Thursday, February 10, 2022

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Booster Course Pass Announced

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass, 48 course for 24,99$, first wave available March 18th

Well, let's move on to the only thing that had a slight connection to Zelda in the newest Nintendo Direct: Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Thought you were done with the game? Twice even? Well, think again! Here's 48 more retro courses in six waves of DCL!

It's a good deal, where this gets turned into "Mario Kart Ultimate", really, going through the history of all other Mario Kart titles. The number of courses in the game gets doubled, which is amazing and theoretically very good value for its money.

However, on the other hand this feels like another case of quantity over quality. The visuals of these remastered tracks don't seem to be on par with the rest of the game, where it looks like it all was taken straight out of Mario Kart Tour and upscaled for some cheap effort. This also raises the question whether these new tracks will have any anti-gravity sections at all, since those are not part of Mario Kart Tour.

Also, it's a shame that this DLC doesn't include any new drivers or karts, from what it seems. This would have been the perfect chance to finally bring back Diddy Kong after all this time... But maybe they will do this via some free updates? After all each of the six waves will require software updates to add the new courses, where they might as well try to improve the game on other ends while they are at it.

The only interesting free update so far was Link and the Master Cycle Zero from Breath of the Wild in version 1.6.0. But it seemed like they were done with the game for a while now.

And so was I... I've completed Mario Kart 8 with three stars in all cups on both Wii U and Nintendo Switch. Online mode is no fun at all, just Waluigis on Wild Wiggler's going backwards at the start of the race everywhere. After eight years I'm ready to move on to a new Mario Kart, where I did like the "Mario Kart X" idea, even though those were just fake rumors, but it doesn't seem like Nintendo has any plans for a new Mario Kart any time soon. Since Mario Kart 8 is still selling like hot cakes and the most successful Nintendo Switch game this shouldn't be surprising, but it's still disappointing.

7 comments:

Tim said...

Super small nitpick here, but there actually was something else Zelda related in the Direct: That taiko drum game or whatever that was lets you play the Zelda theme.

~Tim

TourianTourist said...

Yeah, you're right. I forgot about that the moment I saw it... :D

Tim said...

Can't blame ya :P

Raul said...

I'm done w MK8 but I'm curious as to whether or not this will include characters. Or maybe that would be a separate dlc pack...

Raul said...

I am amused at the fact that Nintendo has realized that MK8D is their GTA5 tho

TourianTourist said...

The Booster Course Pack will only include cups and courses, no new drivers or karts. It's possible that they might release some characters separately, however, maybe even via the free updates. It's still baffling to me how this game doesn't have Diddy Kong yet after eight years.

Raul said...

I agree about Diddy but I'm more shocked E. Gadd from Luigi's Mansion has never been in period even counting Tour. Tour does have Diddy, Dixie, and the real King Boo with his LM design tho.