[all cups played on 150cc]

While it’s not totally necessary, I’d still recommend reading my MK8DX review if you want to know my thoughts on the base game. It can be found here!

Back in 2022, Nintendo surprised everyone with the sudden announcement that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was getting more content, in the form of the Booster Course Pass! The game had been out for nearly five years by then, and had quickly become the best-selling title on the Switch, so I guess Nintendo finally wanted to capitalize on its success. Anyways, whilst initial reception to the BCP wasn’t great, it does seem like people came around on it as time went on. And now that I’ve played all 48 tracks for myself, what do I think?


Since the gameplay of the Booster Course Pass is basically identical to base Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, I might as well start with the most contentious part of the DLC: the visuals. MK8DX had a very polished visual style, using fairly detailed textures to deliver some of the best graphics any Nintendo game’s ever had! By comparison, the tracks in the BCP don’t look anywhere near as good, as their texturing uses flat colours. This is presumably due to the courses being ported over from Mario Kart Tour, where the graphics had to be kept simple due to mobile phones not being as powerful as regular consoles.
Regardless, I think the tracks of the BCP can look nice! Their flatter textures combined with MK8DX’s gorgeous lighting system means that the colours really pop on occasion, and have a sense of vibrancy the base game usually didn’t have (which is fine, those original courses still look lovely).

Despite being ported over from a mobile game, a lot of the tracks are basically untouched in terms of gameplay! In fact, having them in MK8DX’s incredibly smooth engine means a lot of these end up being the definitive versions by default! I also really have to commend Nintendo for picking a lot of the fan favourites, which includes Coconut Mall, DK Mountain, Daisy Cruiser, Waluigi Pinball, 3DS and Wii Rainbow Road, DK Summit and a lot more!

To get more into specifics though, I really like how they handled the courses from Super Circuit. Whilst they’re not all winners (Sky Garden’s layout is really simplified and Sunset Wilds is missing the titular sunset), most of them are fantastic and reimagine these flat tracks with the same level of care as the 3D ones! Boo Lake now has underwater segments, Riverside Park’s got Ptooies and a beautiful sunset, and Snow Land’s atmosphere is lovely!

Since the BCP’s tracks are ported from Mario Kart Tour, it means that nearly all of the original tracks from that game also show up, and they’re… a mixed bag, honestly. The courses you’ll be seeing most often are the ones based on specific cities, which start (and occasionally end) each cup. Reimagining these real-life locations as race tracks is definitely an inspired idea, but their actual layouts can feel very haphazard and irritating to traverse. Despite this, a few of them are pretty fun, with my personal favourites being Sydney Sprint, Amsterdam Drift and Singapore Speedway.

Tour also had a few courses not based on cities, and they’re basically all here too! Whilst Sky-High Sundae and Merry Mountain aren’t the most exciting tracks in regards to their layouts, the rest are fantastic! Ninja Hideaway’s got tons of alternate routes, Squeaky Clean Sprint combines a brilliant concept with some really engaging track design, and Piranha Plant Cove’s an incredibly cool idea that has some fun underwater driving!


Before I get into the criticisms, I really want to highlight two courses in particular, which are some of my favourites in the entirety of MK8DX! The first of these is Bowser Castle 3, an incredible reimagining of a fairly good track from Super Mario Kart! It looks and sounds gorgeous, the unique layout of the original’s kept and expanded upon and it uses antigravity in some very creative ways!

The second course, and my favourite in the game, is a Tour original: Yoshi’s Island. While the layout might be simple and fairly easy, it more than makes up for that with all the fanservice to the game it’s based on! Stilt Guys are wandering around near the start, Poochy makes a cameo, you go through various locations based on the game’s level tropes, and there’s a super cool section near the end where you glide down and can hit a ?-Cloud which spawns a platform that lets you take a shortcut to the finish line!


Alright, now that all my gushing is out of the way, it’s time to critique a few things. For starters, it feels like Mario Kart Wii got a few too many tracks, as over half of it’s originals are present. They’re almost all still fun to race on, but it does feel like there was a bit of a bias towards that game in particular.
Another thing is that some of the choices were just… not very good. Toad Circuit and Mario Circuit 3 are the main ones, but I didn’t care much for Rock Rock Mountain or Rosalina’s Ice World either.
The final thing I’d like to mention is that basically none of the tracks take advantage of MK8DX’s signature antigravity. This might be due to them being ported from MK Tour (a game with no antigrav), but it’s still a bit disappointing. It’s not like the tracks don’t have any antigrav, but it’s never used to the same effect as the base game, and often feels a little bit pointless.


Regardless of the few nitpicks I had, I really liked the Booster Course Pass! The fact it essentially doubles the amount of content for not even half the price means it’s absolutely worth it, regardless of the iffy graphical quality. I think this is definitely going to be enough to hold me over until Mario Kart 9… which will be releasing eventually, maybe…

(oh yeah I had nowhere else to put this, but the new characters the BCP added are very cool, I’m so glad my boy Diddy Kong finally got in)

In my opinion, the tracks included in the Booster Course Pass range from underwhelming to pretty good.
Compared to the courses from the main game, this DLC is mostly a step down in quality, although it did improve over time.

First of all, most tracks don't look nearly as good as the original ones that are almost 10 years old by now.
Textures get re-used too many times or used in the wrong places, there are spots where the developers forgot about appropriately lighting your character and both your surroundings and bystanders seem to be way bigger than the player characters themselves, among other careless mistakes that admittedly aren't too noticable while driving.
Granted, there are some genuinely beautiful standouts and I'm not against the more cartoonish style of the new courses, but in general it feels like less effort and polish went into them.

The same can be said for the layouts.
I've had some of the most fun I've ever had in Mario Kart 8 with some of these courses, while others frequently fail to adjust well to Mario Kart 8's physics.
There are turns that are unnecessarily narrow or sharp, badly telegraphed, the camera regularly moves below the ground (which I've only ever seen in the main game on purpose) and most importantly, next to none of the tracks make use of the potential that anti-gravity has.
I did however appreciate the new, unexpected gameplay elements or gimmicks this DLC brought with it, like the inclusion of half-pipes.

The selection of which tracks made it into the Booster Course Pass feels a bit weird if I'm being honest.
Since almost all of them are old tracks that were remade for Mario Kart Tour, there are some very creative, unique and enjoyable courses included, plus a couple of fan-favourites I'm glad I finally got to play.
But considering how many amazing courses have existed over the course of Mario Kart's history - courses which could have been a part of this package - makes some of the inclusions feel a bit boring in comparison.
I also feel like the City tracks didn't have all that much to offer considering how many of them there are.

I also want to mention some surprises the DLC had in store.
There were a couple of new characters to play as which I'm very happy about, even though the models aren't as high-quality as they could be.
New courses were also included, some of which (like Yoshi's Island) are absolutely fantastic!
We (and by that I mean not just players who bought the DLC) got the option to play rounds with a specific selection of items and some welcome changes were made for balancing.

I apologize if this feels like non-stop complaining, because at the end of the day, this is still Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a brilliant game.
While the DLC may not live up to the standard the main game has set, it doubles the amount of tracks available to you and is especially worth it considering its price.

Wow, I'm glad this $25 Funky Kong DLC came with a few extra characters and 48 tracks! In all seriousness though, the BCP is kind of a mixed bag for me. Is it worth the price of admission? Oh yes, absolutely. You get to double the amount of tracks in the game with some extra characters thrown in as a bonus! However, the tracks aren't all visually up to snuff with the base game. Some come really close, but a lot of them really show their Tour roots and stick out like a sore thumb. I'm glad we got more content for a great entry in the Mario Kart series, but it comes with some unfortunate drawbacks that ultimately may not matter to you. Pick it up if you can.

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.

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.

Finally finished up getting 1st place trophies in all the Booster Pass Cups. Before this released, I had 3 Star trophies in every cup in the base game. I don't have the same ampunt of time that I did in 2017 so ONE DAY I'll go back and get 3 Star in all of them. But this DLC is all over the place for me. I think it started out kinda bad with the first couple waves of tracks. They were of noticeabley lower quality than the tracks in base game Mario Kart 8 PLUS the DLC that released back in 2015 for the game. I get that these were just kinda supposed to be a cheap kinda "hold you over" alternative to creating a whole new Mario Kart game for Switch (which I think was definitely the right descion) but Tracks like the tour ones plus the Ice Cream one felt almost unfinished in aspects. As the DLC went along, I felt like the quality went up significantly. They started adding characters, the brand new tracks were becoming highlights, the music was getting better. I would argue by thr last wave, some of the (non tour) tracks visually fit in with the rest of Mario Kart 8 standered to a pretty good level. I do really dislike the Tour tracks overall though. Some are better than others, but generally I dont like the designs of them. And the Booster DLC does this annoying thing (again, especially early on) where it feels like they just take a track right out of Tour, and then just started spaming them with pre existing Mario Kart 8 assets, like toads and yoshis just standing around in random areas. It's cheap and overall feels like it devalues how gorgeous Mario Kart 8 Deluxe looked before the DLC. But again, they really cleaned things up towards the end of the DLC. I think the Yoshi's Island track may even be my favorite Mario Kart track of all time. I'm just rambling, but yeah I would love to hear the descion making process behind why this DLC is so inconsistent, or even exists a decade after Mario Kart 8 even came out.

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.

There's a real variety in this Booster Course pass. Not only in track locales and style, but also in quality both from a "fun-ness" perspective and from a "budget" feel. The initial packs especially felt very cheap. Toad Circuit looks pretty amateur compared to the base game, and even the majority of the rest of the DLC. But as time went on, the tracks got more exciting and higher quality.

Each pack had a key track that stood out above the rest. The new original tracks were especially delightful and have become firm favourites of mine. Yoshi's Island in particular is now in amongst the best MK8D has to offer (might even be top three!).

There's a lot of content here, and most of it is pretty good, some of it is fantastic - and as far as value is concerned, this is actually a pretty great value proposition now that everything is out!

Now, Nintendo, just release a 96 track VS Mode you cowards!