Ashley Posted December 7, 2022 Posted December 7, 2022 Coincidentally this was released the other day and discusses how CPU just use their weapons due to hardware limitations: 2
Ronnie Posted December 7, 2022 Posted December 7, 2022 I figured I'd be corrected on my post. Never said SMK aren't the biggest cheaters in the series, I just enjoyed how much of a rarity the lightning bolt was back in that game.
Glen-i Posted December 8, 2022 Posted December 8, 2022 8 hours ago, Ronnie said: I figured I'd be corrected on my post. Never said SMK aren't the biggest cheaters in the series, I just enjoyed how much of a rarity the lightning bolt was back in that game. I find it interesting that out of all the items, it's the lightning that annoys you the most. It feels devastating, but in all honesty, it tends to be more beneficial to the person in first. Sure, you've lost your items, but so has the 10 other people behind you, and they likely had better items then you did. And that guy all the way in 10th that used it isn't catching up with you any time soon. Of course, if it happens right after you passed an item box, then things can get a little dicey, and if one lucky git happened to be using a star or Boo at the time, then you need to watch out. But that doesn't happen as often as you'd think. 9 times out of 10, I'd rather eat Lightning then get two red shells thrown at me.
Ronnie Posted December 8, 2022 Posted December 8, 2022 Again I'm not saying that tactically it annoys me the most. Just that when I played SMK the lightning bolt was something rare and cool, now it happens all the time.
Glen-i Posted December 10, 2022 Posted December 10, 2022 Right, Wave 3 well and truly raced. Here's what I think. Spoiler #8 3DS Alpine Pass - This track stands out for its very protracted gliding sections, and barely anything has changed other then the anti-grav hill climb, and being able to trick off of the top of a pipe. I thought this track was one of the weaker ones in MK7, and the same remains true here. It's still decent though, and those with multiple Mushrooms can take a humongous shortcut, which is exciting. #7 Merry Mountain - The more I played this one, the more I liked it. The terrain changes halfway through, which means you need to be on top of your drifting game, and there's a neat alternate path at the start. You can really cut the last corner with a Mushroom, but you skip the last set of items if you do, so there's some nice risk/reward going on there. Solid. #6 Tour London Loop - The past two waves have had one Tour track be kind of mediocre while the other one becomes a firm favourite for me, but London Loop manages to buck that trend. It's still the lesser of the two new Tour tracks, but I still think it's fun. The Tower Bridge inspired ramp is obvious, but appreciated, and the Chain Chomps that get loose on the final lap help to shake things up. Shout out to that Chain Chomp that gets into the Thames, having no effect on the race whatsoever, but still made me laugh. #5 GBA Boo Lake - A retro track that's difficult to recognise from its original game? Must be a Super Circuit track. Boo Lake now has a ton of verticality, an underwater section(!) and a hairpin turn that's even more harsh then SNES Mario Circuit 3. I swear it was not that tight on the GBA! The invisible bridge shortcut has been replaced with a jump that requires a mushroom, which I'm fine with. Every Mario Kart benefits from more Boo in it. #4 Wii Maple Treeway - The other MK Wii track that always got picked online. So I'm not as fond of it as most people, but it's still a good track. I'm surprised the half pipe jump was intact! The corners are proper demanding at times, and I keep messing up the one right before the final gliding section. The song arrangement is very good too! #3 DS Peach Gardens - This track is already good, so how do you make it better? Do the final lap backwards! You're far less likely to ram into oncoming opponents then in Paris Promenade, but I still appreciate this massive nod to Mission Mode from MK DS. I love lap layout changing! More of that, please! #2 3DS Rainbow Road - One of my favourite RR's was the one in 7, so I'm well chuffed it's back! And the road texture looks gorgeous! It hasn't changed much, but who cares? OK, actually, the moon section has lower gravity (Yay!), and you can't cut the last hairpin with a well aimed Mushroom anymore (Bleh!). But I was starting to miss one lap tracks. And now you can finally do a Rainbow Cup for the first time ever! #1 Tour Berlin Byways - Bloody hell! This one took me by surprise! A Tour style lap layout change? Traffic shenanigans with risky blind corners? A new obstacle courtesy of Thwomp? An awesome song that smashes Techno and Orchestral styles together? This one has it all! There's even coins on the familiar surfboard car, so tricking off of it is actually viable at last! I'm in love with this track and expect to pick it many times in future N-E nights! Another very consistent wave here. Not quite as great as Wave 2, but much better then the first one. And I haven't even unleashed the horrors of Custom Items yet. Exciting times ahead! 3 2
BowserBasher Posted December 11, 2022 Posted December 11, 2022 @Glen-i, you know this has to be done one Thursday. No one will ever like us again but it's hilarious. 2
Dcubed Posted January 9, 2023 Posted January 9, 2023 (edited) Right! I've finally 100% finished FE: Shadows of Valentia, so now I can finally get round to my really overdue writeup for the Wave 3 tracks... This track takes place in a 100% accurate recreation of London (I live in London, can confirm it's legit). From Big Ben being everywhere, to Tower Bridge being right next to the London Eye, to feckless dog owners letting their dangerous and violent animals off their leash everywhere? Yup, it's London alright. This track starts off being pretty linear and straightforward, but those with a keen eye will notice the myriad of mini gardens which present curious corner cutting opportunities. Beware of Dog however, as the Chain Chomps all come off their leashes as you move onto later laps! I love it when MK tracks introduce track changes across each lap, and London Loop really benefits from this addition over its original Mario Kart Tour counterpart; likewise, the original music got one HELL of a glow-up in its MK8 form! There's a good amount of shortcut opportunities, some fun hazards to ensure chaos during NE nights and a nice mixture of open and narrow spaces to keep things interesting throughout a race. What's not to like? Overall? This track is a cracking bit of crumpet. Good show Nintendo, toodle pip pip! Boo Lake continues the grand Mario Kart 8 tradition of taking GBA tracks and... uhh... well... this actually bares virtually no resemblance to the original GBA track whatsoever. It's basically an entierly new track, and not only that, it's even an underwater track! Making this the first new underwater track since the original release of MK8 on Wii U all the way back in 2014! (Holy shit, it's been that long!?!?). Like all modern remakes of GBA courses, it's far more vertically orientated than the original, even mixing in a brief anti-gravity section with what must be THE tightest turn in Mario Kart 8 history! Seriously! It's practically a 180 degree turn! It's nuts!! There aren't that many item boxes on the track (just a mere 3 sets of them), but it's such a short track that this isn't really an issue; there's plenty of opportunities to screw over your opponents with terrifying items, or good ol' fashioned NE Shunting. There's lots of jumps and physics changes with drivers going in and out of the water, so there's a lot of action packed into a small space... bit like a GBA really. This one's a real winner. Coming off of the complete reinvention that was Boo Lake, we have the most conservative remake of Wave 3. Alpine Pass has barely changed at all from its original MK7 rendition, save for being made a bit wider. You know what though? That's fine by me. Alpine Pass is a very underrated track that really was the big highlight track for MK7's signature Kite gameplay feature, and that means that it plays unlike pretty much any other track in either Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, or the Booster Course Pass. This is predominantly a flying stage, where you'll be spending most of your time gliding through the air (unless you get shot down of course... then you'll just have to hoof it very very slowly; so don't get hit doofus!), and any time you do spend on the ground is (or at least should) be spent looking for mushrooms that will allow you to cut MASSIVE swathes of grass. They have actually added a couple of extra wind gust pipes over the original MK7 version, allowing you to extend your air-time for longer than before, as well as a small and somewhat pointless anti-gravity section where you go back up the mountain, but otherwise it's very similar to the original. I won't waste too much time on this. You know Maple Treeway and you know that you love Maple Treeway. What is worth mentioning though is what is new over the previous remakes... and the biggest thing is the grand return of the original half-pipe section from MK Wii! Yes! It's back! Gone from the MK7 version, and heavily neutered in MKT, the half-pipe is finally back in all its glory! And that's a significant achievement here, because this is an all-new gameplay mechanic that wasn't originally in MK8 or even MK8DX; meaning that Nintendo went out of their way to program the half-pipe mechanic back into MK8's codebase in order to restore Maple Treeway to its full glory. Oh? And speaking of full glory, the side-path speed boosts that were removed in the MKT version are back too; while the Wigglers now stop you dead in your tracks when rammed into, instead of just letting you pass through them like a banana as was the case in MKT. And if that's not enough? The new music arrangement is an absolute banger to boot. Fantastic stuff! From Paris to Berlin, the sophomore Tour track of this wave has quite the act to follow... Unfortunately, it doesn't quite live up to expectations; because this is a very bland track with nothing noteworthy to note... well, except for the Whomps; another completely new mechanic backported into Mario Kart 8's codebase. Shame it's wasted on such a dull one-note corridor of a track. You see, they've taken the three different variants of the track as-seen in MKT and they've stitched them together into what is essentially a single lap track. The problem here though, is that each of the track variants are basically just a short corridor where you do nothing but drive forward while dodging very light traffic, with no real open areas, path choice or even meaningful turns to speak of! It's the Final Fantasy 13 of Mario Kart 8, only with better music. This was always a great track in Mario Kart DS, and it's just as great her... wait.. wha? WHAT!? WHY AM I GOING BACKWARDS NOW!?!? This is AWESOME! Now, in my last writeup I mentioned how Snow Land's music felt like you were playing Christmas itself? Turns out that Nintendo read my scribbles on here and decided to one-up the last wave, just in time for Christmas! Sadly, the merry theming and the rather lovely visuals belie a rather bland track design. It's another rather straightforward and ho-hum MKT track, with few shortcut outlets and really basic & easy turns to account for the crappy mobile touch screen controls. While the Choo Choo Christmas aesthetics are a triumph? Merry Mountain's actual track design, from a gameplay standpoint, is largely a sack of coal compared to the other presents we got in Wave 3. And for the end of Wave 3? We have the best for last. 3DS Rainbow Road was always a corker and it's still a corker here. Like Waluigi Pinball before it, Nintendo only needed to make minor tweaks to this track, and that's all they did. It's slightly wider now to accomodate 12 players, and they've added anti-gravity to the moon section of this track to make it even more floaty and hard to dodge the flying Chain Chomps; and that's all they needed to do. This track feels like a proper celebration of the fantastic game you've been playing through, and it's a superb way to cap off Wave 3. Special mention also has to go to the amazing Custom Items feature that they also added alongside Wave 3. Nobody asked for it, nobody even considered it, but damn am I grateful that they added it! We've already had some fantastic NE nights that have made use of this new feature, but it really does go a long way towards injecting new life into the old bird and making new Theme Nights possible! Thank you so much Nintendo! (Now fix the gutter ball sound in Waluigi Pinball already!). And with that? Here's my ranking for the tracks of Wave 3... Quote 8th: Berlin Byways 7th: Merry Mountain 6th: Alpine Pass 5th: London Loop 4th: Boo Lake 3rd: Maple Treeway 2nd: Peach Gardens 1st: 3DS Rainbow Road Super 1st: Custom Items Previous Wave Writeups Wave 2Wave 1 Edited January 9, 2023 by Dcubed 1
nekunando Posted January 9, 2023 Posted January 9, 2023 I love that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has been getting new tracks after all this time but I almost feel like it's somehow making the overall product inferior in quality, in a strange way. I've never really touched Mario Kart Tour but basically all of these tracks being released that are based on real cities aren't really gelling with me and while in theory the different routes on each lap could be great, I'm finding myself not really appreciating it. The remainder of the tracks are of varying quality but I'd say very few of them have been able to stand up to the excellence of the original courses. Don't get me wrong.. I'm still looking forward to seeing what else is to come and continually having more reasons to return to what is almost certainly my favourite Mario Kart title. I'm just finding each wave is falling a little flat each time!
darksnowman Posted February 8, 2023 Posted February 8, 2023 In the face of another Direct, I downloaded data and updated the MK 8 software to try out the latest wave of tracks. Liked Boo Lake, Maple Treeway (still a nice place to be despite the pwnage dished out by @lostmario, @dazzybee, @RedShell and everyone back on the Wii), Merry Mountain and why could I not take my eyes off the track on 3DS Rainbow Road? It looked so good. The music on London Loop and Berlin Byways left a lot to be desired. Did they just source some stock music and call it a day? Seems like it. Those tracks flatter to deceive a bit because even with all the routes, you can't go anywhere except where it wants you to. Not expecting open world Mario Kart here but... you could go off road and head to the castle in MK 64 so a similar amount of freedom around those streets would be nice. You can't even hop up on the curb. The Bow-Wow in the Thames was shocking the first time I saw it. Like the city had been invaded or something.
Dcubed Posted February 8, 2023 Posted February 8, 2023 So... this means I can now haz Mario Kart Live characters & costume DLC?
BowserBasher Posted February 9, 2023 Posted February 9, 2023 Love that we are getting a new character, hope this means a few more may come too. Loving the new track too and this just may mean we get another new track later on too.
Julius Posted February 11, 2023 Posted February 11, 2023 Per the Japanese site, it seems like each new wave from here on will include a returning character: Quote [good ol' Google Translate] From the 5th bullet [wave] onwards, characters that appeared in past works will be added! 4
Glen-i Posted February 11, 2023 Posted February 11, 2023 (edited) Assuming that Google Translated wording is accurate (Yeah, yeah, I know.), it implies that it might not just be characters from Tour. Granted, that list of characters is vanishingly small, but... I know of one. A character who was in the DS entry, who felt incredibly out of place back then, but wouldn't in this non-Mario character flavoured roster. It'd be neat to see that one return. Edited February 11, 2023 by Glen-i
Glen-i Posted February 11, 2023 Posted February 11, 2023 10 minutes ago, Dcubed said: Come on Honeyqueen!! Out of all the characters you could've picked, you pick the worst one. Sickening!
Ike Posted February 11, 2023 Posted February 11, 2023 I hope they add some Fire Emblem characters. Not enough sword users in this game. 4 1
Glen-i Posted February 12, 2023 Posted February 12, 2023 4 hours ago, Ike said: I hope they add some Fire Emblem characters. Not enough sword users in this game. I want it to happen just so a bunch of losers moan. Pity Mario Kart hasn;t ventured outside of the EPD catalogue yet.
darksnowman Posted February 13, 2023 Posted February 13, 2023 They've been sitting on Kamek for ~25 years. Actually, I see he is apparently in Tour, so you'd think they'll bring him over to 8!
Dcubed Posted February 13, 2023 Posted February 13, 2023 (edited) I wouldn’t expect anyone who hasn’t appeared in Tour. Specifically I expect the following… Wave 4: Birdo Wave 5: Diddy Kong & Funky Kong (sorry Dixie…) Wave 6: Pauline, Petey Pirahna, Kamek Edited February 13, 2023 by Dcubed
EEVILMURRAY Posted February 13, 2023 Posted February 13, 2023 Bring Donkey Kong Jnr back, he's had a good rest
Glen-i Posted February 14, 2023 Posted February 14, 2023 (edited) 21 hours ago, EEVILMURRAY said: Bring Donkey Kong Jnr back, he's had a good rest He's in Tour. It's be a crying shame if they didn't bring that over for 8 DX. It's legit the best thing Tour did. Edited February 14, 2023 by Glen-i 1
Dcubed Posted March 2, 2023 Posted March 2, 2023 It’s a good thing that we held out on doing a Theme Night this week, because… It comes out next week! (March 9th) 1 1
darksnowman Posted March 2, 2023 Posted March 2, 2023 Quote Fruit Cup Amsterdam Drift Riverside Park (GBA) DK's Snowboard Cross (Wii) Yoshi's Island Boomerang Cup Bangkok Rush Mario Circuit (DS) Waluigi Stadium (GC) Singapore Speedway Three real-world tracks seems a bit overkill this time. Oh well. Just on the day my NSO expires they add on another reason to reactivate it.
BowserBasher Posted March 2, 2023 Posted March 2, 2023 Seems these are coming out pretty quickly now. When was the last one? Just before Christmas? So we could have all the tracks by September at 3 months apart.
S.C.G Posted March 3, 2023 Posted March 3, 2023 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Wave 4 Release Date Now up on the main site. Full N-E *Guess Release and a trailer. Check out the article for more details. *It's like a press release, with added ambiguity 1 1
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