The new course is one of eight coming to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe this week.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s Booster Course Pass Wave 4 is set to arrive this Thursday, March 9, and Nintendo is gearing up for it by giving fans a sneak peek at one of the highly anticipated courses included in the upcoming Fruit Cup, Yoshi’s Island.
The official Nintendo of America Twitter page on Sunday posted a tweet including a brief, 16-second clip of racers from the acclaimed series hurtling along the new course. Focussing most of the camerawork on Yoshi and his pink, egg-spitting counterpart, Birdo, the short clip shows the racers speeding along tracks inspired by one of the most beloved Mario-themed games of the 16-bit era. It also places a lot of emphasis on big hills that racers jump off and begin hang gliding from, indicating that these may be central features of the Yoshi’s Island course.
Set to release later in the week, the new content will include a total of eight new tracks for players to experience, with many being ported in from other Mario Kart titles. Of those in the Fruit Cup, Yoshi’s Island is the only truly original one, with Riverside Park and DK Summit coming from previous console and handheld editions of the franchise and Amsterdam Drift coming in from the mobile game Mario Kart Tour. Likewise, the four courses included in the Boomerang Cup — Bangkok Rush, Singapore Speedway, Mario Circuit, and Waluigi Stadium — will all be callbacks to courses from other entries, with the first two coming from Tour and the last two coming from DS and GameCube versions, respectively.
Receiving more than 97,000 views in the first half-hour of its posting, the course seems to be attracting a lot of attention to the nearly decade-old game — the original Mario Kart 8 released back in 2014 — with most people replying to the Tweet having a positive outlook. Several others took the opportunity to list features they’d like to see in future updates, or even postulate that it might be time for a full sequel. Said one reply on the Yoshi’s Island course specifically, “We had F-Zero and Zelda tracks and now a Yoshi Island track…now we only need a Metroid course. Come on, think about it.
