Monday, November 10, 2014

Some details on the first MK8 DLC pack

Kinda old news (by that I mean last Thursday), but since the DLC pack isn't out yet, why not?

First, track names. For the Egg Cup: GCN Yoshi Circuit, Excitebike Arena, Dragon Driftway and Mute City. For the Triforce Cup: Wii Wario's Gold Mine, SNES Rainbow Road, Ice Ice Outpost and Hyrule Circuit. That's right, two of the three retro tracks were already featured as retro tracks in other games, and I can't say I'm too hot about the hardest track in the entire series being one of them. GCN Yoshi Circuit, on the other hand, is a much better pick - I've always wanted to race on it with an inward drifter, so now's my chance!

There are also a few tracks based on other Nintendo series, as was expected. Excitebike Arena and Mute City were natural picks, and Hyrule Circuit only makes sense considering the title of the DLC pack, which includes "The Legend of Zelda". However, I can't help but think having Link on the roster and a track based on Hyrule may turn out to be a little jarring. Much moreso than the Mercedes thing, at any rate. But oh well, I won't knock it until I've tried it. For all I know it's going to be a perfect fit. (After successful crossovers involving Pokémon and Nobunaga's Ambition, as well as Zelda and Dynasty Warriors, I'm going to avoid passing judgement beforehand.)

Cat Peach is confirmed to be a middleweight, to absolutely nobody's surprise. This means there are now enough middleweights for everyone in four-player local multiplayer, though I guess if you care enough about weight classes to pick your character based on that, you're not going to be picking a middleweight of all things. No word on Tanooki Mario and Link, though I fully expect the former to remain a cruiserweight, like his suitless counterpart.

Finally, the vehicles: three karts, the Blue Falcon, the B-Dasher and the Tanooki Kart, and one bike, the Master Cycle. We also know the visible stats for the Blue Falcon, and they confirm what I suspect most people wanted out of these DLCs: vehicles with new sets of stats. Indeed, the Blue Falcon is the only vehicle thus far that provides a boost to both ground speed and acceleration. Of course, it's also very light, with crappy traction and average handling to compensate. The Tanooki Kart has bad ground handling and good traction, but we don't know anything outside of that for the time being.

12 comments:

  1. I just hope that Link's equipment will weigh enough to be considered worth playing as. Though I really doubt he'll weigh anywhere near as much as Morton also I think Tanooki Mario actually may more more than regular Mario considering he has the ability to turn into stone.

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    1. Maybe he'll get to be metalweight by virtue of that layer of chain mail? Honestly, I can't see him having a large hitbox, so that's basically the best case scenario, even if metalweights are totally obsolete compared to the other heavyweight classes.

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  2. Okay, because Mario Kart isn't my thing (and from what I remember of both tracks, I didn't think either of them were that bad), which is the hard one, Wario's Gold Mine, or SNES Rainbow Road?

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    1. SNES Rainbow Road. No walls at all, Thwomps that make you spin out if you so much as touch them... yeah, that was a nightmare. This is the FOURTH Mario Kart game it's in now, someone really hates us all.

      Then again, Donut Plains 3 was pure evil back then too, and it's fairly tame nowadays (unless you run crap traction like I do, then it's a bit more challenging).

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    2. To be fair Wario's Gold Mine isn't too much better for similar reasons.

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    3. I never had any issues whatsoever with Wario's Gold Mine. Mostly due to the fact that the physics in the original game were way worse than in any other installment. And there was inward drifting in MKWii. Inward drifting makes everything better.

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    4. The Super Circuit version had no Thwomps. The Super Mario Kart half of that game was basically the equivalent to how Johto was in Crystal, only even lazier. With how Super Circuit is nowhere close to the best Mario Kart...Do the math...

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    5. Johto was hardly spectacular either, mind you. I'd even go as far as to say it just might be worse than gen 1 Kanto.

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    6. Would that not make it the perfect comparison?...

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    7. If you compare Johto to the original tracks in Super Circuit, you have a really good point.

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    8. You know how you come up with something sometimes, and it turns out to fit even more perfectly than one could have dreamed to the topic at hand? That's basically me comparing Super Circuit to Crystal. Older stuff thrown in due to extra space and stroking the nostalgia boner, coming in rushed. I wasn't even thinking of the subparness of the "new" stuff until you brought up the point that Johto is far from the best region in Gen 2...
      Fun fact: Because I'm arguably the only one who liked Super Circuit (nostalgia; one of the first video games I played), I tended to go to the website because I didn't know how to unlock those nostalgia-ridden, bare-bones courses (in my defense, I was very young and naive). You know how you need to get 100 coins, not mattering of place? The website said you needed to get an A rank, which it said could be gotten by a perfect 36. That's blatant misinformation you expect out of prima guides...

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