Topic: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Just finished playing on the wave 2 courses at least once! I played them all in Grand Prix (150cc), and a few of them in online multiplayer. I'll go ahead and rank them as well, though I have a hard time ranking stuff in general, especially since every course is so different from each other.

1) Kalimari Desert
This was one of the courses that I wanted for the BCP, and I'm happy with how it turned out here. It's a nostalgic course for me, and I love the old west theme and the train going around! I like how you'd go on the train tracks as well, and the remixed music here is nice. It's definitely the best version of the course, I find - pleasantly surprised with this one!

2) Sydney Sprint
Really enjoyed racing on this course, too. Might just be the best real-world course in the BCP, and I love its visuals and music. It's also surprisingly long for a Mario Kart course, with many turns, but it's not too long I don't think.

3) New York Minute
I must admit that I'm a little biased towards this one, because - fun fact - I'm from the state of New York! I've visited NYC in real life a few times as well. As for the course itself, it's another fun one. Lots of turns of course, and I adore the NYC theme. I will also add that the music is absolutely fantastic - I might even say it's got the best music out of everything from wave 2!

4) Waluigi Pinball
This was one of my favorites from Mario Kart DS, and I'd say it's just as good as it's always been. Love the pinball theme and how it's got its own item roulette sound. It's got the same music as DS Wario Stadium - kinda wish they remixed the music for this one course, but it's no big deal.

5) Mario Circuit 3
A simple, yet classic course with quite a few turns, and I've always loved the SNES Mario Circuit music. I kinda wish they picked Mario Circuit 4 over this one, since that has not been remade for a Mario Kart game, but it'll do.

6) Sky-High Sundae
A pretty solid track overall, and I love the ice cream theme. What's also noteworthy is that it's an anti-gravity course, I think it's the first BCP course to have any sort of anti-gravity section. Kinda odd that the center railings give you spin boosts, and the visuals could be a little less...bright, I guess. I did fall off course in around the second half because of that, I didn't know I would until it happened.

7) Mushroom Gorge
It's not one of my absolute favorites, but it's still a decent one. I definitely like the bouncy mushrooms here! My only real critique is that it seemed to just reuse the original music, though I was told that it's remixed ever so slightly.

8) Snow Land
Again, not one of my favorites, but it's still decent. Just a bit simple, I find. I do like the remixed music at least!

I might like this batch of courses a bit more than wave 1 overall! Looking forward to spending more time with them.

Oh thank goodness the articles and the pitchforks were making it seem like Nintendo gave us some flash games rather than you know, new tracks to play.

Just finished my first races with the new courses....and they seem better? Depends on the track.
Waluigi Pinball, Mushroom Gorge and Kalimari Desert are my favourites, and they probably needed the most work in terms of unique features/animations. The rest seem like ports from Tour with some added spectators copy and pasted around. I suppose they all can't get the same amount of attention.

Whoever is working on this definitely figured out how to do shiny floors though! It's almost too much at times.

I liked this wave, the only stages I didn’t really like were the tour ones but that was because of how cramped they felt, other then that there great!

Also the cpus will screw you over hard if they feel like it, I forgot that.

Next Tour track as expected was Sky-High Sundae, seems to be identical to the MK8 Deluxe version just without antigravity.

The next Mii costumes look like Bowser so perhaps the next track is GBA Bowser Castle 3:

@TowaHerschel7 I interested in bug where I believe in same stage doing certain shortcut you can stuck and need restart stage, because you end up stuck in same position?!

A bit over 6 years ago:

It happened in the end, another one of the Wii U era's mysteries solved!

@Grumblevolcano Wow, I had completely forgotten about that Tweet.

I'm definitely enjoying Wave 2, but is anyone else having an issue with the really bright lights in the launcher tunnel in Waluigi Pinball? I never had an issue with the original DS version. Maybe it's just because it's in HD and the colors come much brighter and faster, but it bothers my eyes.

Having played the tracks I have to say how I’m still surprised how negative a minority on the internet has been about the DLC. I get that there’s a group that’s desperate for MK9 and they see this as somehow denying them what they want. I also agree that the DLC tracks aren’t all at the same level of polish or quality as the original tracks.

The thing is though that the DLC does make the game overall notably better. I mean clearly having Waluigi Pinball and Ninja Hideout alone does that - even if the other tracks were all awful (they’re not) those are great tracks on a par with the best tracks in the base game.

My initial impressions is that the brand new track and Kalimari Desert are the highlights. Kalimari Desert was already a highlight of 64 but pulling in the Tour gimmick of changing things up each lap was a surprising and inspired choice that I'd love to see more in retro courses.

@Grumblevolcano There’s no way they new, did they?

Tour is getting a multiplayer update at the end of September (new ways to play), battle mode perhaps?

Sydney Sprint is the biggest surprise to me. That course is awesome!

Played the new tracks the other day and I am not impressed with this round of DLC. I don't know if it's me but the mushrooms in mushroom gorge don't feel as bouncy as they did in the Mario Kart Wii. The Sydney track was ok and I wasn't big on the Sundae one. I did like the update they did on Coconut Mall though.

@Tasuki I thought it was a HUGE step up from Wave 1. The courses look nicer, seem to have less bugs and technical issues, and in-general are quite good. There were 3-4 good tracks in Wave 1 whereas Wave 2 easily has 6-7 good to great courses. The only one I'm not a big fan of is Sky High Sundae, but it's still a decent enough course.

It might be that my expectations were lower after wave 1 but I also thought wave 2 was much more fun to play through and a decent selection of tracks this time.

I think Wave 2 was all right.
The ones I appreciate the most are Waluigi Pinball, Mushroom Gorge and the new Sundae level.
The SNES/GBA courses feels so... basic. It's not like what they did with those stages in the base game, where they felt completely new and fresh.

@Tasuki To each their own. I think it is a substantial improvement over Wave 1. I can't comment on the bounciness as I haven't played the Wii version of Mushroom Gorge in years, but it seems perfectly fine to me. Sydney Sprint is great! It is very lengthy and I love all the sights and different routes. And that music is bangin! It was a big surprise to me and my favorite of the bunch. Now give me my beloved Maple Treeway! I've wanted that track in Mario Kart 8 since I first got the game on my Wii U way back in 2014 and after years and years of waiting it is almost here..

Finally got around to playing Wave 2 (I've had a very busy week please don't judge me) and I'll have my thoughts on each of the individual tracks up once I've played on them a bit more but my opinion after playing on each track a single time? It's very, VERY good but I felt like it lacked a bit of the 'wow' factor from the first wave, you know?

Sky High Sundae is amazing though, easily one of my favourite new tracks.