Booster Course Pass: Vol. 2?

Well, I'm a broken record about this, I know... but with the latest wave it became more and more apparent that they might simply continue this til the end. Mario Kart Tour has been going for three and a half years now, since September 2019, where they have produced more than enough content to fill the Booster Course Pass, but there is still so much left. This is mainly thanks to the fact that the majority of additions are from Tour with all the city tours or completely new courses. In fact, 22 of the 48 courses will be from Mario Kart Tour at the end. That's nearly half of the Booster Course Pass!

They won't run out of cities any time soon and if they keep this rate for a second pass, then it will be very easy to fill the rest of it with the remaining fan favorites. And there are a lot of good courses to choose from, where many of them are already in Mario Kart Tour. People expected DS Airship Fortress for a reason, but instead we got DS Mario Circuit. This is disappointing to some, but what if they are simply saving some bangers for the second round? There could be a "Bullet Bill Cup" for example, which comes with Airship Fortress and King Bob-omb as a new character.

Of course there is also the possibility that they are simply saving some better courses for the next Mario Kart game, but I personally think that the next Mario Kart will be a "Nintendo Kart" anyway, so they should put everything into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe what they can to make it the ultimate Mario Kart. And whatever retro courses there will be, those are going to come come with much better graphics and new gimmicks as a selling point, so it doesn't really matter. Six of the retro courses from Mario Kart 7 also have re-appeared in both Mario Kart Tour and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe now, so there is nothing preventing them from bringing back courses multiple times in a row.

In the long run it might even be very attractive to have absolutely all contents from Mario Kart 7 integrated into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, since the Nintendo 3DS online "infrastructure" isn't going to last forever, much like Mario Kart Tour. The Booster Course Pass should be all about preservation, first and foremost.

In addition, drivers are now also part of the equation. Six new characters is less than half of what they potentially could add without touching all the alt costumes. And no matter who they go for, some fans will be still left disappointed. We can't have all the Kongs, Pauline, Kamek, Nabbit, and so on with just the Booster Course Pass. But we could with a second one and this way also include some of the characters who no one might expect right now, like the Hammer Bro.

The different Bros might also share a character select slot, where the Fire, Ice, and Boomerang Bro work as alt costumes for the Hammer Bro, so they could hit four birds with one stone here. Speaking of alts, potentially they also could a variety of variants for the other characters, like Dr. Mario, Builder Luigi, Wedding Peach, White Tanooki Mario, and so on. They wouldn't require more space on the character select screen and will simply share the same stats with their originals.

Then there's Battle Mode, where Mario Kart Tour just got its own one last year. A second Booster Course Pass could add one or two battle mode courses per wave just to show this mode in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe some more love as well. Right now there are these three retro stages in Tour:

• GBA Battle Course 1
• GCN Cookie Land
• DS Twilight House
  

More will likely follow, where something like N64 Block Fort will certainly make many fans happy. And there even could be some completely new battle courses as well.

In any case, there will be more than enough contents to justify a second Booster Course Pass. Of course this doesn't automatically mean that it will happen for sure. After all, this is Nintendo we're talking about, who never bothered with bringing back the Zelda and Splatoon villagers to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, for example. They just love to have something left with their games that could have been done, but never will be done. However, there is just too much stuff to ignore here and as long as they keep working on Mario Kart Tour, there will be potential additions for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

The real question is when the next Mario Kart game will become a thing and how it will look like, because this will have a big influence on the outcome here. If it's going to be "Nintendo Kart" coming late 2025, then there is no reason to hold back right now. But who knows what Nintendo is currently cooking up?