Thursday, September 14, 2023

Booster Course Pass: Four More Characters!

artwork of Diddy, Funky, Pauline and Peachette on Daisy Circuit

In today's Nintendo Direct they have revealed one of the new courses in wave 6 of the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Wii Daisy Circuit. And on this course they showcased a total of four new characters with Diddy Kong, Funky Kong, Pauline, and Peachette.

Well, this was unexpected in multiple ways... Nintendo must really follow the predictions, because they deliberately chose a course here that rarely anyone saw coming for the final wave. And yes, there are people out there who have predicted Wii Daisy Circuit to make it, but this comes after we already had a surprise course from Mario Kart Wii and GCN Daisy Cruiser in wave 5, so this seemed unlikely for multiple reasons. (Update: Actually, with Wii Daisy Circuit there is now a circuit track from every mainline Mario Kart game present in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. So, there was a pattern here.)

I suppose that this will replace GCN Mushroom Bridge in the end. It could also be that Wii Rainbow Road won't make it into the final wave, but this would soft-confirm a second Booster Course Pass for me, because there is no way that they are not ending things with that particular course. And if we're not getting two more GameCube courses any longer, then this will allow us to re-arrange the remaining courses a bit more meaningfully:

This way we'd have a Bowser Castle and a Raindow Road at the very end, which would be great.

As for the characters, they got the three most popular candidates with Diddy Kong, Funky Kong, and Pauline, all at once. That's worthy of a celebration and most people should be very happy about this. But why they opted for Peachette instead of Dixie Kong, who is also in Mario Kart Tour, is beyond me. This could have been the perfect Donkey Kong wave, character-wise...

And we already have Baby Peach, Cat Peach, and Pink Gold Peach for more than enough Peach variants. Though, technically this is a variant of Toadette, but she looks like Peach anyway. It seems a bit like a waste, especially when you have characters in Tour like Dixie Kong, Nabbit, or even Captain Toad.

Of course it wouldn't matter that much if this wasn't the end of the DLC. And maybe it isn't the end after all...?

I'm curious to see how the character select screen now looks like. There is only space for two more characters at the moment, where some people are suggesting that Peachette and Funky Kong are alt characters. But why would they have to be alts, while Cat Peach or Dry Bowser aren't? It would be disrespectful to these drivers and not make much sense in the overall picture.

Maybe they have put other characters together (like the villagers, who used to be one slot on the Wii U) to make space, where the most popular candidates are Tanooki Mario and Cat Peach. It was observed that ever since wave 2 you won't get Mario, Tanooki Mario and Metal Mario in the same CPU match together. Same with Peach, Cat Peach and Pink Gold Peach. This could imply that they are internally handled as alts already and not as their own characters any longer.

Or maybe they simply added another row or column. But this would mean that there is now space for four or five more characters, where this would be hinting at more DLC coming. Well, let's see how the sixth wave is going to look in full, but maybe they will already have announced Booster Course Pass Vol. 2 by the time. There are enough courses and characters left in Mario Kart Tour to keep this going in 2024 with three more waves.

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