The Switch has gotten the most action in terms of Mario sports games on a single console since the GameCube, with three traditional sports titles and one Mario & Sonic game thrown in there for good measure. The three traditional sports games were also notable because of Nintendo’s recent decision to add to the games later down the line with free updates. So let’s talk about each of them:
**[Mario Tennis Aces](https://youtu.be/mMHT2vdWvpg):** After over half a decade of underwhelming Mario sports titles (World Tour notwithstanding), things finally began to look up for this subseries with the surprise announcement of Mario Tennis Aces in early 2018. This game was pretty well received upon release for its tight competitive gameplay, slick presentation, and solid online, but was criticized for the mediocre adventure mode, unintuitive menus, and lack of other side modes at launch. Over time after launch, a lot more stuff would be added via patch updates such as a new opening cutscene for adventure mode, a bunch of costumes and cosmetics, returning game modes, a vastly improved menuing system, and new characters including Pauline.
**[Mario Strikers Battle League](https://youtu.be/cLAzzYz92r4):** This one just came out a few months ago, and yet I don’t see a lot of talk here. It had been nearly 15 years since the last Mario Strikers, so I’m willing to bet this game sold well just on the anticipation alone. This game was more technical than the two games prior and I played it a decent amount at launch, but the online structure is baffling to me. You can’t simply link up 8 players with their own systems like in other first party games, instead you need to link up 4 Switches with two players each to do 8 player. That and the glaring omission of characters like Daisy and Diddy Kong caused me to drop the game after a while, especially since Xenoblade 3 and Splatoon 3 were about to come out. Thankfully both of them returned via content updates along with Pauline as a newcomer, so now I have a reason to pick the game up again.
I have not played Mario Golf Super Rush or Mario & Sonic Tokyo 2020, so I can’t really comment on those. At least the former has Pauline and New Donk City as a course, so that’s something.