The first eight DLC tracks for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will go live on Friday.
The Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass, which costs $24.99 / £24.99, will provide 48 DLC tracks across six waves, the first of which will land on Friday, March 18.
The courses will include remakes of classic tracks from across the series from games such as Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart Double Dash, Mario Kart Wii, as well as handheld entries and the mobile game, Mario Kart Tour.
However, Nintendo has not yet officially confirmed what time the tracks will officially go live.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Booster Course Pass trailer
Despite this, VGC has reason to believe that the DLC will become active on March 18 at 0.01am in each region, rather than at the same time globally.
This should mean the DLC will go live at:
- 00:01 ACT on March 18 in Australia (06:01 PT / 09:01 ET / 13:01 GMT on March 17)
- 00:01 CET on March 18 in Europe (16:01 PT / 19:01 ET / 23:01 GMT on March 17)
- 00:01 ET on March 18 in North America (21:01 PT on March 17, 04:01 GMT on March 18)
This was also the case with the Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise DLC, which was released on November 5, 2021.
Like the Mario Kart DLC, Happy Home Paradise could be bought separately for $24.99 or was included as part of the Expansion Pack for Nintendo Switch Online members.
Players can currently pre-download the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass, as was the case with Happy Home Paradise, so they can start playing as soon as the DLC goes live.
Since practically all first-party Nintendo software which can be pre-downloaded from the eShop goes live at midnight, it’s almost certain that the Mario Kart 8 DLC will also be available at midnight in every region.
The full list of courses that will be available in the first wave are as follows:
- Paris Promenade (Tour)
- Toad Circuit (3DS)
- Choco Mountain (N64)
- Coconut Mall (Wii)
- Tokyo Blur (Tour)
- Shroom Ridge (3DS)
- Sky Garden (GBA)
- Ninja Hideaway (Tour)
Before players will be able to use the DLC, however, they will also need to download a free software update planned for the game, which will likely be released on Thursday ahead of the DLC going live.
The last mainline entry in Nintendo’s racing series, Mario Kart 8, was released for Wii U in 2014.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, an enhanced version of the game for Nintendo Switch, was released in April 2017, the month after Nintendo’s latest console launched.
To date, Nintendo has never released more than one mainline Mario Kart game on a single console.
The platform holder said in November 2020 that Switch had shipped almost 93 million units and that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had officially become the franchise’s best-selling entry ever with nearly 40 million copies sold.
Source: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/what-time-does-the-mario-kart-8-deluxe-dlc-go-live/
