Think it’s a good time to catch everyone up to speed on what the ID updates indicate for the upcoming slate of Tours. Last time the major miss was assuming the Metropolitan and Athens Tours would be separate; instead the Spring Tour was both (existing European cities + Athens 1 and 2; all city tracks). Keep that in mind just in case some of the assumptions here aren’t fruitful.
If anyone is still lost on what these IDs are; they correspond to image files for each course. Existing courses get ID increases when they return too, since they’ll have new preview images with different top shelf drivers. Combining old track increases with new track increases occurring at the same time, we can approximately guess the theme of the Tour. They’ve been preparing Tours earlier ahead of time than in the past recently, and have mostly been recycling Tour names / themes since last year, which is what makes this a little easier to guess at.
- May 3rd - Bowser Tour: All existing Bowser related courses (GBA BC 1-3, 3DS BC, Neo Bowser City, Airship Fortress) got ID updates at the same time as the SNES BC and GBA BC 4 gaps. With this and the announced Koopaling Mii Suits it is very safe to lock this one in as happening.
- May 17th - Piranha Plant Tour (?): The theme is a bit of shot in the dark (the first Piranha Plant Tour was Piranha Plant Pipeway’s debut) but what can be seen at least is that Waluigi Stadium and Piranha Plant Cove 3 received ID updates at the same time. The returning courses don’t seem particularly related to the theme (some SNES and Wii courses, and Luigi’s Mansion), but that’s never been a requirement.
- May 31st - Wedding / Peach Vs Daisy Tour (?): Some existing Peach tracks (Royal Raceway and Peach Gardens) received ID increases alongside the Daisy Circuit gap and the massive GBA gap. This gap is speculated to hold at least three tracks, and the only one we know of for certain is Luigi Circuit; meaning that Peach Circuit could be on the table here.
- June 14th - Mario Bros. / Mario Vs Luigi Tour: All of the existing Mario Circuits, plus Luigi Raceway, got updates alongside the Mario Raceway gap and the big GBA gap. This one would likely be where Luigi Circuit goes.
- June 28th - Jungle Tour: A bunch of tropical themed tracks (Cheep Cheep Lagoon, both Koopa Troopa Beaches, Dino Dino Jungle and Piranha Plant Cove) got increases alongside… the big GBA gap again. Given what we know, it is not impossible that this gap actually holds Lakeside Park. Sure would be fun if it turns out better than Riverside and 8DX passed over it…
- July 12th - Summer Tour: With our new knowledge of how the Athens Tour turned out, seeing New York, Vancouver, Sydney and Singapore get ID upgrades alongside the gap between Paris and Singapore sure does seem to spell out Rio.
- July 26th - Wild West Tour (?): This one seems to have a weird mix of desert tracks and Daisy tracks, and potentially either mobbr or mobdk? It’s a weird mix and nobody is really sure to make of it. That also goes for the next Tour afterwards:
- August 9th - Sundae Tour (?): This one will see the return of Sky High Sundae, and a bunch of snow / ice themed tracks; but there’s no real indication of a new track to go alongside them. Current speculation would be RMX Vanilla Lake 2, as it would be the last listed RMX course and as such would have no visible gap.
Man, i'm going to be really pissed if they actually added Lakeside Park to Tour but skipped over it for the BCP.
After I saw how much potential GBA remakes could have with Snow Land, I was disappointed with Boo Lake and Riverside Park being (at least in my opinion) the weakest tracks in their waves.
I honestly would've preferred Broken Pier, since it's literally just the same thing as Boo Lake (they even have a similar layout) but it's longer, with a more complex design, and with ominous, more spooky background elements. Imagine if you drove through one of those scary looking mountain face things? Man that would've been cool. I've always thought Boo Lake is just so generic and really gives me Ghost Valley 4 vibes.
But missing out on Lakeside Park is a way bigger loss, it was pretty much
the GBA stage I was most actively hoping for after I saw how much potential they have to offer. It has such an intense atmosphere, the layout is more interesting than most from that game, and the lap change volcano gimmick is just awesome. I know it didn't really fit Wave 4 at all, but so what? Neither did Airship Fortress really and people predicted that track ad nauseum.
And if the music for
Riverside Park in Mario Kart 8 is THIS good, can you IMAGINE how hard the sax player would've went with Lakeside? Oh man, hearing that MIDI Tour remix is going to painful knowing what could've been.
So yeah, if/when Lakeside Park shows up in Tour when we're out of GBA slots in the pass, i'm going to cry myself to sleep, thank you. That rad Yoshi Desert remake missing the cut is sad enough.
