Mario Kart 8 is now Smash Kart

This was just brought to my attention, but the DLC for Mario Kart 8 finally went up on Nintendo's website today, and it involves playable Link and several F-Zero references. We also get Cat Peach and Tanooki Mario as playable drivers..... now, I hate to sound like I'm just a crabby old gamer complaining about Nintendo's every move, but... this sucks. As for the two new cups (8 new tracks) that's freaking AWESOME. Thank you Nintendo. But I can't help but hate this "turn everything into Smash Bros" attempt Nintendo's been making recently. Games like Nintendo Land and now MK8 are just turning all Nintendo franchises into one generic universe. I mean, Link really doesn't fit in. Not only is his art style wildly different, but cars shouldn't even exist in his world. Maybe if they had gone with his original cartoony design it would have been more understandable. Now, the Blue Falcon car is a reasonable cameo, but there's an entire Mute City stage. The worlds of F-Zero and Mario are practically polar opposites. This stage has no place here. There was also what looked like an Excite Bike stage, which is actually pretty understandable and OK for me if true. Plus, we already have three different forms of Peach and Mario each (not counting the dozens of other characters who look like them) do we really need MORE alternate costumes? So now there's Mario and Peach, Baby Mario and Peach, Metal Mario and Peach, AND Mario and Peach dressed in dopey furry costumes. 

This announcement is for DLC released this November. However, yet another DLC bundle comes out in May of 2015. This one brings 2 more cups to the scene (8 more tracks) giving us 50% more total stages which, again, is freaking awesome, but this bundle also adds three new characters: Villager, the generic avatar from Animal Crossing that is suddenly a mascot in every game just because he was idiotically placed in Smash, plus ANOTHER Animal Crossing character, Isabelle, some little brownie scout dog thing that as been forced in my face for the past year constantly. I know Animal Crossing is more popular than I give it credit for, but... REALLY??? Why are all of these randomly selected characters being put in MARIO Kart? It's like no series is even its own thing anymore. Before you know it they'll have to rename their series: Nintendo Kart, Super Nintendo Bros., The Legend of Nintendo, and Nintroid. Cameos are cool every now and then, but these guys are just going overboard now. The thing that made Smash Bros seem so wondrous was being able to see all these different characters in one game for once. If all these characters and worlds are blended all the time anyway, SSB is just another average Nintendo game. I understand that SSB is super popular and many of their fans want more with all those characters, but there's such thing as moderation. These characters have no place in MK. Especially the Animal Crossing characters. At least Mario and Link always went hand in hand as Nintendo's main all-stars. They're the faces of Nintendo and have been since the NES. AC is a random, averagely successful game that came out more than 7 consoles deep into Nintendo's career and has no direct connection to Mario at all. This is just simple advertising - whoring out their games through Mario and Smash. I'll be getting this DLC for the stages, but I really hope there's a way to avoid uploading the characters. Oh yeah, and "Dry Bowser" is back. Yeah, there just weren't enough variations of characters we already have, we need dead Bowser. Man, why couldn't that "leak" with Diddy, Birdo, Kamek, Plessie and E. Gadd be real instead of this?