Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC Courses May Be Ported From Mario Kart Tour

By M. Kang

Posted on February 13, 2022

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During the latest Nintendo Direct, Nintendo surprised fans by announcing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Booster Course Pass DLC. Perhaps just as surprising to many was the discrepancy of art direction and aesthetics in the new courses compared to those that came with the game.

According to VGC, the discrepancy may be because Nintendo is seemingly porting these tracks over from their mobile app Mario Kart Tour rather than remastering these courses from the ground up. The first wave of courses announced in the trailer backs this account up as all but one course is in Mario Kart Tour or has been found within datamining of the app. The less detailed aesthetics and the similar looking assets also backs this theory. Some eagle-eyed fans also noticed that the icons for the first wave also all came from Mario Kart Tour’s course icon list.

If Nintendo is using assets from Mario Kart Tour, it would save a lot of time and development energy. The Booster Course Pass DLC is set to add an ambitious 48 courses to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, perhaps making the game the ultimate way to play Mario Kart.

However, it would also be slightly disappointing for while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is one of the best-selling Switch games, it is also a Wii U port that released originally in 2013. If the goal is to take advantage of the large player base Mario Kart 8 Deluxe currently has (instead of creating a new game entirely), it would seem like the company would want to put in more effort for the title.