Ever since the Booster Course Pass was announced back in [year], fans have wondered whether we could be getting other content in a similar way. Could characters be on the table, like Kamek and Petey Piranha? What about new settings for vs mode, or new arenas for battle mode?
All these possibilities (and more) have come up time and time again, to the point that numerous people have created mockups and trailers showing what it could be like:
But now it seems like things have changed. Now… it seems like these mockups might not just be mockups much longer.
And that’s all because of a discovery found by a dataminer going by the name azuraPKM1542. In their post on Twitter, they say the following:
考察
・元々衣装とメタル化が存在するマリオとピーチのライバルキャラが忽然と消える→衣装キャラ実装の為にネコマリオやピンクゴールドピーチがマリオ＆ピーチ枠に統合される？
・新しいライバルキャラを入れる枠を確保してる→新キャラ実装？
— アズラ 11日 20時〜8DXフレ戦 (@azuraPKM1542) October 18, 2022
This translates to:
- Other forms of Mario and Peach (including Tanooki Mario, Cat Peach and their metal variants) have disappeared from the rivals list.
- Will they be integrated into the main slots for Mario and Peach, as costume options instead of characters?
- And now a new slot is open for a ‘rival’ character, does that mean a new character could be added?
This basically means that Tanooki Mario, Cat Peach, Metal Mario and Pink Gold Peach aren’t ‘rival’ options for modes like Grand Prix anymore. As a result, those racers that usually have them as their rival (read, hyper component AI opponent meant to make these modes more challenging) don’t have a character set anymore.
And the resulting theory they have based on this is that it could be proof Nintendo is planning to merge the alternate forms of Mario and Peach into one character slot each. This would let players select between them in the same way as the different colour variants for Yoshi or Shy Guy, or Link’s two forms in the Deluxe version.
Hence this would leave a slot (or four) open for newcomers to get added in a future update.
So yeah, that’s the gist of it. The rival setups for various characters have been broken in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for a while now, and it’s possible that’s evidence Nintendo is planning to merge Mario and Peach’s alternate forms into a single character slot, letting up space for newcomers in the process.
But is it likely?
Well, we’re not sure.
On the one hand, it would be pretty neat to see these slots merged together, and we can definitely see that happening at some point. There’s no reason Mario or Peach need 6 character slots for their different forms, especially when almost every other ‘alt’ shares the same one as its main counterpart.
Yet at the same time, we’re not convinced that’s a sign of any extra characters be added. Sure, it could be. And if we had to hazard a guess, we’d say there’s a good possibility we’ll see Tour’s newcomers added into 8 Deluxe at some point, especially given Nintendo’s interest in preserving it post mobile game shut down.
Otherwise, why would ALL of Tours unique tracks get added in the DLC, including Merry Mountain, Ninja Hideaway and all the city ones?
But we’re not sure they’d stick them all on the normal character select screen. Instead, it feels likely they’d add an alternate tab to the menu, similar to how you switch between the old and new tracks in the track selection screen.
Note how this is a different view to the original track selection screen
That way, they could add way more than 4 new characters without needing to cram them into the existing character select screen layout, or make the icons super tiny like some sort of Smash Bros fan roster.
So we’re not convinced here. It’s possible, and it’s interesting to see the game’s internal data has changed here, but we’re not sure that means new characters are being added in this way.
Still, what do you think? Will we see new characters for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe via the DLC? And if so, how would they be added to the character select screen?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below, on social media, or on our Discord server today!
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