The Wide World of Dirt

#16: Tour Amsterdam Drift

The best of the 14 Tour city tracks lands at #16 on my list.

Amsterdam Drift’s music remains infectious from its mobile game version, further livening up a track full of vibrant color.

A trip underneath the NEMO Science Museum sends players gliding out of the tunnel over a train and into the Zaanse Schans area full of windmills. Weaving around the terrain brings racers over a ferry and back into the city where they’ll encounter a tram before returning to the finish line.

Instead of going back under the museum, you’ll keep driving straight and take a dip into the canal where fast water streams can shoot you up for tricks or onto a small boat where you can grab more items.

Once exiting the canals, racers fly by the finish line to start lap three where karts blow by another tram before swinging back into the canal for a moment prior to ramping out into the Keukenhof tulip fields.

Driving through the Rijksmuseum and the Bloemenmarkt leads to the final set of corners that lead to the finish line of a truly remarkable circuit.

For as much flak as these city tracks got (and as you’ve seen throughout this list, deservedly so in some cases), Amsterdam Drift proves that these tracks offer scenic variety and blend different gameplay types in the same level, making for one of the most diverse tracks in the entire game.

Grade: 34/40

#15: GCN Baby Park

I’ll be short.

I’m a DoubleDash fan, y’all should know this by now.

Not only do I enjoy chaos in my Mario Kart games, I embrace it.

Baby Park provides one small frill to its original version: it’s anti-gravity, allowing competitors to bang into one another to gain speed.

My one gripe with this version is the track not allowing items to roll over the median like in the GameCube original.

Outside of that, it’s seven laps of white-knuckle mayhem.

If you can’t embrace the chaos, it’ll engulf you.

Grade: 34/40

#14: N64 Yoshi Valley

From the simplest layout in the game to perhaps the most complex, Yoshi Valley lands just outside my top-10 for a glaring reason.

That reason? They made the shortest and quickest path far too easy to navigate.

This version’s bridge path may be narrow, but it’s nowhere near narrow and slippery enough with MK8DX‘s physics engine.

As such, there’s no incentive to take the alternate pathways outside of harvesting coins in the different tunnels prior to popping out where all paths merge.

The big egg remains difficult to get around if you happen upon it at the wrong time while the final bridge might be the worst place in the entire game to come across an idle Bob-Omb.

A pair of switchbacks can be bypassed rather easily with a mushroom, but this version of the track’s final section far exceeds the MK64 original.

Though this track fails to crack this list’s top-10, it would’ve been a shoo-in for the top-5 of the base game. Its gimmick still appeals to me.

Grade: 34/40

#13: Toad Harbor

One of the strongest tracks from Mario Kart 8, Toad Harbor lands at lucky number 13 on my list.

This track became an early favorite for me when I first played it on my friend’s Wii U in high school (that was over a decade ago, oh boy.)

A small ferry right after the first turn offers the first alternate path, giving players the option to take to the roofs of a local market or cruise on the ground with the vendors and artisans.

Another split path gives players the opportunity to take a faster narrow path up the S-curve or a longer path that has more coins and a double item box.

At the top of the hill, anti-gravity comes into play as racers can rip along the walls while others dodge the trolleys below that carry coins and items behind them.

A final downhill straight where trolleys take up a lot of space can be the site of many long-range plays with projectile items. In fact, if you hit the first boost ramp at the top of the hill and throw a Bob-Omb off of it, you can hit the leaders that are much further ahead.

Overall, this track enchants me in a way many others don’t, leading to it having such a high ranking for being just the second track in the Flower Cup.

Grade: 34/40

#12: Tour Squeaky Clean Sprint

When data miners revealed that there were assets in Mario Kart Tour for a bathroom-themed course, I was one of many that rolled their eyes at the idea.

When Squeaky Clean Sprint finally arrived in the fifth wave as the final track in the Feather Cup, I was taken aback at how well this track turned out.

From driving on old towels to diving into sinks and bathtubs, this drain-dwelling adventure has racers rolling through lost engagement rings before duking it out with a soapy floor and a fan.

On the second lap, the toilet springs a leak that can be tricked off of and send players up to a new path that can allow players to take two other new paths previously unseen by the player.

My one gripe is that the toilet leak should have been available on all three laps, so those two additional paths on the shelves and the back of the sink aren’t hidden/unreachable for much of the race.

Other than that, Squeaky Clean Sprint is a great course that more than exceeded my very low expectations for a bathroom course.

Grade: 35/40

#11: Big Blue

One of the tracks from the illustrious F-Zero series made its way into Nintendo’s premier racing game and made quite an impression on players.

Some of my contemporaries have this track rated very highly, and I’m mostly in agreement with them. That said, it just barely misses out on my top-10.

Similar to Mute City before it, this track drops down a little due to how it races online where people have unfortunately broken the track.

Racers will abuse the anti-gravity of this course and cut out almost the entire second sector, which is a real shame as the stream in this section means drivers have to hold a steady wheel to get through it the quickest.

The third sector is easily the longest. Alternating between the different speed treads can prove difficult for some, but the twisting dual paths towards the end of the circuit converge for the final two turns that, like 3DS Rainbow Road, leave me wanting more from that part of the track.

Big Blue is an epic journey split into three sections, and while I enjoy it, some of its flaws allow the track to be broken. I can’t in good conscience place a truly broken track into my top-10.

Grade: 35/40