Booster Course Pass Vol. 2 Discussion

The Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is over and while there is currently no reason to believe that Nintendo might continue releasing DLC for the game, it's still worthwhile to discuss the possibility. All of the contents in the Booster Course Pass were originally made for Mario Kart Tour. In some cases the courses may have been made for both games at the same time, but first and foremost they have been porting over the things from Nintendo's mobile game.

And there is a lot more left where it came from... Courses, characters, Mii racing suits, but also costumes for characters, and lots of different kart parts, where we have seen anything of the last two in the Booster Course Pass.

Mario Kart Tour won't be forever, where the game has already entered a "content loop" since early October, which means that no new courses, drivers, karts and so on will be added to the game. Because of this, interest will decrease and it's only a matter of time until the service will be shut down, sharing the same fate as Dr. Mario World. And when that happens, it will be nice to have as much of it in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as possible.

Also, the Booster Course Pass is certainly one of the selling points for the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, where it's in Nintendo's own interest to keep this going for at least another year, until the successor to the Nintendo Switch (and potentially a new Mario Kart game) are ready for the world.

Mario Kart 8 will also see its tenth anniversary in 2024. And what better way to celebrate the longest living and best selling Mario Kart game in existence than with more content?

More Courses

By porting over courses to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, they are not only making them more accessible, freed from the limitations of the biweekly tours, they are preserving them for the future, for when Mario Kart Tour is no more. And with the Booster Course Pass they have focused on the original courses, first and foremost all 14 cities, combining their individual courses into one.

The job wasn't entirely done, however, where one original course still remains with the Piranha Plant Pipeline, also known as "Pipe Canyon". In addition, there have been a number of remixed courses, based on the different themes present in Super Mario Kart (and the Bowser's Castles from Mario Kart: Super Circuit), which can be seen as original courses as well.

The majority of what's left are the retro courses, but this may even be what some people had expected from the Booster Course Pass when it first got announced in February of last year. 20 of the 48 delivered courses then turned out to be "new", at least to those who haven't played the mobile installment, leaving not as much room for beloved fan favorites, like DS Airship Fortress.

Here's a list of what's still left to be found in Mario Kart Tour, other than Piranha Plant Pipeline. You can also take a look at it all on the excellent Super Mario Wiki.

Super Mario Kart

• SNES Mario Circuit 1
• SNES Donut Plains 1
• SNES Ghost Valley 1
• SNES Mario Circuit 2
• SNES Choco Island 1
• SNES Ghost Valley 2
• SNES Donut Plains 2
• SNES Choco Island 2
  
• SNES Vanilla Lake 1
• SNES Koopa Troopa Beach 2
• SNES Vanilla Lake 2

Mario Kart 64

• N64 Luigi Raceway
• N64 Koopa Troopa Beach
• N64 Frappe Snowland
• N64 Mario Raceway
  

 

Mario Kart: Super Circuit

• GBA Peach Circuit
• GBA Bowser's Castle 1
• GBA Bowser's Castle 2
• GBA Luigi Circuit
• GBA Cheep-Cheep Island
• GBA Yoshi Desert
• GBA Bowser's Castle 3
• GBA Lakeside Park
• GBA Bowser's Castle 4

 

Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

• GCN Mushroom Bridge
• GCN Dino Dino Jungle
  

 

Mario Kart DS

• DS Luigi's Mansion
• DS DK Pass
• DS Airship Fortress
  

 

Mario Kart Wii

• Wii Dry Dry Ruins

 

Mario Kart 7

• 3DS Daisy Hills
• 3DS Cheep Cheep Lagoon
• 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar
• 3DS Mario Circuit
• 3DS Wario Shipyard
• 3DS Bowser's Castle

• RMX Mario Circuit 1
• RMX Choco Island 1
• RMX Choco Island 2
• RMX Vanilla Lake 1
• RMX Vanilla Lake 2
• RMX Ghost Valley 1
• RMX Donut Plains 1
• RMX Rainbow Road 1
• RMX Rainbow Road 2

As you can see, there is some really good stuff left, including N64 Koopa Troopa Beach, GBA Yoshi Desert, GCN Dino Dino Jungle, DS Luigi's Mansion, DS Airship Fortress, Wii Dry Dry Ruins, 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar, and 3DS Wario Shipyard. Additional DLC would be worth it for these alone. GBA Bowser's Castle 4 has also gotten a similar treatment to SNES Bowser Castle 3, where this would be another great pick.

They could also make up for the lack of tracks from certain Mario Kart games in the Booster Course Pass, first and foremost Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64, which only got two each. And Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and Mario Kart DS were only given three. Put this against the eight courses from the favored Mario Kart Wii, which now would only see one more addition to balance things out a bit.

And speaking of getting sidelined, Luigi could finally get a racing course to his name, where other than DS Luigi's Mansion there are two of his circuits available in Mario Kart Tour, N64 Luigi Raceway and GBA Luigi Circuit. The man deserves at least one of these.

Of course, they could be saving some of it for the next Mario Kart game, but for that they probably won't be porting over the versions from Tour and instead remake them from the scratch for the next console generation, which means that the Tour versions will be lost eventually. And by now it's also fine when courses re-appear multiple games in a row. Just because something got into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe via the Booster Course Pass, doesn't mean that this course is out of the question for the next Mario Kart.

What caused most of the repetition is that many courses came from Mario Kart 7, which seemingly was used as a basis for Mario Kart Tour. In fact, with the exception of the two Wuhu Island tracks, all original and retro courses from the Nintendo 3DS can also be found in Tour. In less than five months, from April 2024 onward, we won't be able to play Nintendo 3DS and Wii U games online any longer, which includes Mario Kart 7. This gives a potential second Booster Course Pass additional value, where a big part of Mario Kart 7 could live on in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, potentially swaying over those who are still playing the 3DS title online.

Here it's actually a good thing that 3DS Rosalina's Ice World was brought in via wave 6 as a big surprise, because otherwise there would have been an overabundance of 3DS (and ice-themed) courses left to consider, making this the Mario Kart Wii of the second pass. But with this swap things could actually get more balanced and it's already easier to puzzle together a number of new cups.

Not everything will be eligible or worth having, though, where especially all the SNES and RMX courses are prone to some redundancy in themes and visuals. We don't really need SNES Mario Circuit 1, 2, and 3 all in the game, for example, the latter should be enough. We also don't really need four more beach-themed courses, but at least one of them would be nice to have in addition.

With that in mind, there is not enough content left for full 48 courses. Best that we can do, without having too much redundancy, is maybe half a Booster Course Pass, three more waves spanning 2024, offering six cups with 24 additional courses. But that's perfectly fine and more than enough, because in two years we might be already looking at the successor to the Nintendo Switch, where the next Mario Kart game will become a big topic.

As for the RMX courses, they could serve the same purpose as the city tours in the original Booster Course Pass, where each cup could come with one remixed course. They are more three-dimensional and are generally more interesting than the remaining SNES counterparts, with the best examples being RMX Ghost Valley 1 and RMX Vanilla Lake 2. It would be a good way of featuring the remaining themes and music from Super Mario Kart, without adding various boring, short, and flat tracks.

Even with the corresponding theme already present, they might want to give the RMX courses a shot, because they still offer something unique. This is mainly the case with RMX Donut Plains 1, which feels very different from SNES Donut Plains 3 with its gigantic lily pads. RMX Bowser's Castle 1 on the other hand doesn't hold a candle to much more polished GBA Bowser's Castle 4, one of the latest additions to Mario Kart Tour.

It may also be possible to combine the RMX courses of the same theme into one, like it was done with the different courses for each city. It's not the same thing, since you're not taking different routes through the same map, but these courses are so simple that it should be possible to put them together somehow into one longer track. Take RMX Rainbow Road 1 and 2, for example, which could then be used for the final cup.

Finally, it's not out of the question that they might make something entirely new for a second pass or maybe give us something that was originally planned for Mario Kart Tour, but didn't make the cut. Of course, any larger efforts are best saved for the next game, but they could continue the trend of giving us one "new" / unlabeled course per wave. And similar to the RMX courses, they could make extensive use of existing assets to throw something together. As an example, imagine a new final course based on the infamous Champion's Road from Super Mario 3D World. That would be crazy,

About cups, it's surprising how easy it is to find more power-ups for cup names, even if we're just going by items from Mario Kart games:

• Mega Mushroom Cup
• Ice Flower Cup
• Shine Cup
• Bullet Bill Cup
• Boo Cup
• Blooper Cup
• Bob-omb Cup
• Super Horn Cup
  
• Crazy Eight Cup

There's enough there to cover what we need, where some of it may even become a fantastic fit for what courses there are left. For example, a "Boo Cup" could come with RMX Ghost Valley 1 and/or DS Luigi's Mansion. And the Crazy Eight would be a great choice to end things for Mario Kart 8 after ten years, honoring the game with a cup that will most certainly remain exclusive.

More Drivers

You may argue that there aren't enough (interesting) courses left in Mario Kart Tour for a second Booster Course Pass, but when looking at the characters we certainly get a different picture, because they've covered only about half of the unique characters that were introduced to the mobile game.

• Captain Toad
• Chargin' Chuck
• Dixie Kong
• Donkey Kong Jr.
• Hammer / Boomerang / Fire / Ice Bro
• King Bob-omb
• Meowser
  
• Monty Mole
• Nabbit
• Poochy

With Donkey Kong Jr. we even have one more classic character left, but this is a weird one, because he looks like an animated SNES sprite in 3D. This may not work or look absolutely horrible in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. In any case, there are enough options left to fill an entire new row of eight more characters at the bottom of the current character select screen.

They could split this up into three waves again, similar to the first Booster Course Pass. The first wave could feature the Hammer Bro, where the other three Bros are added as alternate character variants, like they did with Birdo and all her colors. The second wave could have another monster trio with Chargin' Chuck, King Bob-omb, and Monty Mole. And the final wave could focus on different heroes with Captain Toad, Nabbit, Poochy, and finally Dixie Kong.

This isn't even taking all the character costumes into consideration. Mario Kart Tour has tons of them, where they could add a variant to almost every character in the game. There's Dr. Mario, Builder Luigi, Wedding Peach, Aurora Rosalina, Gladiator Donkey Kong, Vampire Waluigi, Cowboy Wario, Pirate Bowser Jr., Astronaut Toadette, White Tanooki Mario, King Boo from Luigi's Mansion 3... The list goes on and on. It's crazy and they could make good use of this as well.

Speaking of costumes, the last wave of the Booster Course Pass saw the addition of new Mii racing suits and here we have a very similar picture to the characters. They didn't even cover half of them and there are some weird omissions:

• Bronze, Silver and Gold
• Dry Bones
• Iggy, Larry, Lemmy, Ludwig, Morton, Roy and Wendy
• King Boo
• Waluigi
• Hammer Bro
• King Bob-omb
• Monty Mole
• Nabbit
• Cat
• Pastry
• Rocky Wrench
• Santa
• Reindeer
• Roaring Racer
• Spike
• Piranha Plant
• Fish Bone

There are several suits left based on the base game characters, like Dry Bones or King Boo. The latter glows in the dark, which is really cool. Waluigi could be added via amiibo, like Daisy in update 3.0.0, where it's odd that they left this out for some reason, which may even be an indicator that they are still planning for more updates and DLC.

This time they could also split this up into multiple waves. One wave could focus on the Koopalings, for example, while the last wave comes with the suits based on the new characters, like Nabbit or King Bob-omb. And there is some other cool stuff left, like the Fish Bone Suit, which they could mix in there.

As for the Bronze, Silver and Gold Mii Racing Suits, those could become an unlockable bonus for scoring the respective trophies in all cups for all modes in the game. This actually makes so much sense that it's also weird that they haven't done this already, similar to the Waluigi Suit.

More Vehicle Parts

Let's come to what's probably the most important part, because this is something the Booster Course Pass didn't even look at: Mario Kart Tour has over 300 karts and over 200 gliders. To be fair, these numbers include many color variants, but there is still a lot of stuff in there with a good mix of classic karts from previous Mario Kart games and also a large number of new karts.

This could even become the big focus of a second round of DLC. Instead of a "Booster Course Pass Vol. 2" we could be looking at a "Booster Kart Pass", which also happens to add some more characters and courses along the way. This would completely justify the continuation of the DLC.

There are two problems with this, however. One is that the karts in Mario Kart Tour come with pre-selected tires. It may not be as easy to port them into the customization system of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, where every tire can be combined with every kart. This might even be the reason why the Booster Course Pass doesn't have any vehicle parts to offer, but it looks like everything is based on Mario Kart 7 anyway, where they had the same system. In the least they could have given us the missing karts from that game and also a variety of gliders, where those should work in any case.

The second issue is that there are no bikes in Mario Kart Tour and this is a big problem, because Mario Kart 8 Deluxe first and foremost lacks inward drifting bikes. There are only five in the game, one of them being the original Master Cycle, and with a DLC focused on vehicle parts you'd expect to get the Dolphin Dasher or the Magicruiser, where Mario Kart Tour doesn't have those. They could repurpose Kamek's Zoom Broom into a bike, but that's about it...

Conclusion

There is just so much stuff left in Mario Kart Tour that they could easily entertain another season of DLC for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It wouldn't be entirely the same thing, though. There wouldn't be as many courses, maybe only half as much. The characters would all be new ones from the mobile game. And they may even focus on adding more karts over anything else. But that's not necessarily a bad thing and would help to make a second pass more distinct from the first one.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Booster Course Pass (Review)

Mario Kart 8 is quite the extraordinary Nintendo game. In six months it will become ten years old, as it originally was released on the Wii U in May 2014. In its first year it saw several additions of DLC, both paid and free, which is where The Legend of Zelda became part of the fun with the Hyrule Circuit, Link as a driver, and the introduction of the Master Cycle. Including all that, the DLC added 16 new courses at the time, bringing the total to 48, seven new drivers, and 16 kart parts.

In 2017 the game then got ported onto Nintendo's brandnew console, the Nintendo Switch, as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. This version featured a reworked Battle Mode with eight courses, but also three returning characters (Bowser Jr., Dry Bones, and King Boo), three new characters (the Inklings and Gold Mario), and three new vehicles. The next year then saw the free addition of Link and the Master Cycle Zero from Breath of the Wild, but this looked to be the end of things...

So, it was quite surprising when Nintendo announced the Booster Course Pass in early 2022, offering 48 courses from past Mario Kart games, doubling the total number of cups and courses in the game. In its second half it then also added eight more drivers and 17 Mii racing suits, giving you even more value than what was initially advertised.

To say that the Booster Course Pass isn't worth its money would be totally ridiculous. For what's less than half of the base game's price you're effectively getting a whole new Mario Kart game, which uses Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as its foundation. You can also acquire access to all its content via the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, but that access will be revoked once your subscription runs out. And you can even play the courses without any of this online or in wireless play, as long as one of the other players has the Booster Course Pass or the NSO Expansion Pack. So, it's overall quite generous.

The Booster Course Pass really has turned Mario Kart 8 Deluxe into "Mario Kart 9" at this point, but there is a catch to this: a ninth Mario Kart game already exists with Mario Kart Tour for mobile devices. And it quickly became clear that this is where everything was coming from. With the Booster Course Pass Nintendo has ported over a big chunk of the contents from Mario Kart Tour into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to create the Mario Kart game of this generation.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. First of all, the Booster Course Pass wouldn't exist without this particular effort. It's a project that probably co-exists with the development of the next Mario Kart game for the next Nintendo system, where Nintendo is cleverly putting together what they have, in order to offer the fans something "new". And many people don't play Mario Kart Tour, where for them these contents really will be new.

Everything also got fully remastered and this is a great way of preserving what was done for the mobile game, because service games are not forever and there will be a time where you won't be able to play Mario Kart Tour any longer. And even if you play it on a regular basis, the game doesn't let you freely pick courses, since you're bound to the current "tour". So, the ability to play many of these tracks any time you want, on a proper Nintendo console with much prettier graphics, may also be very appealing in any case.

Here's what made it from Mario Kart Tour into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at the end:

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

 

Turnip Cup:

• Tour New York Minute
• SNES Mario Circuit 3
• N64 Kalimari Desert
• DS Waluigi Pinball

 

Propeller Cup:

• Tour Sydney Sprint
• GBA Snow Land
• Wii Mushroom Gorge
• Sky-High Sundae

 

Rock Cup:

• Tour London Loop
• GBA Boo Lake
• 3DS Alpine Pass / Rock Rock Mountain
  
• Wii Maple Treeway

 

Moon Cup:

• Tour Berlin Byways
• DS Peach Gardens
• Merry Mountain
• 3DS Rainbow Road

 

Fruit Cup:

• Tour Amsterdam Drift
• GBA Riverside Park
• Wii DK Summit / DK's Snowboard Cross
• Yoshi's Island

 

Boomerang Cup:

• Tour Bangkok Rush
• DS Mario Circuit
• GCN Waluigi Stadium
• Tour Singapore Speedway

 

Feather Cup:

• Tour Athens Dash
• GCN Daisy Cruiser
• Wii Moonview Highway
• Squeaky Clean Sprint

 

Cherry Cup:

• Tour Los Angeles Laps
• GBA Sunset Wilds
• Wii Koopa Cape
• Tour Vancouver Velocity

 

Acorn Cup:

• Tour Rome Avanti
• GCN DK Mountain
• Wii Daisy Circuit
• Piranha Plant Cove

 

Spiny Cup:

• Tour Madrid Drive
• 3DS Rosalina's Ice World
• SNES Bowser Castle 3
• Wii Rainbow Road
  

It's quite the list and there should be something in there for every generation of Mario Kart fans, though some get treated better than others. Fans of Mario Kart Wii will find HALF of the game's original courses in here, bringing the total up to 11, where this was clearly favored over everything else. Each wave came with at least one Wii course and four of the other retro courses were also present in the Wii title. It was the big console Mario Kart before Mario Kart 8 and also very popular, so it's understandable to a degree, but they could have swapped one or two of its courses in favor of the something else for a better balance.

The biggest losers are Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 with only two courses each. At least SNES Bowser Castle 3 and N64 Kalimari Desert are very impressive with their changes, but it can't make up for the fact that they didn't really care too much about the originals, which isn't true for Mario Kart Tour. It had a lot more to offer from these games and even a variety of remixed courses of the SNES classic, but it wasn't meant to be.

Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and Mario Kart DS both got a bit more with three courses each, where GCN DK Mountain, GCN Waluigi Stadium and DS Waluigi Pinball are the highlights. The biggest surprise is probably that DS Airship Fortress didn't make the cut, however, which certainly is a huge fan favorite. But they also had other good options, like GCN Mushroom Bridge, GCN Dino Dino Jungle, or DS Luigi's Mansion...

Mario Kart: Super Circuit was the secret star with five courses to its name, where each wave came with one except for the last. A lot of love was put into remaking these courses in Mario Kart Tour, making them more three-dimensional by adding some height. It's not entirely on par with GBA Cheese Land and GBA Ribbon Road from the original Wii U DLC, but it's still quite nice for some enjoyable short courses. Though, it's a shame that they couldn't preserve the sunset in GBA Sunset Wilds for some reason (it's there in Tour), where this course probably should have been swapped with something else.

Next in the ranking is Mario Kart 7. Now, while there are only four of its original courses present, seven of its retro courses can be found in the Booster Course Pass as well, where it has profited from the Wii hype quite a lot. In fact, all four of its retro Wii courses are there. Mario Kart 7 was seemingly used as a basis for Mario Kart Tour, so many of the new versions of the courses feature elements from that game, like the added underwater section in GCN Daisy Cruiser or the blue glider mushroom in Wii Mushroom Gorge. With this in mind, it's actually surprising that the Nintendo 3DS title didn't even see more additions, e.g. 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar, 3DS Wario Shipyard, or more of its fantastic retro courses, like the aforementioned DS Airship Fortress.

But the biggest chunk of the Booster Course Pass comes from Mario Kart Tour itself. 20 of the 48 courses are from that game, whether they are labeled as "Tour" or as completely new. The "Tour" label was reserved exclusively for the city tour tracks, where each cup starts with one and two also end on one, for a total of 14.

This features cities from all over the real world, where Europe is the Mario Kart Wii of continents, meaning that half of the cities are from there. Curiously, they didn't add anything from Africa or South America, where Cairo and Rio de Janeiro seem like the most obvious candidates. But the development of Mario Kart Tour came to an end, so we will most likely never see these cities in Mario Kart, unless the game gets a successor in the future.

With the city courses also comes the big new mechanic of the Booster Course Pass: re-routing. Each city has at least three different variants in Mario Kart Tour, where they share the same map, but take different routes through that map. For Mario Kart 8 Deluxe these variants were all merged into one course, where for each lap it directs you onto a different route with the help of the new arrow fields. It's a cheap solution and makes it easy to get out-of-bounds on certain ends, but it enables an experience that is entirely unique to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

It's technically similar to the sectioned courses, like Mount Wario or the N64 Rainbow Road, but you may drive through certain roads twice or even in reverse, which then lets you potentially run into incoming traffic of other racers. As a result, every lap is entirely unique, where you get a lot more out of these courses from the Booster Course Pass. But it can also make them confusing and very hard to learn, where going into them for the first time can be a mess.

Piranha Plant Cove, which is one of the remaining new courses, also makes use of this mechanic, but the rest are more straight-forward. It's questionable why these six courses are labeled as "new", since most of them originated from Mario Kart Tour as well. Well, two got into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe first, briefly before they also appeared in Tour, but in the end everything was first and foremost made for the mobile game. There are some very simple seasonal courses here, with Sky-High Sundae and Merry Mountain, but also some absolute highlights, like Yoshi's Island, which was based on the beloved SNES game...

However, one of the original courses from Mario Kart Tour went missing, which is Piranha Plant Pipeline. We can only speculate why it didn't make the cut, but it's rather odd that they left out a single course in the end, out of 21. It's the most glaring omission in all of this and it only has been playable in Mario Kart Tour once so far, making this a rarity.

Overall, the selection of courses is a mixed bag. There is a lot from Mario Kart Tour and Mario Kart Wii in there, whether you want it or not. We got two more Rainbow Roads for a total of five and four more circuit tracks, where there is now a circuit from every Mario Kart game in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Meanwhile there are only two Bowser Castles in the game, but at least there is one more now and an excellent one at that.

Waluigi and Daisy saw quite some love in the course selection to make up for the fact that they didn't have anything to their names in the base game. And meanwhile Luigi still hasn't gotten a single race course in the entire game... At least he was one of the few battle courses with GCN Luigi's Mansion, where there have been no additions to that mode, sadly, even though Mario Kart Tour offers a few battle courses of its own. It may not be the greatest selection, but considering that the new Battle Mode was the big selling point of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe initially, it's a shame that we didn't even get one of them.

Quality-wise the courses are also a mixed bag. The visual difference between the base game and the DLC courses was absolutely jarring in the beginning, where courses like DS Shroom Ridge looked like the were directly ripped from Mario Kart Tour and recycled old course elements, like the ever-same vehicles from N64 Toad's Turnpike. There was also an apparent lack of anti-gravity and underwater sections.

But by now the Booster Course Pass offers some of the best-looking courses in the entire game, like the 3DS and Wii Rainbow Roads, and introduced many new track elements, like the half-pipes from Mario Mart Wii, the Bob-omb cars, giant Wigglers, penguins, and more. And there are some courses that make excellent usage of the underwater and anti-gravity driving modes in the DLC. You can really see how the team behind the Booster Course Pass has learned and evolved over the past two years, potentially even taking the early feedback into the heart.

Drivers and Mii Racing Suits

Part of that early feedback could also have been the lack of any other additions, where Mario Kart Tour has a lot more to offer than just courses. We don't know whether this was planned from the beginning or not, but they certainly didn't advertise that they were also going to add more characters before the fourth wave in 2023. And in the end we got eight in total:

• Birdo
• Petey Piranha
• Wiggler
• Kamek
• Peachette
  
• Diddy Kong
• Funky Kong
• Pauline
  

Out of the many, many characters present in Mario Kart Tour, they have prioritized the ones from past Mario Kart games. We finally got Diddy Kong and Birdo back, who had appeared in both Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and Mario Kart Wii, but got left out in Mario Kart 8 for some reason, until now. Then there's Petey Piranha from Double Dash!!, Funky Kong from Mario Kart Wii, and Wiggler from Mario Kart 7. And with these additions the roster finally feels very much complete (unless you really are a big fan of R.O.B. or the Honey Queen, but they are not even in Tour).

They've also included some of the new characters in Mario Kart Tour, where Kamek and Pauline were without a doubt the most popular choices... And then there's Peachette, who got in over characters like Dixie Kong, Nabbit, or King Bob-omb.

It's hard to complain about something that is essentially a bonus, but in the end it would have been better if Nintendo had planned this from the start and maybe charged a little more for the Booster Course Pass. With more time and money we could have potentially gotten more of the characters, leaving little to desire. But for the most part they went with the best possible choices.

The new Mii racing suits leave a similar picture. It was a big surprise addition coming with the last wave and they've added a total of 17, all from Mario Kart Tour. These costumes are quite creative, have their own trick animations, and really make the Mii racers a lot more fun to use, where it's fantastic that Nintendo has added these on top as well. But there is a lot more left where they came from and this could have been distributed evenly over all waves right from the start.

And one area that the Booster Course Pass didn't touch at all are the karts and gliders. There are over 700 vehicle parts in Mario Kart Tour, lots of them from past Mario Kart games, and they didn't add a single one to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe during all this effort. It may have to do with the fact that karts and tires aren't separate any longer in Mario Kart Tour, but it's still so similar to Mario Kart 7 that there could have been a way around this...

Conclusion

If you enjoy Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, then the Booster Course Pass is without a must-have, adding a whole Mario Kart game's worth of content on top of what is already there. For this they have ported and remastered the contents from Mario Kart Tour, leaving a mixed bag, both in variety and quality. But overall it's all nice to have in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, adding a ton of value to the game.

The biggest complaint about the Booster Course Pass is that they didn't go all-in with this, because there are lot of good courses, drivers, Mii suits, and other contents left in Mario Kart Tour, which feels like a waste. But these complaints would become void if Nintendo were to announce more of this DLC in the (near) future.

Booster Course Pass: Wave 6 Impressions

It's over. The final wave of the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was released this week and all 48 new courses are now available after two years of updates. It has the most additional content of any wave with four new characters and 17 Mii racing suits, but also comes with some of the best courses in the DLC.

Acorn Cup:

• Tour Rome Avanti
• GCN DK Mountain
• Wii Daisy Circuit
• Piranha Plant Cove

 

Spiny Cup:

• Tour Madrid Drive
• 3DS Rosalina's Ice World
• SNES Bowser Castle 3
• Wii Rainbow Road
  

The biggest surprise in the end was the omission of Piranha Plant Pipeline, also known as "Pipe Canyon", the only exclusive course left in Mario Kart Tour, besides the RMX tracks, which didn't make the cut. This was certainly unexpected, despite the fact that its English name is way too similar to the existing Piranha Plant Cove in Wave 6, but there was the idea that the Booster Course Pass would preserve all 21 original courses from Tour, where it falls only one short...

It was replaced by 3DS Rosalina's Ice World (or potentially even Wii Moonview Highway from the previous wave), so let's talk about that one first. There are actually quite a number of 3DS courses left in Mario Kart Tour, as well as tracks with a snow / ice theme, where they have picked the overlap of both for something that feels very seasonal, basically this year's Merry Mountain.

Like many 3DS courses, this one comes with an underwater section, something that was heavily underutilized before the fifth wave. It's also the only course in existence to Rosalina's name, so it's a decent choice overall.

I personally always liked this course in Mario Kart 7, mainly because of its comforting music, and it looks absolutely gorgeous in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. As with GBA Snow Land, they are nailing the ice visuals. The part where you go around the large hole after the start can be a bit annoying with the camera angle, however, and for some reason you can now land and drive on the plateau above the ice there. But it's off-road, so you don't really want to get up there... They've also added the Wii half-pipes to the section afterwards and a shortcut near the end, where both of this is not even present in Tour, so they've put quite some work into this one.

The second course that rarely anyone saw coming for the final wave is Wii Daisy Circuit. It's another track that I personally found very comforting in the past, and it has a beautiful evening theme. They only thing that stands out visually is that they've reused the brick road texture from GBA Sky Gardens yet again for the part around the fountains. Sydney Sprint also has this texture everywhere, for example, and it stands out quite a bit.

Otherwise, the only thing you can say against this is that there already have been too many Wii courses in the Booster Course Pass and that they could have balanced things out a bit more. But with Wii Daisy Circuit there is now a circuit track from every single Mario Kart game in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe:

• SNES Mario Circuit 3
• N64 Royal Raceway
• GBA Mario Circuit
• GCN Yoshi Circuit
• DS Mario Circuit
• Wii Daisy Circuit
• 3DS Toad Circuit

So, this inclusion was probably very much intentional and we have to blame some of the other Wii courses for the overabundance. But not Wii Rainbow Road, because this is another step of getting every Rainbow Road into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, where this is the fifth one. And it's absolutely gorgeous.

This has always been my favorite Rainbow Road and I love that it's back. They even brought back the meteor effect whenever you fall down, which is a great attention to detail. It's also clearly themed around Super Mario Galaxy, where together with Rosalina's Ice World the Spiny Cup will make fans of that game and Rosalina very happy.

The only complaint here is that this course is very long, probably the longest course in the entire game, where I keep thinking that the race is over after the 2nd lap. And maybe it should be.

Overall this is just a fantastic finale for the Booster Course Pass, they couldn't have possibly chosen a better (retro) course from Mario Kart Tour to end things, considering that everything in the pass comes from the mobile game. And even if we had the full selection of every remaining Mario Kart course available, this still would have been my pick in the end. (But I also wouldn't mind getting more DLC with some of the other Rainbow Roads.)

Another course that I personally always loved to play in Mario Kart Wii, even though it was part of its retro selection, was GCN DK Mountain. There is just something special about being shot with a barrel cannon up to a volcano and then driving downhill into the jungle. With the re-introduction of Diddy and Funky Kong this was the best choice from the remaining Double Dash!! courses and they really made this course glow, it looks very bright and joyful.

They also added a couple of DK barrels, so the course feels a lot more like something from a Donkey Kong Country game, and they've brought back the "DK" logo on the barrel cannon, which was missing in Mario Kart Tour. You can still do the shortcut near the end where you jump over the chasm, so that's great. The only complaint is that it can be quite hard to trick on the wiggling bridge on the end. At least I'm feeling like playing Mario Kart Wii again when I shake the controller like crazy during this part of the track...

There is one more classic course to talk about with SNES Bowser Castle 3 and this one is fire. After SNES Mario Circuit 3 had stayed very, very faithful to the flat and simple design of the original Super Mario Kart courses, this remake is absolutely wild, like the complete opposite. You can still recognize the original layout, but it's just a lot more vertical. The whole track is set on a lavafall and makes great use of anti-gravity when going up there. The walls between the three lanes before the U-turn now are very high and you can even drive on top of them, though it's quite tricky to do so.

This remake was already fantastic in Mario Kart Tour, but they really outdid themselves with the visuals in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, where it looks a lot grittier. The version in Tour was a lot cleaner, but now it's what you would imagine a diabolical lava castle to look like.

Sadly, this is the only classic Bowser Castle that we ever got in Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe), where there also would have been others available in Mario Kart Tour, but they've picked the most interesting candidate from that selection. It's a short and intense course, similar to GBA Boo Lake, but those can be a lot of fun.

All roads lead to Rome, and with that saying in mind Tour Rome Avanti should have been in the Spiny Cup, instead of Madrid. Originally, it was in one cup together with Athens Dash, the Feathers Cup, but they probably had to reshuffle things. Maybe it was because it comes with a couple of new elements, the Fuzzies and the Rocky Wrenches, which needed some extra work (and cartridge space, where only the first five waves made it onto one), we probably won't ever know.

The highlight of Rome is without a doubt the Colosseum, where you drive around the inside of the walls to its top in the first lap and then right through the arena in the final lap, where two Chain Chomps are gnawing through the floor. It's quite memorable, but the rest of the course not so much.

There are a lot of tight streets and things can get very chaotic if you haven't learned the course and its routes yet. This is true for many of the city tours, but this is one of the worst offenders. In one part it gives you these red directional arrow fields to the left, only for the course to take a right turn immediately, which is super confusing. Rome also puts you into incoming traffic of other players, where the front-runners will meet the guys in the back, which is rare and a lot more surprising here than in some of the other city courses.

Tour Madrid Drive on the other hand feels almost straight-forward in comparison and is not all that spectacular, save for its excellent music. It was the last city tour finished for Mario Kart Tour, so that's most likely why it ended up in the final wave, but you may question the positioning in the final cup. It seems like this was purely done because the course ends on a soccer field, where you drive through the goal, because soccer / football is super popular in Europe and Japan, so this will get a lot of people excited (but not me).

It's a nice idea, though, and the Shoe Goombas playing with gigantic soccer balls are funny to see. There is also a Wiggler sleeping on the Plaza Mayor during the first lap, which then wakes up for the second lap, which is also quite entertaining. In this area you can also find Yoshis and Toads sitting at outdoor restaurant tables and you can drive right through them for a nice shortcut, but they are absolutely gigantic, as always... The art gallery is lovely, but otherwise there isn't much to say about this track.

Last but not least, we have the Piranha Plant Cove, which is the only "new" course in the Booster Course Pass to consist of three different routes, like most of the city tours. In Mario Kart Tour all these routes are separate tracks, so you also have Piranha Plant Cove 2 and 3 in that game, but it's all merged together into one for the Booster Course Pass, which is also true for all the cities.

And this works really well for Piranha Plant Cove, where it has become a wonderful journey through some underwater ruins, filled with giant eels, floating Toads, and lots of Petey Piranha Statues, but also a shipwreck and more. It's a beautiful course, which gives you a lot to look at, but also gives you the time to look at everything, because it's very wide and long. At least this makes it work really well in 200cc.

The majority of the course also takes place underwater, which is an absolute rarity and makes up for the lack of this mechanic in the early DLC. During the sections where you go on land you can also spot some Piantas, the folks from Super Mario Sunshine, but also some actual Piranha Plants. It's more of a "Petey Piranha Cove" otherwise. And the music is catchy as well.

The Drivers

We already knew since the last Nintendo Direct what characters we are getting with this wave as something to look forward to, because we now got half of the characters in the Booster Course Pass all at once:

• Diddy Kong
• Funky Kong
• Pauline
• Peachette
  

The only oddball here is Peachette, who by herself isn't the most terrible idea for a new character. She looks really cute, especially in her biker outfit, and is  more creative than Pink Gold Peach. But given that this is (probably) the final DLC character there are far more interesting characters still left in Mario Kart Tour, basically begging to be ported over into the fun.

For example, if they wanted another female character, they could have gone with Dixie Kong instead, who would have fit right in with the rest in this wave, for a Donkey Kong family reunion. Or if they wanted a character from a modern 2D Mario game, then they could have picked Nabbit, who also appears in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. But instead we got this weird fusion of Peach and Toadette. Maybe they did it for the memes, because that Super Crown power-up really gave people quite some ideas...

It doesn't really matter now, we can't change it and Nintendo won't change it, unless they are planning more DLC, in which case the inclusion of Peachette will be totally fine. In any case, prepare to see her quite often, because she ended up in the same weight class as Peach, Daisy, Yoshi, and Birdo, which means that she is hitting that current sweet spot in the meta.

What matters more is that we finally got Diddy Kong back after more than nine years of Mario Kart 8. He first appeared in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! as a partner for Donkey Kong and then returned in Mario Kart Wii, but for some reason got kicked off the roster with Mario Kart 7. He was the most glaring omission and a lot of people will be happy that he's finally back.

And he brought his distant cousin along with him, the star of Mario Kart Wii, the one and only Funky Kong. He's as fun as he has always been, where he's doing some cool tricks now with his surfboard and offers some of the most energetic voice lines in the entire game. With him everyone from Mario Kart Wii returns, making this the only Mario Kart game since Super Circuit that has all of its characters present in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Though, there is now always only one character missing for the rest of the games: Donkey Kong Jr. from Super Mario Kart, the Paratroopa from Double Dash!!, R.O.B. from Mario Kart DS, and the Honey Queen from Mario Kart 7. Otherwise, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has it all, if you ignore the plethora of characters in Mario Kart Tour.

Speaking of, one more character who was introduced in the mobile game to the Mario Kart universe also made the cut: Pauline. Her horn offers a nice reference to her very first appearance, in the arcade classic of Donkey Kong. Since then she has mainly made a name for herself as the mayor of New Donk City in Super Mario Odyssey, where she has become the rising star of the Super Mario franchise afterwards, appearing in all the latest sports games. So, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe shall be no exception and it's good to have her.

Her stunt animations are phenomenal – she's pulling out her microphone and even doing a laser show in one of them. She's in the same weight class as the Links and Rosalina, which is what I like to use the most, so she has quickly become a new favorite of mine. She also looks really good in her biker suit, which is super shiny and lets her wear her hair in a lush ponytail.

But that's not all... Out of nowhere Nintendo decided to also add 18 new Mii racing suits, making the usage of the Mii racer a lot more interesting and fun. So far we only had the costumes that can be unlocked via amiibo, but 17 of the new suits are unlocked right away as part of the Booster Course Pass and most of them are quite creative.

The ? Block, for example, is very catchy. Or the Dolphin Suit will make fans of the Dolphin Dasher a bit happier. There is a Goomba, a Blooper, and a Chain Chomp if you ever wanted to play as these monsters, where their faces are painted to the back of the helmet, so you and the players behind you can always see them. And all of these suits come with different animations for the stunts, where it's almost like getting 17 new characters.

As everything else in the Booster Course Pass, these Mii racing outfits come from Mario Kart Tour, where they've ported over less than half of them. Curiously, they've added a bunch of outfits based on the new characters in the Booster Course Pass with Birdo, Wiggler, and Petey Piranha. The latter looks even quite similar to the real deal from behind. At the same time they've avoided costumes of any playable characters that didn't make the cut, like Nabbit or King Bob-omb, where those could have acted as consolation prices. But maybe that's exactly what they didn't want to offer with this...

There is also one new Mii racing suit unlocked via amiibo with Daisy, which is also curious, because they could have done the exact same thing for Waluigi, who also has a Mii costume in Mario Kart Tour and an amiibo available, but they chose not to. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe that they are saving some stuff for later, but we'll get to this in a separate post.

The Daisy Suit came as part of the version 3.0.0 update, so you don't have to purchase the Booster Course Pass for this, but you will need her amiibo. And this leads us right to the last topic...

Version 3.0.0

For the final wave of the Booster Course Pass Nintendo decided to release a major update of the game, instead of making version 2.5.0 for some reason. Maybe it's because they've released a physical version of the game in Japan that comes with the DLC, but only with the first five waves, where this is now going beyond what's on the cartridge. The update itself doesn't necessarily justify this jump, where there is only one big addition and that's the new music player:

Here you can listen to the soundtrack of all the courses, including the Battle Mode courses. Now the controls for switching between the base game and DLC courses with the L and R button finally make more sense when there's a third page for the Battle Mode stuff.

For those course where the music alters in certain sections, you can change between the tracks via the Y button at any time. For the Animal Crossing course this lets you listen to the different soundtracks for the four seasonal variants, but it will start over from the beginning in this case. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a way of changing to the front-running versions of each music track, where this is the only complaint about this excellent new feature.

The character select screen has been updated as well to make space for four more characters, instead of just two. For this they have put both Villagers back into one slot, like it used to be on the Wii U. And then they've done the same thing for the Inklings, reducing the presence of guest characters quite a bit.

For characters that have multiple variants, like Link, the Inklings, characters in different colors, and now also the Villager, it remembers and displays the variant that you've used last on the roster, which is new. As you can see above, I have used the Green Birdo and White Yoshi at some point (probably months ago), and this is now how they are shown, which is neat.

As already mentioned, there is a new amiibo suit now with the Daisy Suit, but they've also made it easier to obtain some of the existing Mii suits by making more amiibo eligible. For example, if you want the Hylian Suit, then now you can use any The Legend of Zelda amiibo to unlock it, instead of just certain Links.

There have been slight balance changes, where they've increased the invincibility stat of a variety of drivers and kart parts, but nothing that will change the current meta of Yoshis on Teddy Buggies everywhere. At least the current meta comes in many different colors...

What might drastically change in the competitive scene of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the strategy of "bagging". This got nerfed quite substantially, to quote the patch notes:

Made it so that you can’t acquire strong items when taking an Item Box by stopping or driving in reverse, or taking an Item Box that is in same location multiple times during a race.

This affects entire item box rows, not just single item boxes, so you can't drive continuously through one set any longer in order to obtain that Bullet Bill Star combo that you want so badly. Of course bagging is still possible, but it becomes a lot more risky than it already was. I personally never liked to do it on purpose anyway, so nothing much changes for me, but time will tell how this changes online and competitive play from now on.

If you prefer playing online in self-made lobbies, then you can now share a code, so that people can enter them without being on your friend list, which is certainly useful. It's basically like the arenas in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate now.

And finally, there are new credits for the Booster Course Pass, which show up once you've got a trophy in all of the DLC cups. You can also see them again afterwards by beating either the Moon Cup or the Spiny Cup, the two new cups that end on a Rainbow Road. If you don't have the Booster Course Pass, you can still watch them after having played the new courses online or in wireless play 100 times and then beat any Grand Prix, so that's why this is part of the free update. And that's actually quite considerate.

Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 25

After locating and completing all Shrines of Light in Tears of the Kingdom, my goal was to find the last four missing pieces of armor. While I found one of those, the Climbing Boots, the last missing set turned out to be a dead end, and I've ended up locating and completing all caves instead.

This will be a small update, before I return to Lookout Landing and finally continue the rest of the main quests... Pinky promise!

The Unsolved Mystery of the Zonai Ruins

My theory was (and still is) that there has to be another armor set based on Farosh, which brought me back to the Zonai Ruins, where you can find multiple dragon pillar statues. Those were already there in Breath of the Wild (I've checked), but they have now risen from the ground and have a horn on them, resembling Farosh. If you look closely, you can also see that their inside is made out of the Zonai technology, because the stones are crumbling off on some ends, revealing the slick shrine surface underneath.

Near some of them my treasure chest sensor still goes off, pointing below the ground, where I'm guessing that those might be the chests with the armor. But I already had explored the area for caves a while ago (see entry 20) and I've checked for any missing caves with an offering to the nearby cherry-blossom tree, but it doesn't show any pillars of light at the ruins...

However, one of those dragon statues has also destroyed walls around it, which gives access to a small altar under the ground with a bowl at its feet, just like other Zonai statues or the cherry-blossom trees. It looks like there is a door there that leads you underground, but I have no idea how to open it. I've tried putting all the different body parts of Farosh into the bowl, but nothing ever happened...

I'm clearly missing a quest here that tells me what I need to do... Where is Kass with his accordion when you need him? My best guess is that all of this has something to do with finding Mineru inside the Thunderhead somehow, which I did without any guidance, but maybe it's part of the multiple main quests that I have yet to obtain...

So, I've decided to move on for now. And I'm sure that you probably already know the answer when you're reading this, but don't worry, I will find out soon enough. Being confused from time to time is all part of my journey through this game.

The Unspectacular Search for the Last Caves

While I knew that I probably should return to Lookout Landing and do whatever there is left to do in the story, I wasn't really satisfied with giving up just like that. In the very least I wanted to find the Climbing Boots, so I made it my goal to look for the rest of the caves first. I had seven Bubbul Gems left to find and this felt like the next best milestone after the shrines. And if whatever may be below the Zonai Ruins doesn't count as a regular cave, then I should be able to find them all at this point. Which I was.

My first method was just looking at the map, studying the Hero's Path for any obvious gaps. It sometimes even surprises me in what areas I haven't been at all yet, where it's a bit of a blur with my latest Breath of the Wild playthrough from earlier this year. "Wait, didn't I explore this area already?"

The most obvious omission were huge parts of the Lanayru Wetlands. I've been there early in the game, since I've went for the Water Temple first, but exploration is very limited when you first go there because of all the mud. And I've never really bothered going back down the Zora River after everything was cleared, but I've wanted to look for the rest of Sidon's tablets at some point. They are easy enough to find, since they are in the same locations as in Breath of the Wild, but this wasn't something high on my priority list.

Maybe it should have been higher, because this area turned out to be the cave searching jackpot... Within a couple of hours I've located five of the seven missing caves, all of them around the Zora River and the Upland Zorana, where one of the caves also had the Climbing Boots in them.

Now, that I have the full climbing set with its bonus, I'm also finally starting to make use of it again. As already mentioned the last time, this used to be my favorite set in Breath of the Wild, but in Tears of the Kingdom I've always tried to avoid long climbs as much as possible... Maybe that was because I didn't the right gear for it, however.

The wet area and caves also made me truly appreciate the addition of the Froggy Armor and its "Slip Proof" set bonus. This thing needs to be put into Breath of the Wild, should they ever remaster the game or make a Definitive Edition. It's just so good to finally have this option.

The Lanayru area also offer a bit more variety from the usual cave cost with its wet underground ruins. Combined with Luminous Stones I'm instantly reminded of the original teaser trailer for the game, but sadly none of the caves had this amazing bridge structure...

After this huge success I got into a low, looking for other gaps in my path that could house some caves, but ultimately didn't. I found a lot of Korok Seeds on my way, so there was still some progress, but not exactly the kind of progress that I was looking for...

So, I grew a bit desperate and also had to consider the option that there may caves hidden in places where I've already been. Luckily, the game makes it easy enough to find all caves, because you can always consult this guy:

I already had checked the Faron area and at some point also Death Mountain, but these beams appear much further than what you can immediately see. With the cherry-blossom tree at Death Mountain, for example, it will also activate beams at Akkala, behind the mountain. So, it's easy to miss something if you only do a quick check.

One cave then truly turned out to be at a place where I've been many times: it was above the waterfall at Kakariko Village. Even with the beam showing its location, it took me a bit to find the entrance, and there is nothing really in there, except for some ore and one more Bubbulfrog. But at this point it was just all about those, so I was happy with the discovery.

The last cave then just had to be at the Hebra Mountains. Actually, my next guess was the Gerudo area, but I forgot where its cherry-blossom tree was (should have marked them on the map)... So, I went for Hebra first and quickly spotted it.

It was right at the Rospro Pass, very close to the Skyview Tower. There is even a side quest there, "The Blocked Cave", to help a Rito get inside to look for more food supplies. And I'm not sure how I was able to miss this before, but it's the Hebra Mountains, so whatever... I'll just pretend that the cave at Kakariko was my last one, because this one was at least hidden more cleverly.

Well, not going to lie, this was a bit anticlimactic after how my last shrine truly was something that's very hard to find without the activated Shrine Sensor on your Purah Pad. It  felt like a real accomplishment and the perfect finale for my shrine hunt. This here on the other hand was just completely unspectacular. At least the reward has to be something special... right?

The Unexpected Reward from the Bubbul Gems

If you have followed this blog series, then you should know that I had certain expectations for what's to gain from collecting all the Bubbul Gems for Koltin. I thought that it would be awesome if he could really become a Satori and you were able to summon him at will.

So, it was time to finally find out... And what do you get? What's in it for exploring all caves in Hyrule and collecting 147 Bubbul Gems in total?

You get another piece of fabric, yay... To be fair, Koltin's Fabric glows and looks quite nice. And you already receive plenty of rewards from the first 46 Bubbul Gems, which includes all five monster masks and the whole Mystic Set, so that's eight pieces of armor. This is a lot already.

And after Hestu's Gift everyone should know that going the extra mile with these collectibles is rarely ever worth it in a Zelda game. This makes me wonder if there will be a "Hestu's Fabric" for collecting all 1000 Korok Seeds this time. And I'm sure there is another fabric for completing the Compendium...

Anyway, what happens to Koltin after eating 101 more Bubbul Gems? Does he find true enlightenment and turn into a Satori?

Nope, he just turns into a Blupee and runs off... That's actually quite funny how this ended and I didn't expect this turn of events, but it makes a lot of sense in hindsight. The Japanese and German name for the Bubbulfrogs even gives it away that he never would have reached his goal. According to ZeldaWiki, they are called  "Mayoi", which can mean "inability to reach enlightenment" in Buddhism, which is the opposite of "Satori".

And considering that the Satori was seemingly created in honor of the late Satoru Iwata, Koltin's goal was maybe a bit too ambitious, but I'm sure he's still happy with this outcome. It also makes you wonder if this is how all Blupees get created... Maybe over tens of thousands of years there have been many in the same misguided search of enlightenment.

Kilton then parks his old stall next to the cherry tree on Satori Mountain, as a memorial to his brother Koltin. You have to show him the fabric first, where I wonder how this works if you bring it to the Kochi Dye Shop right away. But maybe you can also show him the Paraglider with it or the game doesn't really care, as long as you've gotten it before... I didn't really test this, but I'm curious to find out later.

The Unsatisfying Gain by Plastic Figurines

Last week the new amiibo for Zelda and Ganondorf were finally released. I guess, it's a good thing that I'm still playing this game, because I wouldn't have much use for them otherwise, at least not until I replay this game in the very distant future. There are so many fabrics in this game that two additional ones probably won't get you playing again if you're already done with Tears of the Kingdom, one way or another...

Well, I've been using the Princess Zelda Fabric a bit, it looks nice and is certainly one of the better designs. The new Ganondorf fabric on the other hand looks like some ugly carpet. The amiibo can also give you the Gloom Sword, but apparently nothing else from where that normally comes from. But I'm not using the amiibo for daily scans anyway, I only save-scum-scanned them all until I got their fabrics and then never used them again, since everything else can now be found within the game.

I suppose, if there were a Master Mode, I would probably use them there more actively, but it felt too much like cheating in the normal difficulty...

Progress:

• Main Quests: 18/23
• Side Adventures: 59/60
• Side Quests: 120/139
  
• Memories: 17/18
• Caves: 147/147
  
• Korok Seeds: 616/1000
• Old Maps: 25/31
• Recipes: 101/228
  
• Map Completion: 84.99%

Remaining Medals:

• Taluses: 73/87
  
• Hinox: 56/69
• Flux Constructs: 33/35
• Froxes: 35/40
  
• Gleeoks: 14/14