The Wide World of Dirt

Something something fungus among us.

Now that that’s out of the way, on to the review.

One of the most popular tracks from Mario Kart Wii has returned to the series in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s second wave of booster courses amidst much anticipation from fans.

As someone who didn’t have the opportunity to play Mario Kart Wii when it came out, I have a lot less nostalgia for these courses, but I was still very excited to race at this track again from my time playing Mario Kart 7.

It didn’t disappoint!

They ramped the graphics up significantly from the course’s most recent iteration in MK7 by making the track less saturated and more earthy. The track takes place in a mushroom world, full of mushrooms. The colors got toned down for the better.

An old path was revived from MKWii with the re-introduction of an alternate path on the left side of the blue glider mushroom introduced in MK7. This provides the player with way more options through the cave section of the track.

The visuals in that cave are amazing as well. Glimmering crystals illuminate the dark cave as the player navigates through the field of fungus.

The rest of the track isn’t much to talk about. It looks great visually. But how does it race?

It races well, for the most part.

The cave section holds my biggest gripe. I don’t know if it has underwater physics like Sky-High Sundae, but you can’t be as aggressive through the section as you might initially think.

If you push down too much on the analog stick, you run the risk of falling between the mushrooms and entering the pit of doom. It’s already hard enough to drive through this section as the leader while worrying about getting hit at the wrong time. It’s made much worse when you think you’re going to gain time and end up in the pit anyway.

They also removed a mushroom in the split paths leading up to the cave for some reason, and I don’t really understand the rationale. The mushroom path is already faster, but the second bouncing mushroom brought the time loss down.

The iconic gap jump is still possible in 150cc and especially in 200cc, but it’s a much more difficult maneuver to pull off than before. I like that the shortcut has been made more difficult to pull off, but this is another instance of lack of shortcuts hurting tracks.

Having a mushroom at this track in the cave section may as well be a detriment to you.

I think having the mushrooms on the left side after the start as a shortcut is cool, but the time save is extremely minimal. At that point, can you call it much of a shortcut?

I think this track could’ve been remade better. With the changes made to Coconut Mall in the wave 2 patch, we could see these tracks be improved after their release.

Regardless, it’s still a super fun track to race at, and I’m glad it’s in the game.

Grade: B+