance. It will look more refined and therefore more satisfying.
But don't let those details hold you back.

Don't hide away, come out and play!

It's easy to shittalk these tracks for looking mostly sterile and mobile-core, but like, y'all are playing mario kart with friends and family and nursing home residents on oxygen machines. it's a fucking party game - in the grand scheme of things, more content is gonna win over less-but-aesthetically-consistent content every time.

the real problem imo is that most tracks they lifted from tour just suck hard, they have less interesting curvature and bite than even the SNES courses. Cool to have them in a real video game for posterity's sake I guess, who knows when Nintendo's gonna pull the plug on tour and erase millions of kid's mom's credit card dollars from existence

I'm not one to blindly want 'More' from something, and I actually quite like endings.

Racing games are my one exception though. With them, I love 'more'. I'll take anything, dude. Courses, cars, characters, music, whatever. With racing games I tend to rack up triple-quadruple digit hour counts with ease, because they're what I play to get my mind going when I need to draft a story or a review or yet another piece of Honkai Star Rail fanfiction. 'More', then, benefits me in multiple ways.

And what game was begging for more than Mario Kart 8? A game so excellent it's borderline ubiquitous and so popular that describing it is a waste of words. MK, after all, did make Kart Racers into an accepted subgenre.

The Booster Course Pass, then, is more. More courses and more characters. There's really not much of a need to say much else, honestly. Quality is consistent with the base game and its own DLCs (back on the Wii U), though I would've liked more anti-gravity tracks personally. And hey, there's an added bonus of having Tour tracks, meaning you don't need to play a bad mobile game to experience some otherwise stellar course design.

Really, in an age where DLC tends be to deceptive, marketed vaguely/not at all or just plain bad, this pass stands out for being decidedly upfront. The developers promised to double the amount of courses in MK8 and they did that with no catches, and even threw in 8 new playable characters to boot - though I exclusively play Daisy, so they're moot to me.

I don't have a funny signoff for this one. I really like racing games, dude.

I decided to blitz through the entire Booster Course Pass now that it's all out, I feel whelmed. Now don't get me wrong, the value that you get out of this DLC is insane, doubling the track count of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. However, there is that poorly textured elephant in the room, everything looks so cheap. It is quite obvious that these tracks are just upscaled tracks from Mario Kart Tour. Due to that, all these courses stand out so much when compared to the base game. Quality does improve as the DLC waves go on, but they never meet the same standard as base tracks.

Track selection is also quite all over the place. These selections don't feel like a best of and more like they randomly selected tracks to include in here. Quite of few bland retro tracks like Toad Circuit and Sky Garden. Some tracks are even butchered like poor poor Coconut Mall. However, the original tracks from Mario Kart Tour, excluding most real-life locales, are pretty good; highlights being Yoshi's Island, Squeaky Clean Sprint, Rome Avanti, and Ninja Hideaway. The new characters are a nice bonus too, although characters don't really interest me anywhere near as new tracks. Although, I do really like wiggler returning from Mario Kart 7. They're so darn cute with their hunchback gamer posture while riding the wiggler bike and turning red when getting hit.

I overall enjoyed this DLC, it doesn't really bother me. I do appreciate that a lot of courses from Mario Kart Tour are being preserved in a Mario Kart with good gameplay. Especially, since we all know Mario Kart Tour will be rendered completely unplayable one day, such is the way of modern mobile games. My main takeaway after playing all of these tracks is that I just want a new Mario Kart. I've been playing Mario Kart 8 since it came out back on the Wii U and I'm just kinda sick of it at this point.

(preface: I joined backloggd roughly like in march this year when the course drip feed was in the middle and because of that I thought it would be funny to review the waves individually since there were only like 2 or 3 by then and now there are 6 of those mfers clogging up my played and I don't want to delete them but also want to write about the pass as a whole without just copy pasting all 6 reviews into here so uhhhhh oops)

This was like the most whelming DLC I have ever played for a video game. Not overwhelming or underwhelming, just whelming. What I got was precisely what I expected when I first heard "Mario Kart DLC that doubles the course count for less than half the price of the game, released in waves". Yeah, the visuals took quite a hit in terms of aesthetic consistency, but that's kinda what I expected given the release-wave live-service type structure they decided to crank these courses out through. Doubling the course count definitely gives a fresh breath of air to Mario Kart 8, a game that had grown quite stale to me after the dozens of hours through the past 8-9 years playing on both Wii U and Switch, but something just kinda feels lost in the sauce with this expansion.

One of my favorite things about Mario Kart is the track design and selection, how each course feels less like a racing circuit and more like a theme park ride. Dozens of themed rollercoasters to ride through each with their own gimmicks and setpieces to race through (while obviously avoiding the nonsense that the other drivers throw at you). I feel like the courses in Mario Kart can really shine because of how much polish and effort goes into making each course have its own unique bespoke thrills, and it's the reason why courses from games decades old can still remain fresh in my memory. With this pass taking courses from previous games yet done so in a hasty manner so as not to overvalue the 25 dollar price point as well as to fit in the likely-incredibly-tight wave release deadline schedule meant corners had to be cut, and the polish had to be sanded.

A lot of courses lost most of their core identities from the little things in them that weren't recreated, whether due to janky reinterpretations of features in previous mario kart games that weren't necessarily in 8 like the half pipe boosters, or from conscious track design alterations that make certain courses lose a lot of their edge. You can't fall back down to the earlier part of the track in Choco Mountain. You can't do the cool-ass crevice skipping shortcut in DK mountain anymore. The bob-omb cars in Moonview Highway barely harm you more than an ordinary shell when hit. I think a lot of the changes usually come from courses that were converted multiple times from their original games to something like Mario Kart 7 and then from there to Tour and then from Tour to 8, and it just makes the vibes off just as much on a gameplay level as on an aesthetic level. Which really wouldn't be much of a problem if there weren't already the highly polished original versions of each track that exist as not only a comparison, but really a reference point as how the courses should be.

Luckily it's not all complete vibe-killers, as the blander courses manage to make it out mostly unscathed or even improved, as is the case with various GBA and SNES courses that made the jump. They even managed to shake up a few existing courses like Peach Gardens and Kalamari Desert by changing up the course as the laps go on, leading to a fresh take on familiar ground. Some Mario Kart courses are just impossible to mess up, yanno?

There are also plenty of city-themed courses from Mario Kart Tour that were included, and they were mostly quite uninteresting compared to the rest of the track repertoire. They felt more like courses from the Mario Kart Arcade GP series, where the courses are flat and devoid of many hazards, with setpieces mostly being static background imagery rather than dynamically integrated into the course like a lot of the best Mario Kart tracks. Like, how come we just drive under the Eiffel Tower in the Paris track instead of driving up it in zero-gravity and doing a backflip off the top or something? By making the courses just tour you through a cities landmarks instead of committing to a singular one and theming around it, it makes the city courses just feel like basic tourism propaganda from their respective cities, rather than creatively thought-out Mario Kart tracks.

Lastly they threw in some original courses, and while the highest highs in the entire 48 course lineup can be found here through Ninja Hideaway, Yoshi's Island, and Squeaky Clean Circuit bringing fresh course designs and gimmicks with considerable levels of polish (Yoshi's Island in particular being a fantastic tribute to its source game), there are also some absolute dingers thrown in there. Merry Mountain and Sky High Sundae were some of the most uninspired courses I have ever seen, being mostly static boring ovals with not much to really make them remarkable, and Piranha Plant Cove being kinda just meh all around.

As a whole, despite the fact that now the course count in Mario Kart 8 has doubled from 48 to an impressive 96 tracks to race on, it's reached the point of diminishing returns for me. I guess stale bread is still stale no matter how much sauce you may try to cover it in, especially if that sauce is stuff I had before in the past made by someone who had more time to perfect it. I was originally kinda upset that courses like Airship Fortress and Mushroom City didn't make the cut, but honestly maybe it's for the better they get to keep their swag.

At this point, I want Mario Kart 9 to have a course count closer to older titles. Give me only 16 courses in four cups, but make them the most exciting, creative, goddamn FUN 16 courses they could ever possibly conceive. Quantity can only win out against quality for so long.

It successfully revitalised the Mario Kart Online for me. The value on offer here is astounding, the kind we rarely see from Nintendo, whose DLCs are often overpriced for the amount of content on offer imo. With the news that Tour is ending its updates, I'm so happy that these tracks are getting preserved in some form. The Booster Course Pass was also meant to be just new tracks, but they overdelivered, providing new features, mechanical tweaks and new characters. I had a blast with every new wave, seeing what surprise additions they would add.

This biggest issue with it are the City tracks. I like these more than most and would rank some of them among of my favourite tracks ever, with Sydney Sprint being a standout. However, the readability is terrible, even on the best ones, with the giant red arrows that I always end up crashing into. Wish they found a better way to implement this.

The last wave is here. This DLC started poorly, the visuals looked like a port from MK Tour, and then one thing happened that usually doesn't happen. Nintendo listened to the fans.
Now, they didn't go back and fix what had already been put out (the grass in toad circuit pains me) but they did bump up the quality for the last 3 waves. We got a few original courses alongside slightly better visuals, and they eventually decided to expand the roster too. The last wave even includes a music player.
That's not to say the DLC is awesome, it still has many flaws in each wave, but I think that it is better than it could've been. Imagine 6 waves of MK Tour ports and no new characters... shiver. at least the DLC turned around near the end. It's not bad, it's not great, but at least Nintendo listened to our collective criticism.

...I just wish we got Mario Kart 9 instead.