Starting with the third wave of the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, we got more than what was originally advertised for the DLC. The first addition was the new custom item selection and while technically this came with the free updates, this was still done as part of the work on the Booster Course Pass. The fourth wave then surprised us with the addition of new characters, where the first one was Birdo. Then we got three characters at once in wave 5, where two more characters are left to be revealed.
With waves 2, 4 and 5 they also showed us certain new courses for the very first time – Sky-High Sundae, Yoshi's Island, and Squeaky Clean Sprint – before they got added to Mario Kart Tour. This won't be possible with the last wave, because all remaining city and nitro courses for Mario Kart Tour have already been revealed...
And this makes you wonder if they have something else planned for the final wave in the Booster Course Pass, as a final surprise addition. One thing that came to mind from the very beginning are new Battle Mode Courses, where there currently are five of them in Mario Kart Tour:
- Tour Paris Promenade B
- Tour New York Minute B
- GBA Battle Course 1
- GCN Cookie Land
- DS Twilight House
Assets for another one have been data-mined with Wii Block Plaza, where this may make it into the mobile game in one of the upcoming tours that are still left.
The Battle Mode in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe comes with eight stages currently, where the menu lists them in two lines of four courses. So, if the Battle Mode were to get extended, they probably would add four more to make it look nice, where two of the above courses wouldn't make the cut. But which ones...?
The first that may come to mind are Paris Promenade and New York Minute, simply because it may be a bit weird to get battle courses based on actual race courses again, since that is exactly what they wanted to avoid with the new Battle Mode for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But the battle variants of these two city tracks feel quite different, because you're not getting directed any longer, so can just freely drive around the roads, kind of like in 3DS Wuhu Town. They are a lot more suited as battle mode courses than what we got in Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U.
And since both Paris Promenade and New York Minute are already part of the Booster Course Pass, it would make a lot of sense to add their battle variants as another free addition to the pass, instead of including them in some separate DLC.
As for the retro courses, GCN Cookie Land is way too small for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and GBA Battle Course 1 is too similar to the existing SNES Battle Course 1, where they are the likeliest to not make it. DS Twilight House also shares its theme with GCN Luigi's Mansion, but it's still quite different, since you're driving outside in a spooky castle, and it's arguably the best battle course that Mario Kart Tour has to offer at the moment. If nothing else, they could give us just this single course by re-arranging the battle courses to a 3x3 grid.
Should Wii Block Plaza truly make it into Mario Kart Tour as well, this would be a no-brainer, because there are none of these "block courses" (like N64 Block Fort or GCN Block City) in the current Battle Mode yet, where this has been a classic theme. It's also large enough for the 12 player total. This could even be this wave's course that makes it into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe before Mario Kart Tour.
They will need to add spots for the cages in Renegade Roundup, but overall it shouldn't be much of an issue to port these Battle Mode courses over, given that there will be at least one more nice fit.
Battle Mode was the big new thing in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, maybe even the selling point over Mario Kart 8 for some, where it's a shame that this hasn't seen any attention in the DLC so far. But maybe they will get back to it for the finale, where we should learn more about the last wave of the Booster Course Pass later this month.
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