Owners of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will be able to play 48 new courses this year by purchasing the Booster Course Pass DLC, but if you read the fine print, no purchase is necessary to access them.
As Eurogamer reports, Nintendo’s Mario Kart page for the UK includes the following details regarding the DLC pack:
“Courses from wave 1 of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Booster Course Pass can be played from March 18th locally or online in Friends and Rivals races, even if only one player owns the Booster Course Pass or has access to it as part of a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership. From March 22nd, courses from wave 1 will also appear in the Random selection when playing Global or Regional races with anyone online.”
The same information hasn’t appeared on the US version of Nintendo’s website, but it seems likely to be the same deal regardless of where you are in the world. So if you have a friend who buys the Booster Course Pass DLC pack then it’s possible to play the courses with them either online or through local play. However, even if you have no such friend, Nintendo is going to make the courses available randomly online.
Of course, anyone really interested in accessing the new courses is going to spend the required $24.99 to purchase the DLC. In return, they are guaranteed to gain access to 48 remastered courses pulled from the entire Mario Kart series. They will be released in six waves of eight courses, with the first wave arriving on March 18, which includes the Golden Dash (Paris Promenade, Toad Circuit, Choco Mountain, and Coconut Mall) and Lucky Cat (Tokyo Blur, Shroom Ridge, Sky Garden, and Ninja Headway) cups.
