Booster Course Pass: Wave 1 Impressions

The Master Cycle Zero is back on the track! The first wave of the Booster Course Pass has been released for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and it's making waves of its own. It contains the following eight tracks:

 

Golden Dash Cup:

• Tour Paris Promenade 
• 3DS Toad Circuit
• N64 Choco Mountain
• Wii Coconut Mall

 

Lucky Cat Cup:

• Tour Tokyo Blur
• DS Shroom Ridge
• GBA Sky Garden
• Tour Ninja Hideaway

 

For some reason Ninja Hideaway isn't labeled as "Tour" in the game, but this might be an oversight. The retro labels of all upcoming tracks already have been datamined, where there are a couple "unknown", despite the fact that the Booster Course Pass is said to be entirely made out of returning courses.

In fact, it seems like everything simply got imported from Mario Kart Tour with some polish. This has been a concern since the pass was announced over a month ago, but it definitely creates a rift in quality between the base game and the new DLC tracks, where the new tracks look a lot more plastic. It doesn't look terrible, but it is simply not on par with the rest of the game and comes with a completely different art style, which also clashes with the drivers and carts.

In addition, everything was upscaled to make space for a higher number of drivers. As a result you will find gigantic Toads at the wayside or comically large objects, because they didn't scale these elements properly afterwards. And you can't unsee this stuff.

Funnily enough, all the original cups got a golden border in the menus, while the new cups got one in silver to differentiate them visually. That's a good idea, but at the same time this can be seen as a statement that we're indeed getting second-rate courses here. Let's just hope that there won't be any bronze DLC in the future with an equal fall from quality...

You can switch between the golden and silver cups by pressing L or R, where it seems that this was put into the game whether you have purchased the DLC or not. Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U already had this bad habit of adding such "buy me" placeholders for the DLC, where Nintendo seems to continue this trend once more, though it's not as bad here, since you simply don't have to flip the page and the rest still looks complete.

Well... this blog has a saying: bad DLC can taint an otherwise great game. The original Hyrule Warriors on Wii U was very solid out of the box, but then Koei Tecmo gradually turned everything into a mess with all the molecular DLCs and the excessive difficulty and level increases. Breath of the Wild is one of the best games ever made, but the Expansion Pass put a visible dent on that with its "pay for quality of life improvements" approach, the random insertion of treasure chests with DLC armor pieces, or questionable challenges that may not be fun for everyone... Of course these DLCs also had some really good things in them, making them worthwhile overall, but it's hard to ignore the taints that came with them. And it's the same with the Booster Course Pass.

Other than the placeholders, the DLC for the original Mario Kart 8 was absolutely great. It offered new courses, drivers, and vehicle parts in the quality of the base game (except for the generic trophies), as well as some very interesting crossovers with other Nintendo franchises, like Zelda or F-Zero. It expanded the whole package to what we know today as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, minus the Battle Mode.

The Booster Course Pass on the other hand has a very different goal: to bring over most of the tracks from Mario Kart Tour, where Nintendo could have just called this the "Mario Kart Tour Pack" if they were more upfront. In itself this is a noble goal. Mario Kart Tour is a service game and that service will cease to exist eventually, where it's good that they are preserving these courses by bringing them over to the current Mario Kart on consoles. This way you can play them whenever you want on a big screen, which is awesome.

But Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the most popular game on one of Nintendo's most successful systems, where you would think that this gets all the budget it needs to become fabulously fantastic. Instead, they are not even trying. They know that this going to sell in any case, so they are saving costs and efforts left and right by simply porting over what they have in Mario Kart Tour without any bigger adjustments...

At least the music is of the quality that you would expect, where it seems that they've actually brought the band back. So, that's something and honestly a relief. Still, the music can't hide the fact that these new tracks were made for a mobile game and are a visual downgrade – or at least a divergence – from the rest of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

The Courses

Now, going through the new tracks, there are some ups and downs. The highlights are probably the courses that got first made for Mario Kart Tour, where it seems like those will make up a majority of the DLC. Each of the new cups will start with one of the city tours even. There is Paris Promenade in the Golden Dash Cup, Tokyo Blur in the Lucky Cat Cup, and also Ninja Hideaway.

These are the most complex of the additions, with different routes and course alterations. The city courses all have different variants in Mario Kart Tour, where some of them now get combined into one for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which is clever and creates an unique experience for all of these.

In Paris Promenade you can choose between two different routes on the first two laps, but the last lap then makes you go in reverse for a bit, where you may even run right into other drivers who are still going through lap 2. This is such a great idea that you might wonder why Nintendo didn't come up with this any sooner. And this also builds on the fact that the tracks in Mario Kart Tour do have reversed variants, something completely new to the series.

Tokyo Blur simply makes you go different routes on each lap, where on the last lap you just go up a spiral driveway on a completely untouched section, so the first place won't have any bananas or other obstacles left by players in the way. But it's by far the simplest of the additions from Mario Kart Tour so far.

Ninja Hideaway is a quite open track with lots of possible routes take, without straying too far from each other. So, this isn't another Yoshi Valley, but that's mainly because the different ways are above each other, where the paths splits vertically. There is even the biggest updraft section in the game, where you have complete control over where to go. And it feels great. Curiously, the level only features Shy Guys, but no Ninjis... Probably because that's what they already had in the game.

The classic courses on the other hand, which also got ported over from Mario Kart Tour, feel very basic in comparison, where Toad Circuit from Mario Kart 7 is the prime example of this. It's a good tutorial track and there's nothing inherently wrong with this course, where it's just a short feel-good racing experience. But in a game where basically every course has something unique to it, this just falls flat and can be quite boring.

Choco Mountain could have had the chance to become something more unique here, instead they've changed this by making it more similar to Wario's Goldmine, where now there is a small cave section with bats flying towards you... They also kept the railing at the end at all times, but that's actually very useful for 200cc.

Some of the other classic tracks also have some quirky changes that seemingly got made by Mario Kart Tour and weren't improved upon in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. This even goes for the tracks that aren't officially in Mario Kart Tour as of yet, but it's safe to assume that those tracks were originally made for the mobile game and simply haven't been available so far.

Coconut Mall for example changed its escalators into flashy conveyor belts, where it's always obvious which way you need to go. At the same time you can't slowly go up in the wrong direction any longer, it's just way too strong. The course also feels more narrow overall, where it's easy to crash into the curves after said conveyor belts. And the moving cars with the Miis in them at the end aren't moving any longer and now feature Shy Guys instead of Miis. Such a change may be understandable for a mobile game, but on the Nintendo Switch this should have been made how it was in the original, since this game still supports Miis and it's easier to dodge moving objects. Curiously, the ramp and booster fields in the final section have also been removed, making it a lot more boring overall.

On Shroom Ridge you also won't find any oncoming traffic, everything goes in the same direction, where this course has borrowed some of the vehicles from Toad's Turnpike. This is arguably not the worst change, because the track is difficult enough as it is with all its sharp turns, where both here and on Ninja Hideaway you may find yourself hitting the brakes on 150cc already. Those two tracks are a nightmare on 200cc, which gets compensated in the Lucky Bell Cup by Tokyo Blur and Sky Garden, which are two of most relaxed courses in 200cc, almost if they were made for that speed specifically. But this also goes for Toad Circuit and comes with the simplicity of these racing tracks.

Sky Garden also would have been a great track for anti-gravity, but instead it's as basic as it gets. And that's true for the whole DLC. Well, all of the new courses have a glider section, almost as it was obligatory to put at least one into each track, so that players can see their entire cosmetics... But there are no underwater or anti-gravity sections. To be fair, the original Mario Kart 8 DLC also didn't have any underwater parts and it was fine. Also, Mario Kart Tour does feature underwater racing, where it's likely that we will be getting some courses with this feature later on.

But the lack of anti-gravity is concerning. Mario Kart Tour doesn't have anti-gravity and they may not bother implementing what's Mario Kart 8's defining feature into the new tracks, simply because the courses in Tour don't have it. Of course not every track needs to have it, but anti-gravity could have worked really well on Sky Garden or on the roof in Ninja Hideaway, but there is nothing. And right now we have reason to believe that there won't be any anti-gravity in the whole Booster Course Pass... Which is somewhat ironic considering that the promotional art has Mario, Luigi, and Peach drive over images of the new courses in anti-gravity.

And this isn't just about the anti-gravity. This DLC doesn't get the same treatment as the remastered classic courses from the base game, where Nintendo did some really creative things to fit them into Mario Kart 8. They are taking what they have made in Mario Kart Tour and they are simply shoving it into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as it is. The only tracks that seemingly got some efforts put into them are the city tours with the altered laps, but that this feels like the utmost minimum.

Overall, this is quite disappointing and the sad thing is that we can't expect this to get any better with the rest of the DLC. It will be nice to have all these tracks available, sure, but it's tarnishing the quality of an otherwise excellent title.