The Mario Kart 8 Booster Pass has proven to be one of the most pleasantly surprising pieces of DLC in quite some time. Granted, Nintendo’s decision to add more courses to the wildly successful Mario Kart 8 is almost certainly delaying the release of Mario Kart 9 in some way, but it’s hard to complain about more reasons to play the best Mario Kart ever.
In fact, the most annoying thing about the Mario Kart 8 Booster Pass DLC so far has been waiting to see which courses Nintendo will add to the next “wave” of releases. However, some recently uncovered Mario Kart music files may reveal exactly which courses you can look forward to playing when Wave 3 of the Mario Kart 8 Booster Pass is eventually released.
Those music tracks were seemingly discovered by YouTuber Recordreader and quickly shared via Twitter, Reddit, and elsewhere. Based on the information gathered from those datamined songs (and other recently discovered information related to future Mario Kart updates), it seems that you can expect to see the following tracks in the Mario Kart 8 Booster Pass’ Wave 3 update:
London Loop – Mario Kart Tour
Peach Gardens – Mario Kart DS
Boo Lake – Mario Kart: Super Circuit
Rock Rock Mountain – Mario Kart 7
Waluigi Stadium – Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
Merry Mountain – Mario Kart Tour
Rainbow Road – Mario Kart 7
Berlin Byways – Mario Kart Tour
If you’re really curious about what may be coming up in future Mario Kart 8 updates, here’s a look at the other upcoming course music tracks that have been discovered so far and when data miners expect those courses to be released:
Now, it’s very much worth emphasizing that all of this information is speculative and will remain speculative until Nintendo confirms or denies it. There are four more waves of Mario Kart DLC courses yet to be released, and Nintendo clearly intends to keep the identities of (and release dates for) those courses a secret for as long as they are possibly able to do so.
Having said that, these leaks make a lot of sense. Not only do these determined tracks adhere to the multi-platform release structure Nintendo has obeyed so far when it comes to the Mario Kart 8 DLC retro track remasters, but this would hardly be the first time that fans have discovered some of those tracks via datamined files. At this point, I’d honestly be a little more surprised to learn that we’re not getting any of those tracks in any of the upcoming Mario Kart 8 updates.
Assuming that those are the remastered tracks we can expect to see in the Wave 3 update, though, then I have to say that it’s a pretty good lineup. Granted, it sounds like we may not be getting some of the absolute best Mario Kart courses until some of the Booster Pass’ future waves are finally released, but Merry Mountain, Waluigi Stadium, and Waluigi Stadium should all translate well to Mario Kart 8. At this point, I’m very curious to see which legacy tracks may get ignored entirely, but it certainly seems like Nintendo is trying to squeeze in a few heavy hitters before the final wave of the Booster Pass DLC is finally released sometime in 2023.
As always, we’ll of course be sure to let you know if and when these leaks are denied or confirmed by Nintendo. I’ll also be sure to let you know if Nintendo does the right thing and eventually adds every version of Rainbow Road to Mario Kart. Of course, they could save us all a lot of trouble and just make Mario Kart 9 the “ultimate” Mario Kart game that includes every legacy track and a host of new ones.