Mario Kart 8's getting a second bit of DLC, with eight additional courses. Here are all the details and some brand new footage...
NewsGiven that the Wii U hasn't exactly been a storming success, Mario Kart 8's sales have been little short of remarkable: since its release last year, the racer's sold nearly 5 million copies - meaning that more than one in two console owners has picked up a copy of the game.
Nintendo's support for Mario Kart 8 isn't over, either. The game's second slab of downloadable content's due on the 23rd April, and ahead of its release, Nintendo's released a list of tracks and a bit of footage to whet our appetites.
First up, here's a look at the tracks making a reappearance from Mario Kart games past:
Baby Park (Original appearance: Mario Kart: Double Dash on the GameCube)
Neo Bowser City (Original appearance: Mario Kart 7 on the 3DS)
Ribbon Road (Original appearance: Mario Kart: Super Circuit on the Game Boy Advance)
Cheese Land (Original appearance: Mario Kart: Super Circuit on the Game Boy Advance)
The HD recreations of those tracks will be joined by a set of new courses, which are called:
Nature Road
Rin Rin Metro
Big Blue
Animal Crossing
We didn't necessarily realize that we needed an Animal Crossing course in our lives until we saw it in action, but it looks brilliant. The roadsides are lined with familiar-looking trees and characters, and the irascible Mr. Resetti even shows up as an obstacle in the middle of it all.
As well as those courses, there are three additional characters to choose from, two of which hail from Animal Crossing - there's a Villager, Isabelle and, just to switch things up a bit, Dry Bowser, the skeletal version of the character first seen in New Super Mario Bros.
There will also be four new vehicles: two bikes (Bone Rattler and City Tripper) and two karts (Streetle and P-Wing).
Here's the trailer, which shows all the characters and courses in action:
There's also, courtesy of Eurogamer, a trailer dedicated to one course - Baby Park, the returning course from the GameCube Mario Kart, which looks cuter than ever in its HD form:
