The Wide World of Dirt

So many tracks, so little time.

Since I know your time is precious, I won’t bore you with an introduction. Here’s volume four of my MK8DX Track Rankings!

#72: DS Wario Stadium

All the way back in 2014, I saw this track in the Leaf Cup and remembered how dreadful it was to race on in Mario Kart DS. The agony was doubled by the fact that it wasn’t the real Wario Stadium from Mario Kart 64.

I gave the track a chance, and it spawned quite possibly the craziest thing I have ever done in a Mario Kart game.

This is an infinitely more interesting version of the DS original. It feels a lot more like a dirt-bike course than the original where you couldn’t perform tricks.

The contortion of this track is something out of Evel Knievel’s wildest dreams, having karts going vertical after avoiding a series of spinning fire hazards.

Diving underwater for the final portion brings a new element to the track that makes the finish of the race more unpredictable.

If I could make a change, I would’ve made it easier to take the ground route than making the glider ramp take up so much of the final ramp, though it does feel cool to glide to the finish.

My final critique: Why didn’t this track get its own song for this game?

Grade: 19/40

#71: 3DS Rock Rock Mountain

For a track that looked so lively and lush in Mario Kart 7, the visuals took a bit of a nosedive here, but that’s not too much of a distraction for me.

I find this track to be rather simple in terms of its difficulty. There aren’t any real complicated turns that throw the player off.

This means that it’s a great track to show off how good you are with items.

Boasting a whooping three glider sections, aerial warfare is the name of the game. Sniping with bananas and shells are great tools to have here in your repertoire because you can throw those over items carried by opposing players.

The music on this course rocks, and it’s a great place to sharpen your gliding skills. Very good and rock solid race track.

Grade: 20/40

#70: Tour Los Angeles Laps

This course played host to one of my best memories in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: I reached max VR for the first time here on Kobe Day in 2023.

That said, it’s far from perfect, and that starts with the music. Why didn’t we just bolster the Tour version with the Beach Boys-style ba-ba-bas?

Driving off the pier and onto the beach is always thrilling, even if the halfpipe in the middle is super, super clunky. All of the road sections past that aren’t incredibly appealing, especially considering you don’t run into any traffic.

Flying over Dodger Stadium and swerving through Rodeo Drive is pretty cool to wrap up sector 2 before we are led to the oil fields of Inglewood.

A lot of folks seem to hate this section, which I don’t get. It’s realistic. It’s also a commentary on America, whether intentional or not, that the country’s wealth, beauty, and prosperity have a lot of ugliness right next door.

Ultimately, LA Laps is a good track that does a better job of interacting with its source city, but there are a lot of boring or clunky sections that hold it back from being as good as it could’ve been.

Grade: 20/40

#69: Wii Daisy Circuit

We lost out on a GameCube or a DS track to have this, the 10th Wii Nitro course.

The layout for this course does a lot of good: the staircase shortcut, the statue plaza section, and all the diverging paths.

I appreciated that Nintendo made the soundtrack for this circuit a little lighter in this version compared to its original.

Outside of that, my main issue with the course is its placement in the BCP.

This would’ve been a good Wave 2 track; instead, we got it in Wave 6. Daisy Circuit is the third track in the Acorn Cup, the penultimate Cup in the game!

Because of this, it stands out in a bad way and lands here at #69.

Grade: 21/40

#68: GBA Cheese Land

My very first game in this series was Mario Kart: Super Circuit. I have a lot of memories of car rides playing on this track, Ribbon Road, and Riverside Park, sometimes plugging in an overhead light.

Just 13 years later, it got a 3D glow-up, the likes of which we’d previously never seen for a GBA title.

No, seriously. Look at the remakes from MKDS, MKWii, and MK7 for Super Circuit tracks, and not a single one of them went as hard for GBA as MK8DX.

While I’m not the world’s biggest fan of this track (especially online), I see why people love it to death. Personally, I miss the little blue mice that would skitter across the road and act as hazards in the original.

I utterly despise the end of this track. The amount of times I’ve driven through the final set of item boxes with a lead, got lightning-bolted, and finished lower than 8th is too high and too dreadful to recount.

I know I’m bringing sour grapes to this discussion, but not many things pair better with cheese than whine. All in all, the anti-grav and other upgrades to this track have made it a fan favorite, just not a favorite for this fan.

Grade: 22/40

#67: Tour Paris Promenade

The very first track of the Booster Course Pass, Paris Promenade needed to properly set the tone for the construction and execution of the Tour tracks.

Considering the success of these tracks, this proved to be a strong track that properly implemented the blended layout that became a staple of Tour tracks.

Though there aren’t a whole lot of interactive parts of the Paris landscape, racers do get to drive underneath the Eiffel Tower (if they so choose.)

There are a few parts of this track that don’t make a whole lot of sense, particularly the section that branches off to the left before the Tower. We’re racing on sand at full speed, something that usually slows us down.

Doesn’t really make much sense, but it’s whatever. I also would’ve liked to see some smaller piranha plants popping out of the pipes on that path randomly to make it more dangerous to drive through.

Grade: 22/40

#66: GCN Daisy Cruiser

As a known DoubleDash truther, I love every track that comes from that game, and Daisy Cruiser was no exception.

Seeing it included in MK7 brought a smile on my face as I was able to drive through the pool for the first time.

Having driven on this track for so long, I’m beginning to notice some cracks in its armor that I’d blissfully dismissed.

There are no opportunities for mushroom or star shortcuts, making it harder to rejoin the pack. The boiler room taking on water doesn’t exactly make much sense, though it does make that section a bit more intriguing.

Accessing both sides of the deck is really cool while they really glammed up the ballroom and actually put characters at the tables! Big aesthetic improvements here, but overall, the track itself isn’t as strong in MK8DX‘s engine.

Grade: 22/40

#65: Wii Moo Moo Meadows

Introducing the first retro course in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Moo Moo Meadows strikes a chord with me due to its great soundtrack and serene environment.

I love how the cows slowly migrate onto the track in the esses, creating a lot of chaos for newer players that don’t know how to get around them.

The new glider section toward the end of the lap reinforces some of the newer additions to a track that helped introduce tricking in its original iteration.

Despite being the first retro track in the entire 96-track slate, I regularly pick this track in online lobbies because it’s a really balanced circuit.

Even if you start the final lap in last, there’s still a chance you can win the race, which is what I find beautiful about Mario Kart as a series.

Grade: 22/40