Topic: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

I noticed there's no similar warning to "Courses from wave 1 of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Booster Course Pass can be played from March 18th locally or online in Friends and Rivals races, even if only one player owns the Booster Course Pass or has access to it as part of a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership. From March 22nd, courses from wave 1 will also appear in the Random selection when playing Global or Regional races with anyone online." for wave 2 so it's probably added to matchmaking when the 3.0.0 update goes live.

@Grumblevolcano Let's hope! 🤞 I remember I was quite annoyed with having to wait days to race the Wave 1 tracks online, especially since I ONLY play the game online. No interest in racing the boring, easy ass CPU opponents.

Why fix what isn't broken?

@PikaPhantom Judging by the current pattern it looks like Tour will provide 18 new tracks (12 city courses + 6 non-city courses). I'd imagine that wave 3's non-city track would be Merry Mountain because it's likely to release close if not during the holiday season.

@Grumblevolcano Course prefixes were datamined at launch. Overall, there were 14 Tour tracks and 8 unlabeled tracks. But yeah, I do expect Merry Mountain in wave 3

Thought it might be worth bringing up this video. Turns out that datamine from a while back listing what games the tracks will be from was spot on. This is leading to more detailed speculation as to which tracks will be in the future waves. I'm personally happy to see more GCN and Wii tracks such as Wii Rainbow Road having potential to come back.

Here is the full list of which games will be getting a certain amount of tracks. I'll put it in spoilers for people who may not want to see it:

Chances of getting dlc tracks in online races (if all tracks weighted equally for online randomizer)
Wave 1 dlc tracks = 14% of 56 total tracks
Wave 1+2 = 25% of 64 tracks
Wave 1+2+3 = 33% of 72 tracks
Wave 1+2+3+4 = 40% of 80 tracks
Wave 1+2+3+4+5 = 45% of 88 tracks
Wave 1+2+3+4+5+6 = 50% of 96 tracks

Ok one more post about this leak from me: If I had to pick the final remaining stages for the games that I care about, I would go:

@StarPoint Following up a port of an old game with all old courses with DLC 5 years later that consists of more old courses is the last thing we needed. Mario Kart is in desperate need of new content, we basically (there is Tour, but that's 90% old content too) haven't had any in 8 years. 8 YEARS!!! Usually there's only a 3 year gap in between new and original entries, and even counting 8D separately, we still should've had MK9 in 2020 going by that pattern. Previously the longest gap was 6 years between 64 and Super Circuit, we're past that now. So we're definitely in an extraordinarily long and unprecedented drought for the series as a result of them not wanting to put MK9 on Switch. DLC at this point, especially DLC that's just recycling old content, just doesn't cut it when you put everything in perspective.

If they didn't want to make Mario Kart 9 yet, there were better alternatives to hold us over, such as creating a new spinoff/subseries that's different enough not to cannibalize MK8D (a Diddy Kong Racing/Forza Horizons would've been a good choice for that) or a new mode of some kind that gives us a glimpse into what MK9 might be like (similar to what Bowser's Fury is for 3D Mario). Again, something new that experiments with new mechanics and covers new tracks instead of the same tired old tracks we've been playing for the last 5-8 years. I mean, I guess it's better than nothing, but that's probably the only thing that this is actually better than.

This is what I'm expecting based on the prefix datamine.

Rock Cup: London Loop, Luigi's Mansion, Cheep Cheep Island, Rock Rock Mountain
Moon Cup: Vancouver Velocity, Mushroom City, Merry Mountain, 3DS Rainbow Road
Fruit Cup: Amsterdam Drift, Koopa Cape, Airship Fortress, New Nitro Track
Boomerang Cup: Singapore Speedway, Daisy Cruiser, Yoshi Desert, Berlin Byways
Feather Cup: Los Angeles Laps, Toad's Factory, Sunset Wilds, Bangkok Rush
Cherry Cup: Unreleased City Track, Dino Dino Jungle, Vanilla Lake 1 or 2, New Nitro Track
Acorn Cup: Unreleased City Track, Maple Treeway, 3DS Bowser's Castle, New Nitro Track
Spiny Cup: Unreleased City Track, Waluigi Stadium, New Nitro Track, Wii Rainbow Road

Obviously positions of the tracks are mostly uncertainties except for a few that I touch on later but generally feel good about the guesses.

I think Rio and Cairo are very likely city tracks to still come to Tour to represent South America and Africa, respectively. Not sure what another possible city could be. Maybe Beijing or Mexico City.

Datamines have suggested GBA Yoshi Desert and GCN Waluigi Stadium are coming to Tour.

Given that each wave so far has a track that has not been remade previously, Mushroom City and Yoshi Desert fit this requirement. I could see Toad's Factory as another not previously remade track. But that means cutting one of Koopa Cape, Maple Treeeay, or DK Summit. DK Summit is less iconic than the other two so I'm cutting it. I think Wave 6 will have two nitros to end on a high note, though.

I put almost all question marks as new nitros. I did add 3DS Bowser's Castle, though, because it would make sense here since MK8 Deluxe has no retro Bowser's Castles.

Vanilla Lake and Dino Dino Jungle are in the Coconut Mall ad. Rock Rock Mountain in the Rock Cup and 3DS Rainbow Road in the Moom Cup and to end the year on a beloved track make sense. Wii Rainbow Road will be a great sendoff to the DLC.

In contrast, these are the not so good predictions I made before Wave 2 when I did not believe the data mine: https://youtu.be/UTz1gmA1C-0

I do agree that Nintendo's disinterest in putting out a single new racing game has been a bit disappointing and kinda weird.

That being said, there is something worse than nothing, its called free to play mobile games! That's where some of these tracks were stuck on, so that alone makes this a noble decision (that and its actually cheap, compared to average Nintendo pricing). I mean, these tracks are new to me, since why the **** would I want Mario Kart on my phone? And I genuinely don't think its an excuse to not have a new racing game, since I doubt this DLC has a full HD video game team behind it, to say the least.

2003: Nintendo releases Kirby Air Ride, F Zero GX and Mario Kart: Double Dash! in a few months (arguably 1080 Avalanche too)
2017 - 2022: Mario Kart 8 again and more stuff in Mario Kart 8. Also a real toy thing...that's also Mario Kart.

I think there's a reasonable middle ground, Nintendo.

@Bolt_Strike The gap between 64 and Super Circuit was around 4.5 years (December 1996 - July 2001 for Japan and similar gaps for the other regions), not 6 years. The gap between those 2 games were still the longest gap though (close 2nd was between SMK and 64).

@Grumblevolcano Huh, I thought Super Circuit was 2002, must've misread. Anyway, even worse. This is by far the longest drought in Mario Kart history.

@kkslider5552000 Tour actually isn't that bad. The controls are a bit simplistic and limited, but otherwise it works fine as a Mario Kart game. Meanwhile, it actually does a lot of things to the gameplay and mechanics that I wish we'd have seen on the Switch. It has an actual shop to by characters and karts instead of a dumb system where you unlock a random kart after a particular coin total. The tracks all have R, T, and R/T variants which feel like entirely new courses. Special items and missions are back. You can perform frenzies. There's a score system which changes how you race (not sure I like this as being the primary method of competing, but this would be great as an alternate Score Attack mode or something). This is the kind of stuff I would've loved to see on a Mario Kart 9 around this time (along with a wave of new, full featured courses designed around the Switch instead of the barebones Tour tracks that feel like they belong in a SMK remake instead of a proper MK9). But nope, they had to take some of the worst aspects from Tour for this DLC.

I haven't seen it myself (and don't plan on doing so in the slightest) but I'd just like you to answer a question I have: is Double Dash getting representation? We haven't had a single GCN track so far between the first 2 waves and I'm getting a bit antsy since those are some of my favourite tracks in the entire series so if you could confirm that for me, I'd greatly appreciate it!

@Fizza It does get representation, and I shall say you will probably be happy with the number once they're all out. I've been clamoring for more DD and Wii tracks myself, and I'll just say that I was pretty happy when I saw this list.

The Japan trailer kind of confirmed this but N64 Kalimari Desert has a different route each lap including the Kalimari Desert 2 Lap 2 layout from Tour where you drive on the train tracks.

@Grumblevolcano I remember when I played the track for the first time in 7, I always wanted to drive through that section so this pleases me immensely. I really hope other retro tracks that were modified in Tour keep their modification when they come over to 8 Deluxe because it can make it so much more exciting to revisit them when they aren't quite the same (kind of like Choco Mountain and Shroom Ridge from the first wave).

@Grumblevolcano So how many laps does it have? I hope it isn't 2 instead of the standard 3..

@vio Given what we've seen in the trailer, I'd guess 3 laps. Something like:

• Lap 1 - Normal Kalimari Desert route
• Lap 2 - Kalimari Desert 2 lap 1
• Lap 3 - Kalimari Desert 2 lap 2