At the Nintendo Direct last February, Nintendo announced that the company would be releasing a DLC for their Mario Kart installment for the Nintendo Switch. We played it on release day and...
Paradise Promenade
The first track of the new DLC is a remake of Mario Kart Tour, which takes place in Paris. The evening atmosphere has had a nice impact. No freakouts and everything is peaceful. Towards the end, the game developers made sure that you are forced to take a different route and thus had to drive the entire course backwards, so you were racing towards your opponents, which has never been done before in a Mario Kart.
Toad Circuit
This track comes from the 3DS spin-off Mario Kart 7 and was the first track there. Now the giant Toad balloon in the sky is making a comeback. Graphically, a lot was done to this track. The atmosphere was also excellent, as with the Paris course, because you drive a track full of Toads on a sunny afternoon. We didn't notice any big changes compared to the track in Mario Kart 7, though.
Choco Mountain
Those who played Mario Kart 64 or DS will surely remember this track. Especially the stones that fall from the sky and then fall into the water. But Nintendo has now gone one better and added a tunnel passage in which beautiful blue diamonds protrude from the ceiling and floor. You are also greeted by Shy Guys. It's a feast for the eyes.
Coconut Mall
Possibly the only reason many people love this DLC is this track. With it, you associate a nostalgic feeling with the Wii. However, we really missed this feeling while playing, as the course feels very small compared to the original one in Mario Kart Wii. Also, many graphical changes have been made, such as the gray ramps at the entrance and exit to the indoor park being replaced with green floors. Also, another shock factor was that the three cars in the parking lot no longer moved like crazy. These were replaced by two cars with Shy Guys sitting in them. The worst part about this: When you drive into them, you just slow down instead of being flung through the air like in the original.
Tokyo Blur
Another track that was exclusive to Mario Kart Tour is the Tokyo Tempo Tour. This one offers a different track in each round and new challenges. In the first one you had to drive outside the city, then in the second round thwomps were added to make driving more difficult. However, the last round was a bit lifeless when you drove over a highway. Because there were only two thwomps, a row of items and that was it. No shortcut option, hardly any coins.
Shroom Ridge
The track originally comes from the Nintendo DS and had great music there. This also comes back in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. However, we found that the bots had a lot of trouble dealing with the cars, as they can slow you down a lot. One minor detail we also noticed was the drifting behavior in the cliff. There the slight incline seemed to change the drifting.
Sky Garden
Returning from GameBoy Advanced is the cloud runway. This offered bouncing leaves instead of a shortcut that required mushrooms in the original. However, these were very buggy.Because if you jumped up on them, you were fired in a completely different direction and thus got off the track and fell down. The clouds by the track also looked very nice, as they had an animation that looked like the cloud was loaded with lightning.
Ninja Hideway
Ninja Dojo is apparently a brand new track according to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (seriously, there's no indication of which console this track is from). Visually, we like this track a lot and if you look really closely, you can see some Mario-style Japanese decorations. However, towards the end the turns become more challenging and the tracks get narrower and narrower, so you barely have room to drift.
Conclusion
The release starts off relatively well from a graphical standpoint. Many people complained during the Nintendo Direct on YouTube that it didn't look like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. However, we didn't notice that while playing. For the most part, it played just like all the other tracks. Currently, the DLC costs 25$. But for the first two cups alone, it's worth the purchase. The remaining ten cups should be released by the end of 2023.
