Hey everyone, Felix from Nintendo life here. Today we’re here to talk about The Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster course Pass wave 3. And I’m not here alone to talk about it. We have the wonderful Kate. Hello, what do you think about these tracks, Cade? Oh diving straight in uh. Well, we just played all of them. All eight tracks, and I of course came in first every single time. Yep, I don’t look at the footage. What do I think of them overall? Better I think than the last few courses. I know that everyone was sort of a little disappointed with in particular the textures. That seems to be an ongoing thing with these Mario Kart cups. But these ones look really nice. There are some standouts for sure and some ones that I’m not a fan of. The city ones, yeah. There are definitely some tracks that fall a bit flat. But overall, Kate, I just think these waves keep getting better and better. Yeah, but we have eight tracks to talk about, so I think we should just get right into it.
London Loop from Mario Kart Tour
So the first one of these eight tracks is London loop from Mario Kart Tour. Now, Kate, you’re from the UK so I think you know a bit more about London than me. I lived in London for like three years and it doesn’t look like that. Um, I don’t know. I was sort of a little underwhelmed with London loop. Because I don’t really think it does a good job of nailing a London vibe. Like I’ve been playing a lot of Dishonored recently, and that gets it right. You know, there’s a lot of rats, everyone’s constantly trying to kill you. Uh, and you just don’t see any of that in London loop. Obviously, it’s going to be squished down and very cute. But like, it’s a very bright and colorful course. And I think that that doesn’t really look right for me. I don’t know what do you think. I feel a lot of the city tracks kind of blend together. It’s a bit hard for me to distinguish these tracks. This one reminded me a lot of Tokyo blur. And it’s, I maybe it’s just because the roads are all the same. And yeah, buildings and stuff. But I really do like the feature of the laps being different. And that’s a thing that’s a theme from Tour. I don’t know. Something didn’t really gel with me with that track. But that’s luckily not the case with all the tracks. Yeah.
Boo Lake from the Game Boy Advance
So the second track is Boo Lake from the Game Boy Advance. Oh, really? Wow, okay. Uh, so I don’t know this course. There are a couple of Mario Kart games I haven’t played, and that is one of them. That’s okay. It’s a lot like the boardwalk one from N64, which I can’t remember what it’s actually called. Yeah, similarly, it’s like, oh, you know what? Ghosts love water and boardwalks. They can’t get enough of that. And I’m like, is that a known thing? I don’t think so. Okay. Um, it’s good. I fell in there’s like a little pond at the start that I fell in every single lap. It was embarrassing. But you still came in first though.
Wink, yes I did. I don’t like lying, it makes me feel bad. Um, yeah, no, I absolutely remember it. But fine, I thought it was. I thought it looked really good. I thought it was really cool with the underwater section, and it had some wacky turns and stuff, and had a little anti-graphics section. And that’s actually a theme we see with a lot of these courses, where we have more anti-graphics. Which we talked about before, that we thought they should utilize that feature a bit more. They only grab with this track. I have is just that it’s insanely short, especially well, I played it in 150, and then me and Kate played on 200 after, and it just flies away so quickly. Also, when I was looking at the footage from all the different tracks, this one was significantly shorter. But other than that, I think it’s a pretty cool track. Maybe not the most memorable, but it’s a nice glow up from the Game Boy Advance. Yeah, absolutely. It’s nice to see those ones getting reinvented, especially with the anti-graphics in the previous uh cups that they’ve added in this booster course pack pass. Um, those haven’t had as much anti-graphics, and that’s a disappointment for a game that’s all about anti-graphics. So yeah, uh, it’s an okay, it’s a sort of seven six seven out of ten, of course I’m ranking them now. Oh no. Well, in the topic of ranking, why don’t you rank this track?
rock rock mountain
It’s rock rock mountain from Mario Kart 7. Um, oh god, I’ll be honest, out of all the eight, I can’t really remember much about this one. That’s actually pretty interesting, because when we first were about to play this track, you said oh, this looks so exciting. I did. I think that it did look really exciting, because it reminded me of shy guy falls, which is my favorite course, or one of them, one of the three I really like. I can see the resemblance. Yeah, it’s on a mountain, it’s outside, uh, I don’t think it confers to shy guy falls, but it has a lot of the same sort of like fun sort of anti-gravity moments, and like winding through caves and things like that. It’s all right, it’s fine. I wish it had more of a gimmick, to be honest. I personally really like this track. I remember playing it on the 3DS a long time ago, so my memory of it is a bit fuzzy.
There’s just something about this track that really, I don’t know, really lands with me. I really like the last section where you’re going up the mountain, and they made this anti-graft, which was really cool. And then you also have these giant flying sections through the woods, albeit they don’t like the woods, don’t look fantastic, but I myself had a grand time with this course. It’s one of my favorites of this wave 3. And the last track of this first club is ah, Mabel Tree Way, probably me and Kate’s favorite track of all these eight. And just look at it, it looks like something that could be in the actual game, doesn’t it? Yeah, I’m a sucker for autumn colors, and maple tree way, it’s so good. Like everything in it is orange and yellow, um, and brown, I guess, which is it’s so toasty and warm, and there’s wigglers and there’s the leaf piles, and there’s a little anti-graphics trick section that you can do which is fun. There isn’t much anti-grab in it otherwise right? I don’t think so, it’s I’m just so glad to see this track. It just lifts up to the expectations so much. The music, oh Kate, this is a banging tune and my eyes just lit up when we came to that section where you can do tricks of like a ramp just like Mario Kart Wii which I don’t think we’ve seen much of in Mario Kart 8, if any of those sections, and I remember just yelling whoa like when it came up. I was so excited about it and yeah, everything about this track is amazing. No, not awful, everything about this track is amazing and if I had to say one thing I didn’t like about it, it’s some of the trees in the distance. Like if you don’t notice them it’s fine but when you actually see them, they look incredibly poor. Like you can see the different polygons of the tree smash. I’m looking at a picture now and it’s like the trunk is a cube and then the tree leaves are just a big sort of like low poly, yeah.
Love, oh well, I wasn’t looking at the far away tree so I didn’t notice. No, and I imagine a lot of people aren’t but that was just, I’m trying to say something good and something bad about each course and that was like my only gripe because otherwise this track is absolutely perfect. Yeah, yeah, but that was the rock cup and we have one more cup to talk about. It’s the moon cup where we have the Berlin Wall in Berlin byways.
This one gotta be honest, like the London Loop sort of washed out. Don’t eat anything at that speed, but I don’t know, I think a lot of the especially the European city tours are sort of a bit samey. Like it’s like hey look, it’s these three things from the city and the rest of it just kind of looks like any other city. I definitely agree and I think my point still stands that these city tracks just blend a bit together. I imagine if you actually live in Berlin or in London this would actually be really cool but since I well, it’s cool to see but I had a friend who is also from England and he thought that a London Lube is just going to be very boring, I’m not going to care for it but he was actually quite surprised like it. It did something to him that he could recognize all the all the landmark or something from real life, yeah.
I will say about Berlin byways and maybe this applies to other city ones as well, is that there’s a lot of roads you can’t go down. Like it’ll just be blocked off, which ah I guess that’s fine because real Berlin doesn’t just have one road but I, I find it a little confusing when I’m driving through the course that I’m like oh, I can’t go down this road, I can’t go down that road. Isn’t it because you have three different kinds of laps, is that what you mean, like it blocks off? I think there were other courses that weren’t cities that did this as well. Yeah, because it’s like it changes every single lap, like like you said, um, but it’s a little hard to get my head around, I guess. I wish they made it maybe.
A bit more clear which paths you have to go through, maybe some arrows on the actual row that guide you or something. But yeah honestly, this feature is one of my favorite inclusions in this booster course pack because it’s just it just adds something new that each lap is just different. Like it’s still the same thing, it’s not one big lap, but it just makes it more interesting. And I hope in Mario Kart 9 we have something like this. I wonder what the gimmick for Mario Kart 9 would be. I hope it’s this or maybe it’s like different roads. The logo is just like a nine with a lot of different roads going away from it. Of course, I’m actually really stoked about it because I remember playing this as a kid because it’s from Mario Kart DS, and it’s Peach Gardens. I didn’t think I’d played Mario Kart DS, but I remember this course, so maybe I did and forgot. Uh, that’s entirely possible.
Really pretty, yeah. Do you think we’ll see Peach Gardens in the Mario movie? Oh, they’re just like in the Mario Kart section, they drive around in Peach Gardens. I would be called like that. There’s a lot of good stuff in this, and we also like they changed some of it, which in the stun I thought, wait, why is it why does it feel different? But it’s because the last lap is actually a reverse lap, which is really cool. It’s like Paris Promenade. And I don’t know if any other tracks do this, but basically, you drive around the whole course for two rounds, and then the third one you just go backwards around it. So the course has to be somewhat even so you can drive both ways. Uh, also apparently, this course was in Mario Kart DS, and that’s why I remember it. Ah, yeah, of course. It looks really pretty. Do you get the thing where, like, if if you were asked what a course looks like originally, you’re like, oh, it’s beautiful. It’s got like really nice lighting and it’s it’s got really pretty colors. And then you look at it, and you’re like, oh, no, it’s hideous. Yeah, so like I looked at a picture of the DS1 just now, and compared to what it looks like even on the Wii, yeah, it’s bad. And so it’s gorgeous. Yeah, and I’m just like, oh, it’s always look like this. It absolutely hasn’t. This is a real upgrade.
Mario Mountain and Bowser’s Castle
Next in line is Mario Mountain and Bowser’s Castle, a Mario Kart Tour track, but this again just feels like a track that could be in the standard Mario Kart at least from my perspective. I think it’s very pretty. It sort of gives me a Nightmare Before Christmas vibe. Yeah, because it’s like this beautiful little village that you’re going through. Uh, it just, yeah, I don’t have any notes on this one. It’s just a very pretty track. It’s got some nice little turns and stuff, and it’s got that kind of spooky vibe going on. And I like that. I think that’s a nice little touch.
This track really gave me that Christmas feeling, which sometimes just falls flat but this just hit the nail on the head. The music, the artistic direction, it’s really cool. There are shortcuts, like in Wario’s Gold Mine, and it’s just a really cool track. It reminds me a bit of Mount Wario, but it’s like two times because you go up and then you also go down. I think this came out at the right time, obviously it’s three weeks till Christmas. So I think that they were holding on to this one. The last course of this booster course pass wave is Mario Kart 7’s Rainbow Road. What do you think, Kate?
Rainbow Road from Super Mario Kart
It’s very pretty. They could have just been like, “Yeah, it’s a rainbow,” but there’s this sort of shimmering ocean beneath you. I don’t know if that’s what it looked like on 3DS, but it looks really nice on the Switch. It’s like the bridge to Valhalla. This course just makes me think, why is the rainbow road of Mario Kart 8 so bad? This looks gorgeous. It has so many cool sections, and it’s one big lap. I’m a big fan of big laps. The nice thing about this one is that it’s set in space, which is not the first time that they’ve done rainbow road in space, but this one has planets and moons and asteroids, which is very cool. You drive on the planets and moon, and you drive on Saturn’s rings. You drive on the moon. I will say the moon looks bad from a distance. It has really obvious tiling on its textures, but who cares really? That’s fine. Personally, I didn’t notice it. Maybe it’s because I was always just flabbergasted with everything else in this track. Maybe I only noticed it because of all the times I fell off. If I had to rank the tracks, I think Mabel Tree Way is on top. Then we have this track, and then we have a tie between Merry Mountain and Rock Rock Mountain. So we have two mountains, which is good. I think if I had to pick one feature that I think a lot of the best tracks have in common, it’s the lighting. They did a really good job on the lighting, except on the city levels, which are a bit flat. They didn’t really good for us, but then we had other tracks that were insanely good. Maybe some of the best tracks we saw in these three waves. And what about you who are watching this video? What do you think of these tracks? Let us know down in the comments below.
Stay safe, play some Mario Kart, and we’ll see you in the next one. Felix and Kade from Nintendo life. Okay, Felix, one last thing. Can you make the noise that Yoshi makes when you choose him in the N64 Mario Kart? What that? I’m gonna try. Blue Pump.
