The nine year kart race - a Mario Kart 8 retrospective
Releasing just last week, the fourth wave of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s £22.49 Booster Course Pass became available to download, increasing the game’s already-series high course count from 72 to 80. With this putting us past the halfway point of the announced courses, I thought this might be a nice opportunity to have a look at how far Mario Kart 8 has come since its 2014 Wii U release, and see what kind of value the DLC offers to both those subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online’s higher tier and those not.
A delightfully familar title screen I've been looking at for a few too many years.
To give a quick history lesson to those who perhaps started with the Deluxe edition on Switch, Mario Kart 8 originally launched on the Wii U in May of 2014 and went on to be the console’s best-selling title by a significant margin, beating out its closest competitor Super Mario 3D World by almost three million units. In its launch state, much of what you see on the Switch was present. Coming from Mario Kart 7’s gliders and underwater driving, Mario Kart 8 added anti-gravity sections to the mix. What was nice here is that it didn’t really do away with any of Mario Kart 7’s main features, instead adding to them with a layer of polish you’ve likely come to expect from the series. The game launched with eight cups, which has been the standard since Mario Kart DS, splitting the courses between 16 new and 16 returning. These returning courses did see a really nice face lift, with many of them getting anti-gravity sections added on top of the graphical improvements you’d otherwise expect.
For those not playing online, your draw to replayability was collecting coins, which would then go onto unlock car parts for you to pick between when going back to courses. Mario Kart 8 went on to make series history when it released several sets of DLC between August of 2014 and April of 2015. Starting out with a free Mercedes Benz collaboration (no really, this was the first piece of DLC in Mario Kart history), we then got two more Nintendo-themed collaboration packs in the form of a paid DLC featuring The Legend of Zelda and Animal Crossing. Each of these packs cost £7 apiece, or £11 if bought together, and came with two new cups and three new characters to enjoy. On top of these, we also saw a free update releasing alongside the second DLC pack. This introduced another series-first in the 200cc setting, which ended up being quite divisive in the community due to people not having used the B button before in their 20 years of playing the games. While divisive, this new level of speed offered players an entirely new way of playing the now-48 strong track list, and gave them a reason to replay older cups alongside those that were freshly added.
Mario Kart 8 wasn’t perfect, but to me was certainly a new high for the series, doing more than enough to earn its spot as the Wii U’s best seller. How does that translate to the Switch though? You shouldn’t be surprised to know that it’s also the best selling game here, and that it’s outsold its Wii U counterpart six times over. What did it add to make it worth buying just three years after its original release? Was it just a port to free it from the acursed shackles of the Wii U? It was kind of that, but there were a few changes to mix things up, and they really were appreciated.
Oh baby that Merc looks just as good on the Switch.
So what did we get? Naturally you got the base Mario Kart 8 experience, as well as all the DLC released to-date. That includes your Zelda and Animal Crossing packs, but more importantly, the Mercedes Benz collaboration. You also got 200cc right out of the gate and a few new characters, including my personal favourite Inkling Girl. It's a bit of a shame we never saw a full Splatoon track to come in with them, but we did get some of the game's multiplayer action, along with an associated map, with a new battle mode. While I do say new, it was a fairly standard affair for the series that was absent in the Wii U game.
Mechanically-speaking, there was one big change, and it's genuinely quite hard to go back to older Mario Kart games having experienced it: purple drift boosts. It's a simple concept for those familiar with drifting in Mario Kart. The longer you hold your drift, the better boost you get. Previously your drift would turn blue for a small boost, then red for a bigger boost... But now we have purple, and boy is that a good boost for those who can hold their drift long enough. It's something that really stands out on 200cc with courses like Mario Circuit and its long turns. Deluxe also brought back the ability to hold two items, which was really great to see after suffering the unique frustrations of Wii U Mario Kart 8's first place coin syndrome.
Outside of these though, and the usual boost to framerate and resolution we're used to seeing between Wii U and Switch, it was basically the same Mario Kart 8 you knew and loved repackaged for the same price as it originally cost. Did it really add enough value to warrant rebuying at full price? It's hard to say, but I'm fairly sure most of the people reading this will have bought it regardless. If nothing else, the game on the Wii U with its gamepad gave you a taste of a truly high fidelity Mario Kart in your hands. Was any fan of the series really going to pass up being able to take it on the go?
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe takes us to... London?
But that was that. For years after its release there really wasn't much to say. Five years in fact. And then out of nowhere, just as fans were anticipating an announcement for Mario Kart 9, Nintendo came out and did it. DLC. And this DLC really was no slouch. Promising 48 additional courses from the series' history, this DLC would effectively serve to double the available content in the game at a cost of half its retail price. In my mind that's a good deal, and it really took a while for the prospect of an official 96 track Mario Kart game to sink in. You're paying around the cost of a cheap app store game for each course (78p if you're curious).
These weren't all being released at once, and I do think that was a good choice. Instead of effectively throwing a game-sized update at us, Nintendo opted to release two new cups at a time over a period of six waves. For a casual player like myself, it keeps me gradually coming back to the game. It works well for a game with so much pick up and play-ability, and I think the model fits far better than something like Monster Hunter Rise's title updates. I don't think Rise has necessarily handled its updates poorly, but it's definitely the type of game where you want to marathon it for a while in oppose to something you can play once and then ignore for a few weeks. Alongside these waves of DLC, Nintendo have also taken the opportunity to drop updates for the game to add features like item selection for multiplayer games, which is especially nice to see when you consider these updates are available to people regardless of whether they bought the DLC.
That's a suspicious ramp in the desert...
In terms of the actual course selection, these were advertised as a full cast of returning tracks, naturally upscaled a bit for the newer generation. I really don't have an issue with this myself. Being able to re-experience some of my favourite tracks in the best Mario Kart engine to date? Damn right I want that. It's also been really interesting to see Mario Kart Tour tracks be added with each wave since they've never seen the light of a console before. I've seen complaints about them lacking in detail when compared to some of the base game's tracks, but to me they're genuinely a breath of fresh air. There's really just more to them when compared to your traditional tracks, and each one feels like a unique experience that I've come to look forward to with each new wave.
What makes the majority of Tour courses different is how they change from lap to lap. You'll see signs changing to point you in new directions and take entirely different routes, taking you through various real-world locations in a really cohesive way that probably wouldn't have been possible with the traditional course layout. We do still see a few older courses have seen similar treatment, with Kalimari Desert now taking you onto the tracks and through the train's tunnel on later laps. With this being a fan favourite, I'm sure I wasn't alone in my wonderment going a direction Lakitu would scold me for in the older games. You're not going to see this kind of evolution in every track, but that's probably for the best. You have a good balance here.
That's a lot of content.
Contrary to what they originally announced, these 48 tracks aren't actually all returning from older game. With wave four having just gone live, we've been graced with not just a new track, but a new character to Mario Kart 8 too in Birdo. Technically we have had one "new" track in previous waves, but these were all Mario Kart Tour tracks that just weren't tagged as such for some reason. I do think these felt more like traditional tracks, with these often being the standouts of their respective wave, but it's still odd. With wave four, Yoshi's Island changes that. It's entirely fresh and boy does it make me want more.
After Birdo's addition too, our character selection screen is sitting with five question marks on it. It'd be nice if we saw some fresh faces to the series and the last two waves ended up being closer to the original DLC of the Wii U version, but I'm not holding out too much hope for this. Even if they are just returning faces like Birdo, it'll be nice to welcome them back.
I love seeing the Stilt Guys on the new Yoshi's Island track.
So now we've seen how far Mario Kart 8 has come since its release nine years ago and shared in a bit of nostalgia, a few questions remain. First, is the DLC good value alone? It's a no-brainer in my mind. It's content akin to a new game for half the price of a new game. Obviously it's not an entirely fair comparison, with a new game both bringing new mechanics and perhaps more importantly, a decent assortment of brand new tracks. £22.49 feels right to me for what you're getting, but it does lead me to worry a little for the eventual Mario Kart 9 that has to follow this. Are we going to be expecting 96 tracks going forwards? Are we going to have extended support out of the gate with a launch day season pass? We just don't know yet.
The value of buying the DLC aside, it also needs to be looked at as a part of the higher-tier Nintendo Switch Online subscription. If nothing else Nintendo picked the games to have their DLC included here well, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing New Horizons being number one and two on the best sellers list, and both being games targeted at NSO subscribers. Should these DLC packs be the swing factor in whether you double the cost of your subscription though? That one's really not for me to say. If you're a devout player of just Mario Kart and feel like you won't get any value out of the rest of the expansion pack, you're probably better off just buying the DLC outright and not having to debate a higher subscription cost each year. The expansion pack route probably makes more sense for those invested in the larger first party Nintendo experience, assuming Nintendo keep up this trend of adding first party DLC. With Tears of the Kingdom launching soon, it surprises me to see them not adding Breath of the Wild's DLC to get people back in the mood. Maybe I'm just expecting too much for my money here though, especially given Nintendo's track record with NSO.
I leave you folks with a not so difficult to beat 200cc time trial on Tick Tock Clock.
Have you been playing Mario Kart 8 since the Wii U days? Have you been enjoying the new courses, or are you hankering for something more? Let us know below!
