Does anyone else find it Annoying that It's only the GBA tracks that Nintendo Messes up?

Lol you dont have to be that salty about it. It still doesn't change my oppinion about the remade tracks. It just doesn't feel the same and a few more turns wouldn't hurt.. And btw, the tracks are remade with the purpose of Mario Kart Tour's simple gameplay in mind. And why are Snow Land and Boo Lake almost exactly the same then? Those two are great remakes!

Snow Land & Boo Lake are more recently remade. They aren't "experimenting" with mobile track creation anymore, it's been 3 years now of Tour. They were also made strictly with the BCP in mind, unlike the other GBA courses in Tour. Maybe aside from Sky Garden, the BCP was still a "maybe" when the others came out. Riverside Park isn't THAT butchered from the original either.

And no, I'd rather not have the GBA tracks keep their random squiggles in the remakes: what's the point of remaking them if they're gonna be the same anyway?

Well, look at the base game GBA and SNES tracks.. point made

GBA Snow Land had 3 Shortcuts: the 1 is that 2nd Route, the Next is the Jump next to the Wall, which later has that Wall Removed, and the Final is near the Wall Shortcut, You can Just cut through the Snow. The Remake Removed the 2nd Route Shortcut.
GBA Boo Lake had a Shortcut Where you could jump over the Fork in the Road with that Jump, which was Removed Later, and the "Invisible" Bridge.
GBA Sky Garden had a Difficult Shortcut where at the Diagonal Wall, You could use a Mushroom and - if ur Lucky - could cut across the Wall Portion. That Shortcut Along with the Ultra Shortcut and 2 other Shortcuts were Removed. In GBA Cheep Cheep Island, there was a Shortcut where You could skip that part will the Seagulls and the Bridge with a Mushroom, that Shortcut was Removed in MKT. In GBA Sunset Wilds, there was a Jump Next to some Walls which if You use a Mushroom, You can Preform a Shortcut, All Shortcuts in GBA Sunset Wilds were Removed in MKT. In GBA Riverside Park, there are 2 Shortcuts. The 1st is very hard, it is the area with those Random Wall Bits, and it has 2 pieces of Bridge, the next is this Water Passage which Requires No Mushroom, Those Shortcuts were Removed in MKT.
Those are all the Shortcuts Removed in GBA Tracks in MKT.

Those...were made...for MARIOKART 8 ONLY! The Tour ones were made for Tour. And the BCP has NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING, to do withthe base game whatsoever.  There isn't any correlation between what the devs did 8 years ago & now, because it's been 8 years. Heck, Tour isn't even the same team.

Besides the tracks from 8 years ago are much better and more faithful remakes. And again, this doesnt change at all how I feel about some Gba tracks.

GBA Mario Circuit is worse than the Tour remakes & faithfulness means nothing when the originals were literally a bunch of random corners that form a loop due to limitations, which don't exist anymore, so a coherent change is due. They don't have the SNES nostalgia & shouldn't be this flat in the first place; they're fixing the layouts, & the new ones are perfectly fine.  End of.

I feel like those shortcuts were too crazy to actually be realistic on a new game. I mean, GBA needed all of those shortcuts to have interesting tracks. As an example, I remember that one spot on Cheep Cheep Island where you can jump to a shore and cut a part (but it's hardly useful since you'll have to pass in the water to get out) or an enormous cut with two platforms. Today, this is hardly realistic, like most of the little ramps in GBA, we don't need them anymore tbh

TBH, the Ultimate GBA Sky Garden Shortcuts would be too powerful compared to the Shortcuts in MKT. GBA Cheep Cheep Island's Shortcut can get cut. But still keeping the Original Shape. GBA Sunset Wilds can be a bit shortened, the Road near the Shortcut will be Shortened so the Shortcut wouldn't be too powerful. But there is no reason why that Shortcut with Boosts in GBA Snowland is not in MKT or MK8.

Gonna do a bit of a megapost here.


How can we tell what developers were intending do with a track in the original game by how it was remade? If you really want to look at what Nintendo was intending at the time, you can look at Double Dash's tracks. Certainly more ambitious (in part due to greater hardware) but it still brings in that Mario Kart wackiness we all associate with the game. There's lots of weird layouts that Nintendo would never do nowadays (looking at you, WC!) because you couldn't navigate the track blindfolded with both hands behind your back. Even then we saw modifications like with Dry Dry Desert that I don't think were ever intended but were just "we have to put a new gimmick on this track". They certainly didn't get changed as much as MKSC's tracks but changes were still made, and it wasn't what was "imagined to look".
Hardware in and of itself doesn't make a track good or bad, it's a matter of how the game's controls and physics compliment (or don't) the track's layout and whatever you can do on there. MK64 may be on a more technically inferior console than MKDD, but I will enjoy myself infinitely more with MK64 because the controls compliment the tracks infinitely better than they did in MKDD.
Even if you're going to use hardware as the excuse as to why they're updating the tracks...they honestly could have done it as early as MKW, and that game has the most faithful remakes in the entire franchise. As much as I like to dunk on CTGP, that has some stellar tracks that show the Wii's capabilities when it comes to what they could do with tracks. And yet Nintendo ported the tracks over, graphically updated them, adjusted the scale, and that was that, despite having the remakes of "tracks that couldn't be modified later" like Yoshi Falls, Waluigi Stadium, DK Jungle Parkway, DK Mountain, Daisy Cruiser, and Airship Fortress. All tracks from "3D" karts, all faithful to the original. And now continually they are making changes to tracks from "3D" karts not because they "couldn't be modified later" as of MKW and MK7, but because Nintendo has gotten a compulsive need on the level of a crack addiction to shove every gimmick into every track at every opportunity.


So I'll go over how I thought the MKSC remakes turned out.
Riverside Park is literally half of a track now, lol. Pitiful.
It's hard to fuck up Bowser Castle 1. Luckily they didn't.
Mario Circuit was in the base game and as such is 99.5% accurate with the original. It implements MK8's gimmicks without over-relying on them and still stands on its own as a fun track. Boo Lake is probably the best of the DLC remakes.. The layout is mostly faithful to the original and it adds in MK8's gimmicks without feeling too over-reliant on them.
Cheese Land has a layout mostly faithful to the original but I feel it relies too much on anti-gravity so it falters there. Sorry.
Bowser Castle 2 suffers from some minor layout modifications, and I still hate how Mario Kart Tour presents tracks. If they kept the original layout I'd imagine that's how it would have been handled in MK7.
Sky Garden was butchered, it's literally half the track the original was. Nothing else I need to say.
Sunset Wilds hasn't been added to MK8 yet. Simplified as expected, maybe not quite as egregious as Sky Garden but still quite noticeable.
Cheep Cheep Island isn't...bad? The track's been made wayyyyy smaller. Layout's mostly the same but I feel a lot of the vibe is missing, but that just may be an issue of me disliking Tour's presentation.
Snow Land I think could have been solid but Nintendo doesn't really do anything with the theme and it suffers the same layout issues as the rest of the Tour remakes.
Ribbon Road sucks.
Bowser Castle 3 misses its blue aesthetic, it really made it stand out. Other than that my thoughts on Bowser Castle 2 apply here.


Include the game's gimmicks into the track. It's not that hard. Donut Plains 3 in the same fucking game did it and actually did it fairly well, it's one of the better remakes that MK8 came out with. Same with pretty much all of Mario Kart 7's remakes. They implemented gliding and underwater driving into the track without over-relying on it, and also graphically updated it to look better for the ages. In essence, it's still the original track, but updated to modern hardware and with some new bells and whistles. This is the entire point of a remake. Changing the track's layout (and thus how it plays) and calling it the same track is fundamentally dishonest and misses the point of remaking it. It's like if you replaced the meat in a Big Mac with sand and still called it a Big Mac. Even if the layout was kept the same (as was the case with Shroom Ridge), these remakes look like shit, the entire package looking overexposed and plasticky like a cheap knock-off playset you'd find at a D-tier toy shop.
I could also tell you now that if the original layouts made it into MK8D, it would be trivial to navigate, both because of the increased scale of the games and the overall slowing of the game engine. Perhaps not on 200cc but I think 200cc's implementation was kinda rushed and poor. MKT is a whole other animal, so I won't get into that.


Snow Land's alternate route isn't really a shortcut moreso an alternate route. It's slower if you know what you're doing anyways. The ice path is faster. The bumper by the final turn was removed and was faster.
Boo Lake also has a lot of unintended shortcuts with regards to the bumpers there, but that was MKSC's physics enabling it moreso. But the fork is indeed gone.
Sky Garden...yeah. The MKDS shroomspot was removed, the cloud cut is removed, the MKSC shroomspot was removed (although tbf that was made impossible with MKDS, even the wall cut which is completely for funsies was removed. All were faster.
Cheep Cheep Island had a lot of shortcuts, all were removed.
Again, they remade the Tour versions. I think they could have done the originals justice but in their place we get a different track masquerading as the original.


Mario Kart is the last game we need to be concerned about when it comes to realism. If we were playing an F1 game then that'd hold water but this is a kart racer where characters featuring turtles, actual babies, a gorilla, whatever the fuck Inklings are, and metal-plated versions of other characters race around on such realistic tracks like a candy wonderland, a full+active commercial airport, a dance club, an active highway, a pendulum clock, and an active volcano. And this is just the base MK8. Mario Kart has not and will never care about realism in their games. If you want to justify the removal of shortcuts (however wrong you may be), it's not realism. It's not better and it will never be better. That cut on Cheep Cheep Island you're talking about? Easily one of the most rewarding cuts in all of kart, not only due to the sheer length you cut (you can almost half your lap times if done optimally) but also its difficulty, so landing it is all the better. Now you just drive (which in and of itself has become increasingly less interesting for the past 15 years now) on the pre-determined path the game tells you to go on and watch the pretty pictures. Every GBA remake bar Mario Circuit suffered this fate. It's disgraceful to Mario Kart's history.

@WassupYoshi so basically you have a problem with Mariokart 8 as a whole, good to know

The GBA tracks were unreasonably long-winded. Good on a GBA, but off it? They'd never get far.

And spoiler alert, Double Dash was the only really 3D Mariokart bedore Wii.

Another spoiler alert, all of the Wii retros are similar to the originals bc the originals were ALL flat. Waluigi Stadium is the least flat retro, along with DK Mountain. The DS picks were also flat tracks. They specifically chose the flattest courses they could for Wii because they had gliding and underwater in mind for later.


CTGP shows what the Wii is capable of after trial & error & understanding how to develop courses on it. The devs? Make a Mariokart. That was it. CTGP took a long time to make. One MK is all the devs needed. They didn't look to go beyond that, they didn't want to go beyond that. The only reason those mods exist is because someone wasn't satisfied, or intrigued enough to wonder what they could achieve if they went deeper. Using CTGP is very, very, very flawed.


As for the Tour remakes, they're perfect. The originals were unreasonable to port over. Again, notice how they specifically reused the most unflattenable courses from GBA in Wii & 7.. GBA Mario Circuit is far & awayte WORST remake in 8/Tour, even compared to Sky Garden. Case closed.

And yes, the hardware affects the courses. You really think they'd copy past a 2D image, rather than a full-fledged 3D model that makes sense?

And yes, looking at every other GBA game, we know they had to cut back alot of what they originally wanted, every single time without fail. You really trying to tell me they perfected this one & had to fuck up what they had in mind for every other one? I rest my case.

TLDR: Once you notice the originals were random squiggles, the remakes are fine.

GBA Boo Lake:

Tour Boo Lake:

Seems better to me.

I think Tour here, & not just bc bias

Look at stuff like the 7 ramps bundled up together on the final corner. The tiny bridge next to the road for no real reason. It's stuff like that that they need to remove. It doesn't work in 3D. It would in 2D, but not on a modern, proper version of the course.

There are actually 8 Jumps at the Final Turn.
Did you count Correctly?

It was just a number to show how ridiculous it is.

And the boosts before every large jump? That isn't necessary anymore. That's the whole point. They don't need to keep the unnecessary add-ons anymore.

Sorry.

The Wii U version is an aggressively mediocre kart experience with tracks that rely more on their gimmicks than their layout in order to make tracks fun. Deluxe has the same issues but takes away basically every single option to the player that allows them to go fast and includes DLC tracks, of which maybe a quarter are worth the price of admission. Mario Kart Wii was the beginning of the end when it came to Mario Kart being a kart racer with interesting racing mechanics and a crazy high skill ceiling, but Mario Kart 8 and Tour is that in full force. I have a problem with the Deluxe version moreso, but both are lower tier karts.


Nintendo has pulled off long and winding tracks before and since MKSC, it's not exclusive. Mario Kart 64's Wario Stadium takes well over a minute per lap in an uber-condensed layout. In Double Dash, Wario Colosseum was so long that Nintendo shortened the track to 2 laps. Its version of Bowser Castle and Rainbow Road are also long as hell. Mario Kart DS has tracks like everyone's beloved Waluigi Pinball, DK Pass, its version of Wario Stadium, and its version of Bowser Castle. Mario Kart Wii has DK Summit and Maple Treeway. Even Mario Kart 7 has some longer tracks like Shy Guy Bazaar, Rock Rock Mountain, and Wario Shipyard, not even mentioning the 3 track that go by sections because they would take damn near two minutes per lap had it been done traditionally.
It's not exclusive to MKSC to have "long-winded" tracks (when in reality you could reasonably complete 3 laps on most tracks in under a minute without any major shortcuts). You're justifying the simplification of layouts by saying there will be more pretty pictures flying by. If that's not peak ADD brain, idk what is.


Mario Kart 64 does have 3D courses. The characters are all 2D but the tracks themselves are not flat. Again, if you want to look at what the developers intended for MKSC, look at MKDD.


DK Jungle Parkway is, obviously, known for being flat and as such being able to be consistently MTed on in MK64. Daisy Cruiser literally has multiple levels to it. If we want to talk about the DS remakes I will give you that, but saying that they with intent chose flatter tracks for DS and Wii's remakes "because they had gliding and underwater in mind for later" is completely wrong. You cannot under any circumstances assume that what is currently happening with kart is what was always intended. You have to remember that SMK was originally not even a Mario Kart but they changed it later to become one.


So now you're saying that MK8 was what Nintendo really wanted kart to be, so as such they rushed MKW out the door to deliberately not have gliding or underwater sections? Bring me to your plug, because I want whatever you're smoking.
And it's not the hardware we're talking about, it's the kart itself and how it was coded. You could probably implement gliding into MKW. As with pretty much every other kart. Is it going to happen? Not in my lifetime because the work that would be required would be immense for basically no payoff, but I know it is possible.
Let's get this straight. Hardware at its core affects graphical capabilities, and how much memory you can process at any time. It does not affect how many gimmicks you can fit into a kart game. It does not affect how a track plays, nor does it affect how technically interesting a kart game is.


So they reuse Cheep Cheep Island (a track which they'd pretty much have to port one-to-one without completely butchering it) for Mario Kart Tour, a game where they could "unflatten" it, but they would reuse Sky Garden (a track had massive potential before Tour + 8 butchered it) in Mario Kart DS. And we also now assume that they are only using tracks that they could "unflatten" despite a cavalcade of tracks with good potential still belonging in Nintendo's back-catalog.
Again. Bring me to your dealer. I want whatever you're smoking.


If you want to judge it in terms of pretty pictures flying by, then yes it does. In terms of actual driving, it doesn't, and it never will. Every time I play Mario Kart 8 I'm basically falling asleep at the wheel and it's on the strongest hardware. Super Mario Kart still plays really well and it's on the weakest hardware technically. In terms of gimmicks, you're assuming that the hardware enabled it and not the coding that the developers had in mind.


Nope. I'm saying that assuming how MKSC's tracks were butchered in 2023 are not an indicator of how they were originally envisioned to be in 2001. This also goes for every other kart. How Mario Kart 8 envisioned Wario Stadium and Tick Tock Clock is not and never will be an indicator of how Wario Stadium and Tick Tock Clock were always envisioned.


"Once you notice" you gotta be shitting me

Dude I've been playing MKSC at a high level for 5 years now. I know every track in the game inside and out. Every little bit of trivia and tech that you want to know about MKSC, I know better than you and will always know better than you. If you're trying to school me on MKSC you're failing miserably.
Every track is random squiggles at its core. MKSC made those squiggles interesting. Hell, every kart before MKW without fail made those squiggles interesting. MK8 doesn't make it interesting, nor does MKT.