Nintendo has announced that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will getting its final wave of new race courses later this year, and that it will finally be adding longtime fan-requested character Diddy Kong. Not only that, but he'll be joined by Funky Kong, Pauline, and Peachette. Nintendo didn't announce a release date for these course or characters, but they will be dropping at some point this holiday season.
As for the actual race courses, only the one was shown off during this announcement, that being Daisy Circuit which was first introduced in Mario Kart Wii. It's unknown as to whether this next wave of DLC will contain more courses than that, but it's possible that Nintendo used this opportunity to shine a spotlight on the new character additions rather than the tracks. In any case, it's nice to see Diddy Kong finally in the game when fans have been asking for him for so long.
This also marks the last of the already announced DLC packs that are coming to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, meaning the future of the title is pretty much up in the air at this point. It's possible that Nintendo could announce even more DLC to keep the gravy train going, but fans wil undoubtedly be itching for a new one considering the game is almost six years old at this point. We'll have to wait and see what Nintendo has planned.
It was yet another pretty big showing for Mario and friends during this latest Direct, with several titles and release dates getting revealed. Nintendo seems to be putting all of its efforts into remakes right now, as not only was a Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake announced during the show, but we're also finally getting a Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door remake almost twenty years after the original game launched on the GameCube back in 2004.
It wasn't just Mario in the spotlight either, as we also got more info on Princess Peach's first ever standalone console debut. The official title for the game is Princess Peach: Showtime! and sees our beloved princess taking to the stage to defeat a variety of different baddies. Not only that, put it appears as though she can don different costumes in order to gain different abilities, such as a Detective, Swordfighter, Kung-Fu Artist, Chef, and many more that weren't revealed in the trailer.
To cap it off, we also got the announcement that Princess Peach: Showtime! will launch early next year, with a confirmed release date of March 22 to jot down in our calendars.