Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass - Review

The DLC that could.

Console: Nintendo Switch

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass kind of came out of nowhere. The success of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is well documented. The updated port of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best-selling Switch game with over 57 million units. With that success, Nintendo fans kept predicting with every Nintendo Direct announcement that MK8D DLC would be revealed.  

The more years passed though, the less likely it seemed that we would get more content. It felt that if the game would've gotten DLC, it would've released already. But Nintendo will Nintendo so nearly five years after the release of MK8D the Booster Course Pass was announced. For 25 bones or a continued NSO subscription, you got 48 retro tracks over 6 waves spread out over 2 years. 

I covered each wave when it came out, so you can check those out if you want a more detailed description of what each of them offered, but now that it´s all said and done I want to take a look at the completed package. It started nice but unambitious but ended as quite a good expansion. 

Without further ado, let's dive in.

The entire DLC gives 48 retro tracks from across the entire history of Mario Kart spread out over 12 cups, doubling the overall offering. We have courses from the very beginning of the series on the SNES to its most recent entry, the mobile ´Mario Kart Tour´. 

Let's start with the Mario Kart Tour stuff since that's the elephant in the room, so to speak. Both major points of criticism aimed towards the DLC are, at least in part, in relation to Mario Kart Tour.

Those criticisms are the lower quality of these tracks compared to those found in the base game. Lesser textures, more basic designs and the lack of such things as anti-gravity sections. All blamed on these tracks being 'low-effort ports' of their Tour counterparts. That many of these tracks are just upscaled versions of their Tour versions. The graphics and texture works on these tracks are not as detailed as the ´base´ courses. 

In Mario Kart Circuit 3, for example, the background grass is nothing more than a green plain whereas in, say, Moo Moo Meadows it has actual blades of grass. That these returning tracks aren´t as aesthetically impressive because they twist and loop around themselves as much as the anti-gravity-supporting MK8 tracks. 

It also doesn't help that the tracks made specifically for Mario Kart Tour are so overrepresented. At least 2 tracks in each wave are from Tour, not counting the 'co-developed' tracks (I'll get into what that means later). Together with how similar these tracks are in look and feel to each other, they do give the impression that they are here just to easily fill a slot. Although, with Mario Kart Tour's support getting ended and that game certainly getting shut down in a year or two, the Tour tracks in MK8D will preserve some parts of that game. That's something, at least. 

While the graphics and such didn't improve much over time, in other sections the DLC did grow. We started to get some anti-gravity sections here and there and retro-tacks that got some more meaningful changes. Peach's Garden, for example, has now a completely different 3rd lap. This gave me the impression that the 'B-team' working on this expansion got more experienced. They even went back to tracks from earlier waves and polished them up a bit, like making the cars in Coconut Mall actually move. 

While in some departments the courses are lacking, in others, they're not. They are apart from the lesser graphics, well-made and above all else fun. They really chose a good variety of tracks. From the popular, like DK Mountain, to those tracks that now get some time to shine like Rosalina´s Ice World. From the short but sweet to the long and varied. The overabundance of Tour tracks is really the only problem here in terms of variety. A dead horse I won't beat anymore in this review. 

My standout tracks are Coconut Mall, Wii Rainbow Road and Waluigi Pinball. All tracks from the DS and Wii outings, the Mario Karts I played as a kid. With Waluigi Pinball especially I felt like coming home to a nice warm bath. Ninja Hideaway and Rosalina's Ice World have also stayed in my mind as, for me, new tracks that I quite liked racing on. 

A special mention needs to go to the 'co-developed' tracks. What do I mean by this? Well, each wave has one track that in-game and in the official market material got deemed 'new'. In actuality, these tracks did come to Tour first but looking at their design I feel like they were developed with both Tour and MK8D in mind. Why do I think that? Well, aside from the fact that they are not city-based tracks, they are a lot more elaborate. 

They are longer, have more stuff going on, and have better graphics and textures. Some of them even have anti-gravity integration and other such gimmicks. They are perhaps not quite of the same pedigree of a fresh track of MK8 but clearly of a higher quality than your standard Tour track. 

Now, on to the new racers! When the DLC was first announced people were disappointed that Nintendo only seemed to include new tracks. That seemed like an odd omission. Luckily though, starting with wave 4, we did get some new recaers. 8 to be exact. From the long-requested Diddy Kong to my personal favourite Pauline. It's nice Nintendo 'beefed up' the DLC this way and it's nice to have more racers to choose from. They also threw in some Mii costumes and a jukebox mode in Wave 8, so those were some nice surprises as well. 

Speaking of the jukebox: the music is great. They've re-recorded all the music from all the courses in the MK8 style and, by and large, sound great. Some have even been giving new variations for their final lap. To make them pop that much more during the most critical lap of the race. 

Conclusion

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass is a surprisingly good expansion and addition to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. What started as a rather barebones outing steadily improved its quality with each wave. The team seemed to get more experienced the longer they went on with tracks integrating the anti-gravity mechanic and even going back to older waves and making some minor but fan-requested changes. With 48 new tracks, 8 new racers and some other unexpected extra goodies such as the jukebox, and you have yourself some great value here. A great end to Mario Kart 8.