Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Wave 6 review – Rainbow Road’s end

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Wave 6 – all good things… (Picture: Nintendo)

The sixth and final DLC pack for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has finally been released, with a brand new track and a host of new characters.

It’s nine years since the launch of Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U and only now is the game finally complete. It might be a stretch to describe it as a live service title, but after two excellent DLC packs, the original game was ported to the Switch, as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, with a few new features, and then suddenly, five years later, the Boost Course Pass was announced – offering 48 remastered courses (and a few new ones) for what works out as less than 50p a track.

The tracks have been released in six packs of eight, over the last two years, and now, finally, the last one is out. It includes a brand new, and very good, course, and a number of new characters and outfits, although, like the other packs, the majority of new content is tied into the mobile game Mario Kart Tour, which recently announced it would not be updated with new content anymore.

With rumours of the Switch 2 growing stronger every day, despite Nintendo’s attempts to quieten them, it’s natural to start imagining what form Mario Kart 9 might take and when it will be released. There’s a very reasonable school of thought that suggests it’ll be out early on in the Switch 2’s lifetime, just as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was, and that it could even be a launch title. However, we probably won’t know anything about that for a good few months yet, so for now let’s just enjoy the best ever Mario Kart in its final form.

You can’t buy any of the DLC waves separately, but you can get access to the whole Booster Course Pass for free if you subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack (most Nintendo DLC seems to work this way, including for Animal Crossing: New Horizons). Although to celebrate the fact that everything is now out a code-in-a box physical version is being sold in stores that also includes some badges, stickers, and art cards.

It would take a heroic act of curmudgeonliness to pretend that the Booster Pass isn’t good value for money but there have been two persistent, and perfectly reasonable, complaints levelled at it. The first is that because most of these are remastered courses, from earlier console games, none of them really use the anti-gravity gimmick from the main game.

This includes remasters of SNES tracks, which are basically complete remakes anyway, and brand new courses, which is a shame because it was a fun feature in the parent game. The other complaint is that the Booster Pass courses use the simplified, more cartoonish, art style from Mario Kart Tour, rather than the more realistic approach from Mario Kart 8 itself.

A lot of the courses are from the mobile game, so it’s reasonable that they haven’t been remade for the DLC, but it is odd that the others have copied the same art style. Although that’s become less apparent as each wave has gone by, presumably because of Nintendo taking note of the feedback.

The two Mario Kart Tour courses in this pack are Rome Avanti and Madrid Drive and while they’re perfectly entertaining you can see that the whole real-world city gimmick has run its course. Which may be another reason why support for the mobile game has ended.

By this point the European courses, in particular, are starting to blend into each other, especially as we had Athens in the last wave, but there’s still some neat details here, as the track changes each lap and you end up hang-gliding over the Trevi Fountain and passing giant-sized Chomps in the Collosseum.

The Madrid one has a giant Wiggler dozing in the Plaza Mayor, and waking up on subsequent laps, while the finale ends with you driving through a football stadium as giant footballs bounce towards you.

Mario Kart: Double Dash!! on the GameCube is often regarded as the worst of the series but DK Mountain has brushed up nicely for its remaster, with giant Indiana Jones style boulders and a wobbly rope bridge, as well as some nice scenery that underlines the fact that these DLC courses can still look visually impressive.

Daisy Circuit is less interesting, and overly reminiscent of other courses such as Toad Harbor, but even as the dud of the wave it’s perfectly fine. Rosalina’s Ice World, from Mario Kart 7 on the 3DS, is very good, with a whole underwater section that you can either dive into purposefully or end up falling into through holes in the ice.

Piranha Plant Cove is a great new addition (Picture: Nintendo)

It is a little overshadowed, though, by the brand new Piranha Plant Cove, much of which also takes place underwater, but is much more detailed and varied. It looks great too and is very long, with each lap taking a completely different route, like the Mario Kart Tour tracks. Nintendo never promised to include new courses so the effort they’ve gone to with this, and the other ones, is much appreciated – with the Yoshi’s Island one from Wave 4 being the best.

The final course of the final cup is, of course, Rainbow Road; it’s the one from Mario Kart Wii, which is a particularly good iteration and often very tricky. Bowser Castle 3 from the SNES is also really good, its Mode 7 origins now transformed into what looks like something out of Elden Ring.

On top of that you have four new playable characters: Peachette, Pauline, Diddy Kong, and Funky Kong. Peachette is a weird choice (she’s basically Toadette cosplaying as Peach, from Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe) but apparently she was in Mario Kart Tour so Nintendo has just added her to this as well.

That’s where Pauline comes from too but she’s great, as she poses while her kart jumps in the air and sings away to herself when doing well. You also get 15 new Mii outfits, that range from a Chomp suit to dressing up as a ? Block, and even a neat new credit sequence to draw a line under the whole thing.

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Wave 6 is an excellent set of courses in what has been an excellent season pass, for an excellent parent game. Some might talk of Mario Kart 64 or Mario Kart Wii but for us Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is clearly the best entry in the franchise and by virtue of being so it’s also one of the best video games ever made. Almost a decade later and it’s not only as much fun as ever but it’s almost impossible to imagine how Nintendo might improve it.

Given how much this one has sold (57.01 million, plus another 8.5 million on Wii U) they will obviously try, but with the addition of all these extra courses it feels like Mario Kart has finally been perfected. If Mario Kart 9 can prove that’s not the case, then it will be something quite extraordinary.

Formats: Nintendo Switch
Price: £22.49 for all 48 tracks or free with Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Release Date: 9th November 2023
Age Rating: 3

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The sixth and final DLC pack for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has finally been released, with a brand new track and a host of new characters.