If you’re not planning to buy the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8, don’t worry. You’re not completely out of luck. The new premium tracks will be randomly available for players playing Global or Regional races online. If one of your friends owns a copy of the DLC, you don’t have to purchase it when you’re playing with them in a group either.
As originally reported by Eurogamer, the first wave of premium courses will be available for Random selection when playing Global or Regional races online, starting March 22. Alternatively, you can play them as soon as March 18 by playing in Friends and Rivals races with someone who already purchased the DLC. So someone still needs to buy the DLC, or you’d need to pay for the Nintendo Switch Online bundle. But that’s still cheaper than everyone in your local Mario Kart meetup purchasing the DLC for themselves.
This information has been detailed in the U.K. version of Nintendo’s website, but it is not available on the U.S. website. Kotaku reached out to Nintendo for clarification, but it did not respond at the time of publication.
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The newest Mario Kart 8 DLC was announced at the Nintendo Direct on February 9. The DLC consists of remasters of race courses from older Mario Kart games, and Nintendo intends to release them within six waves each made up of eight courses. The first of which will be available March 18, and the full collection of the promised 48 tracks will be released by the end of 2023. Players who have the expanded version of the Nintendo Switch Online subscription can access all the DLC as soon as they are released. Otherwise, you can buy the pack separately for $24.99