One more wave and the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will come to its conclusion. And since the first wave we always had a pretty good picture of what to expect from all this, thanks to different leaks and data-mines. We knew the labels of all the courses, for example, which have been mostly correct, but the order has changed in various instances and Wii Moonview Highway was originally unlabeled. Plus, there was a leak of some music files, where all the featured tracks eventually made it into the game, but with much better audio quality.
And everything in the Booster Course Pass also appears in Mario Kart Tour, so you could always look at what the mobile game has to offer and go from there, though they've made plenty of additions during the last 16 months, so just because a course (or character) isn't present in Tour yet, doesn't mean that it's out of the question as of now. They still might add the Honey Queen or DS Delfino Square.
The Courses
For the remaining two cups we know that there will be two more city tours, two new courses, two more courses from Double Dash!!, one SNES tracks, and one more Wii course, which got put at the very end. Since last time Mario Kart Tour also introduced Rome Avanti, SNES Bowser Castle 3, and the Piranha Plant Pipeline, where all of these seem like surefire picks.
We will with all certainty get Rome Avanti and there is one more city course awaiting us. It gets abbreviated as "MD" in the files of the mobile game and because of the naming conventions for these cities, people have been speculating that this might be Madrid. Plus, they have been favoring European capitals quite a bit, where Madrid would be a natural addition. Looking at the current temperatures there, they should probably set the course on fire, though...
As for the two "nitro" courses, there are two new courses already present in Mario Kart Tour: Piranha Plant Cove and Piranha Plant Pipeline. The former is the only of the new courses in Mario Kart Tour that isn't a city, but features multiple course layouts. So, it comes with more complexity and therefore is probably a good finish for a cup. The latter looks much simpler in comparison, where here you're mainly going through some pipes and have to make a choice which pipe to take.
Together with 3DS Piranha Plant Slide, those course names are going to be very confusing, but that's really an issue created by the western translations, where in the Asian countries the Piranha Plant Pipeline is simply called "Pipe Canyon". This is also the data-mined "DK" course, where DK in this case stood for "Dokan Kyanion" – Pipe Canyon spelled with Katakana. So, say good-bye to the idea of a new Donkey Kong course or the possibility of a "Desert Kingdom". I adored the idea of a Super Mario Land course after what they did with Yoshi's Island, but that's not happening any longer, at least not anytime soon...
Fans of Donkey Kong may still be in luck, since we're also getting two more Double Dash!! courses, apparently, where one of them has to be either GCN Dino Dino Jungle or GCN DK Mountain. The brandnew course in wave 5, Squeaky Clean Sprint, comes with a "Dino Dino Outdoor & Camping Goods" bag in it, which might be teasing at the former. But if Diddy Kong is one of the two final characters, or any Kong for that matter, then DK Mountain might also be a good pick.
It probably won't be both, since they share the same music in Double Dash!! and having them both in the same wave will cause quite some musical repetition. That being said, in Mario Kart Tour there is currently only GCN Mushroom Bridge left, yet another course with ongoing traffic, where they will re-use the Toad's Turnpike vehicles for the tenth time... So, there will be some repetition in any case if we're truly getting two more courses from the GameCube.
We knew for a while that there was going to be one more SNES course, next to Mario Circuit 3, but they were all pretty plain and boring in Mario Kart Tour. SNES Vanilla Lake 1 or 2 seemed like the most interesting pick here, maybe with the water geysers from the RMX Vanilla Lake 1 added into the mix. But then SNES Bowser Castle 3 came and really blew this out of the water, because it has three dimensions. This is on par with some of the better GBA course remakes and without a doubt one of the best contenders for the final wave. So far we also haven't gotten any other Bowser Castles in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has been favoring the different Rainbow Roads.
On that topic, we got the 3DS Rainbow Road at the halfway point of the Booster Course Pass, which was excellent, and history might repeat itself with the finale, where the last course is said to be from Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart Tour offers a new version of the Wii Rainbow Road. That's a perfect fit right there and if it looks anything like the one from 3DS it's going to be a fantastic finish for the Booster Course Pass.
With all of this in mind, the course list for the final wave pretty much writes itself:
The order will probably look different, but I'm overall confident that the selection of courses will look something like this. You can never be sure with Nintendo, though... Everyone also expected DS Airship Fortress and then we got DS Mario Circuit instead. So, in the end we might get SNES Vanilla Lake 1 after all.
The Drivers
This is how the character select screen in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe currently presents itself, after the additions of Petey Piranha, Wiggler, and Kamek:
Only two spots left! There goes my dream of getting Diddy, Dixie, and Funky Kong all at once in one wave. The karting Kongs won't be reunited so easily... But I love that they put Petey right next to King Boo and Kamek in the row of baddies, those were the perfect positions for these characters. This probably won't mean much for the last two contenders, however.
The best choice for the Koopaling row would either be Boom Boom, Chargin' Chuck or the Hammer Bro, where the latter could have the Ice, Fire, and Boomerang Bros as skins. And while those aren't terrible choices on their own, there are more desirable picks left. Also, these characters probably would have been part of the fourth wave as well, since they've added a bunch of different Mario enemies all at once here.
The last row so far consists entirely of guest characters and while it could be that they might add someone in that category to Mario Kart Tour in the near future, it only has the Miis so far and no one else. Maybe you could count Dixie Kong, since she has primarily appeared in the Donkey Kong Country series and only very few Mario spin-off games, where Mario Kart Tour is one of them. But it's still the same universe, technically.
The same goes for Poochy, who was only recently added to Tour, together with the Yoshi's Island course. But they have paired this one with Birdo in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, where it would be weird to have Poochy thrown in afterwards...
R.O.B. primarily comes to mind for the guest characters and while it would be lovely to get him back, his underside might make it difficult to put him on bikes. Not impossible, but difficult. And the development team behind the Booster Course Pass has been struggling with getting things right.
But if you ask any Mario Kart fan who the remaining two characters are, then you will have get a definitive answer, where these might be as set in stone as the last couple of courses. The most popular picks left, out of the unique characters in Mario Kart Tour, are without a doubt Diddy Kong and Pauline. People will riot if they don't get Diddy in the end, who has been absent in Mario Kart 8 for all this time and for no good reason.
Pauline on the other hand is the hot new star of the Mario franchise since her appearance in Super Mario Odyssey, where she has also made it into Mario Strikers: Battle League last year. The only problem with her is that they can't just import her from Mario Kart Tour and call it a day, since her dress isn't exactly bike-friendly. She will need a biker suit, just like Peach or Rosalina. But this could also be a reason why she joins the fun last, where she simply needs a bit more work than the others.
All of this is under assumption that we won't be getting any more characters after the Booster Course Pass, where they could easily fill another row or column with what they have left in Mario Kart Tour. If there's more, then they will probably save Diddy Kong for later to add him alongside Funky and Dixie. And just like with the courses, you never know with Nintendo, where we might be getting Honey Queen and Penguin Mario as the last two additions in wave 6.
As a reference, here is the list of all the (more or less) unique characters who are still absent from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but have appeared in other Mario Kart games as playable drivers, most of them in Mario Kart Tour:
It's still a big list and even if they were to add two more columns to the character select, it wouldn't be enough. And picking only two out of this will hurt a lot. I'd love to have Diddy Kong back, for example, but I'd love it even more if we were to get Funky and Dixie alongside him. And some of the other characters on this list, like Nabbit, would also be really awesome to have.
The End?
While I've kept saying that there could be a second Booster Course Pass after this one, I'm not as convinced any longer, because there has been a lot of talk about how Mario Kart Tour seems to be wrapping up internally when studying the game's files. I've always assumed that they will keep going with this, especially since there are so many potential cities left. We have nothing from Africa or South America, for example, where Cairo and Rio de Janeiro seem like must-have tours.
But if Madrid is going to be the last city and Piranha Plant Pipeline the last nitro course, then there will be no incentive to keep porting over contents, because they will have covered all the new courses from Mario Kart Tour, which is the most important thing. The rest has been filled up with various retro courses and while there are still many good ones left, it's not enough for a second Booster Course Pass. They could make half a pass with three more waves, but that's really it.
What they also could do is focus on other additions, like more drivers, some karts, and also Battle Mode courses. This would be pretty good as some extra DLC after the Booster Course Pass, considering the circumstances. But the last wave could also already come with Battle Mode courses, since at least two of them in Mario Kart Tour are based upon the existing city tracks (Paris Promenade and New York Minute), where it would make sense to have those as part of the original Booster Course Pass. And there isn't much else left to work with, where only DS Twilight House seems like a good candidate.
Go for Gold!
One little thing that they could add with the next update is an incentive for completing all the new courses and cups from the Booster Course Pass, the same way it was done with the base game. There you were able to unlock the gold tires, gold kart, and Gold Mario by fulfilling the following criteria:
- Beat every staff ghost in 150cc.
- Get at least one star in every cup in Mirror Mode.
- Score first place in every cup in 200cc.
As a reward, they could add some of the golden variants of characters present in Mario Kart Tour, like Gold King Boo, Gold Dry Bones, and Gold Dry Bowser. Once unlocked, they will stay with you, even if you've used the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack to play the new courses and your subscription ran out.
These new gold characters would just be skins of the existing base game drivers and not take their own character slots, just like Gold Mario. However, such variants don't change the weight class of a character, so it might not be a good fit, because you would expect these metal characters to come with a higher weight. But since we're talking about skeletons and ghosts here, it may not be a big issue... And it's just an idea, nothing that I would expect to happen.
Update: Alternatively, there is also a Gold Mii Racing Suit in Mario Kart Tour and golden variants of various kart parts from Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe), like the Gold Pipe Frame or the Gold Monster tire. These could serve as new rewards as well.
Small update to this post: I forgot that DS Waluigi Pinball already uses existing music (from DS Wario Stadium), so it's not really a criteria for the course selection.
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