Just in time for the holidays, perennial best-seller Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is getting upgraded again with its latest batch of DLC tracks. Booster Course Pass Wave 3 goes live on December 7, and will add the golden autumn Maple Treeway track from Mario Kart Wii in addition to original tracks from the mobile spin-off Mario Kart Tour like the festive Merry Mountain.
Here’s the full list of eight new courses:
- Tour London Loop
- GBA Boo Lake
- 3DS Rock Rock Mountain
- Wii Maple Treeway
- Tour Berlin Byways
- DS Peach Gardens
- Tour Merry Mountain
- 3DS Rainbow Road
While Merry Mountain and Peach Gardens were teased earlier this year, Maple Treeway and the 3DS version of series standard Rainbow Road are the real showstoppers. The latter is so big it actually features only one lap and more aerial glider jumps than just about any other track in the series.
Maple Treeway, meanwhile, is revered as one of the prettiest courses while also housing some challenging shortcuts and a glitch that lets players explore the base of the tree they spend all race riding on (though it’s not a given that Nintendo will replicate that exploit in the new version). And last but certainly not least is Boo Lake, which actually features a real lake now, unlike the version that originally debuted on the Game Boy Advance over 20 years ago.
Nintendo has now revealed half of the 48 courses coming to Mario Kart 8 in the Booster DLC, and so far they seem to line up with a previous datamine leak, at least in content if not in timing. The big question now is whether any of the remaining tracks will include Waluigi Stadium from the GameCube era. None of the individual DLC waves have included any tracks from Mario Kart: Double Dash at this point, and the pressure is mounting.
On the bright side, the latest wave of tracks continues to look stellar, much more so than some of the initial courses released earlier in the year. While remastered courses like Coconut Mall were dunked on by fans for lacking detail and looking less realistic than their base-game counterparts, the new Maple Treeway and 3DS Rainbow Road refreshes seem as impressive as anything else currently in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, itself a port of an eight-year old game.
Who knows when we’ll ever catch a glimpse of Mario Kart 9, but at least fans will be eating well until we do.
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