Having been given a new lease of life on Nintendo Switch after such a disappointing run on Wii U (to say absolutely nothing of its stellar quality, of course), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has firmly established itself as the Switch’s killer app, and for very good reason. With its “easy to learn, hard to master” gameplay that appeals to gamers of all walks of life, alongside the enormous selection of 48 tracks, which includes all the DLC from the Wii U version, it’s not surprising that it has become the Switch’s best selling game.
Certainly it will have caught many off guard when Nintendo announced the Booster Course Pass, a DLC pack that literally doubles the track total to a staggering 96, potentially the most out of all racing games. At a RRP of $24.99 USD/£22.49 GBP, its value cannot be disputed (especially considering the pack also includes eight more characters as a bonus), and would alone be enough to justify picking up the Booster Course Pass. With that in mind, however, a buyer would need to be aware of the varying quality throughout all six waves of the Pass, both in the context of the Pass and of the game as a whole.
The track selection is overall excellent. Of course, with a selection so vast, there are bound to be some stinkers (Wave 2’s SNES Mario Circuit 3 and Wave 4’s GBA Riverside Park are examples with their relatively boring stage design lifted almost verbatim from their source games with few gimmicks); however, the overwhelming majority of courses are every bit as great as they were in their original games, with a healthy amount of additions to each to make them feel fresh. Fan favourites such as Wave 2’s DS Waluigi Pinball and Wii Mushroom Gorge, Wave 3’s DS Peach Gardens and 3DS Rainbow Road, and Wave 5’s GCN Daisy Cruiser are present and accounted for, and some older circuits like Wave 6’s SNES Bowser Castle 3 have been spruced up so much with stage elements and minor alternate routes that it’s shocking they had such humble origins. It gives a new lease of life for a huge number of classic tracks.
Special mention must be given to the tracks that debuted in this DLC pack. Wave 1’s Ninja Hideaway, Wave 4’s Yoshi’s Island, and Wave 5’s Squeaky Clean Sprint are so unique in both track layout and sheer creativity that they are assuredly highlights of the entire Booster Course Pass.
This is most evident with the Mario Kart Tour tracks that were taken from the mobile title. They’ve been given a healthy facelift to bring them in line with a typical console game. In a truly inspired choice, the multiple versions of each track have been merged into a single course, with each version acting as a separate lap. The result is that each lap of every Tour track takes you down a different route, a wonderful idea to keep each stage engaging and fresh. They’re not perfect conversions, though; the Tour courses were designed with the control scheme of the mobile game in mind, which don’t translate perfectly well in the faster, more player-controlled scheme of the Switch game, leading to more crashing into walls or falling off tracks than the base game circuits. This doesn’t make any course unplayable by any means, but it’s something to consider.
Some tracks, though, have been changed in ways that are unwelcome or even straight up nonsensical. Wave 5’s Wii Koopa Cape removed the stream of water in the tunnel section, replacing them with sporadic anti-gravity Spin Boost Pillars. Wave 1’s Wii Coconut Mall has had their escalators replaced with much more generic looking conveyor belts. In no way can these be considered deal breakers, but it’s disappointing that the personality of some tracks has been removed.
A player’s opinion of these changes, like most aspects of the DLC pack, depends on the context they’d view them. In isolation, the tracks themselves play fantastically, and some of the changes are welcome (or at the very least inoffensive), but when looking at the courses in the context of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as a whole, it’s very difficult not to feel disappointed. Graphically speaking, the DLC tracks all look amazing on their own, but when comparing them against the beautiful landscapes of the base game’s stages, they are noticeably worse in quality.
Every visual element in the DLC that can be compared to base game counterparts, such as trees, bushes, grass, brickwork, background elements, landscapes, and even audience members, is worse in Booster Course Pass tracks than in base game circuits. While they all look beautiful even by Nintendo Switch standards in base game tracks, those in DLC courses would not look out of place in a GameCube game. It’s clear that this is a side effect of all these tracks either having been lifted straight from Tour with a minor graphical uplift, or would appear in the mobile game very soon afterwards. This does nothing to detract from the moment-to-moment gameplay of these tracks, but it is still disappointing to see when placed against the high visual quality of the base game stages.
It cannot be stressed enough that the visual displeasure does not take much away from the quality of the pack as a whole. Each of the 12 new cups are a joy to race through, much more so when playing in the hectic environment of local and online multiplayer. The sheer quantity adds hours and hours of enjoyable gameplay to a game which many have already put hundreds into already, and that’s to say nothing of the welcome addition of the eight playable characters of previous entries. If you’re a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe fan of any calibre and are willing to overlook its relatively minor shortcomings, the Booster Course Pass is a no-brainer of a purchase.
