With rumors of a [new Mario Baseball game](https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/mario-sports-baseball-sluggers-nintendo-switch-game-leaked/) coming later this year, I’ve seen a lot of initial reactions that have been pretty lukewarm to the idea nowadays. And I can’t help but agree with them. Ever since 2011, we’ve gotten at least one new Mario sports game every single year, with the only completely vacant year being 2020. And the quality of each of these sports games have varied wildly. At their best, I feel they can rival some of the best Mario spinoff games ever made. And at their worst they are pure filler, meant to eat up a calendar slot until the next big release rolls around. So let’s take a quick look back at every Mario sports game to have come out in the past 10 years or so and see what we think of them in retrospect:
**[Mario Sports Mix](https://youtu.be/XEla32-TCA4):** Made by Square Enix and brings together 4 different sports in one. A fun distraction and got some cool minigames, but I’m not revisiting this anytime soon. At least it gave me the opportunity to dunk on a Behemoth from Final Fantasy using the power of volleyball.
**[Mario Tennis Open](https://youtu.be/LEs1wZohOpo):** Clearly a byproduct of Nintendo needing to push out more games for the 3DS following its first major price cut. The new chance shots completely dominate the gameplay and it feels more like you’re a cat chasing a laser toy. Not one I’m keen on checking out.
**[Mario & Sonic Sochi 2014](https://youtu.be/F0GROJ1F41E):** It’s the first Mario & Sonic game in HD yet somehow looks worse than the London game before it. I’ve never played this series and I don’t have any intentions on starting anytime soon. Surprisingly though, a 3DS companion version does not exist.
**[Mario Golf World Tour](https://youtu.be/5LfPg9lpx2k):** Actually amazing and super underrated. If your biggest complaints about recent Mario sports games are the lack of content on day 1 and the lack of any real “Mario” elements, I cannot recommend this game enough. It’s got so much worthwhile stuff to do for the single player, and the online is shockingly good! It even got a season pass that’s absolutely worth the price! Best Mario Golf game since Toadstool Tour (might even supplant it) and may actually be a strong contender for best Mario sports game ever made if I’m being real.
**[Mario Tennis Ultra Smash](https://youtu.be/PXBWAjxioSU):** Well… it seemed like the developers used up all their creativity points on World Tour, so there’s not much to say about this one. You can’t play with your friends online, you need an Amiibo if you want to play doubles by yourself, and this game was originally full priced. Yep. At least you can grow big here?
**[Mario & Sonic Rio 2016](https://youtu.be/z8l4UR_tGeU):** See my thoughts on Sochi 2014. Also one more thing of note is that there are no Dream Events in this game. Y’know, the thing most people actually care about?
**[Mario Sports Superstars](https://youtu.be/qQZCq9hHt5Y):** Game released on 3DS only a few weeks after the Switch and Breath of the Wild launched. Who here honestly cared?
**[Mario Tennis Aces](https://youtu.be/mMHT2vdWvpg):** Actually digged this one for a good while, and the story mode was a neat distraction with plenty of cool challenges. The core tennis gameplay was exciting and deeply strategic, the online worked pretty well, and there was a good variety of courts to play on from day 1. However I largely stopped playing right after Smash came out, but at least I can say I didn’t feel my time was wasted with this one. This was the first big attempt at the “free updates” model for the Mario sports games, wherein where Nintendo would dripfeed the rest of the game’s content over the course of the year. Apparently a lot of cool stuff was added post launch, but I only really came back to it every month to get those new characters right away.
**[Mario & Sonic Tokyo 2020](https://youtu.be/TsiuwvMdXdY):** See my thoughts on Rio 2016. But at least I can see that the developers clearly had fun with this one, with the Newgrounds-esque story mode and plenty of fun references. So that’s commendable.
**[Mario Golf Super Rush](https://youtu.be/aucAzFWpvMc):** One of the biggest disappointments I’ve had with a Switch game, probably *the* biggest if I’m being frank. The golfing itself wasn’t nearly as fun as the last game, the new story mode was painful to go through, there were barely any courses at launch let alone Mario themed ones, the online was terrible, and I really was just biding my time until the next big calendar release. This one was easily the biggest offender of the “free updates” model for me, and I dropped the game long before I could take advantage of that new content. I just… I hate this game so much… I’ll go back to World Tour now.
**[Mario Strikers Battle League](https://youtu.be/cLAzzYz92r4):** I’m pretty sure most of us forgot this game existed once Xenoblade 3 and Live A Live came out nearly a month after. After 15 years of nothing we finally get a new Mario Strikers… and it’s somehow got less to offer than the two previous games combined. I will give it credit tho, it looks freaking *gorgeous* and the core soccer/football mechanics can be fun to master, but I find it’s a real clusterfuffle to keep up with what’s going on in the field. But that didn’t change the fact that there wasn’t much we could do out of the box. You can play offline and online… and that’s it. This game was also arguably worse when it came to “free updates” than Super Rush, as it only added more of the same content. Heck, Daisy wasn’t even in the game at launch! At least I can say I played this one longer than Super Rush, but I’m not returning to it anytime soon. Next Level please just bring back Punch Out, that’s all I could ask for.
by Asad_Farooqui
23 Comments
I don’t think this is a very hot take. I think everyone is pretty sick of these low-content full-price Mario sports games.
I’m not sure about it either. I hope they have a demo like they did for Strikers. I’m not a soccer person so I found out pretty quickly I sucked at that game and didn’t waste my money. I think baseball could be fun though if they have enough content.
I enjoyed the Golf Super Rush game including the story mode. Overall I found it fun but I think it’s one of those games you’d get more out of with multiplayer which I’m more of a solo player. If they made story mode longer and started off with all the courses I would have felt better about it.
Never tried Aces but I’ve been hearing good things so I may have to go for it on sale at some point.
Never really cared for the Mario Sports games. The only notable exception is Sports Mix and that’s only really because of a personal bias. The others don’t faze me in the slightest
If you count Japanese releases, we’ve got a Mario sports game every year since 2003!
2003: Mario golf: toadstool tour
2004: Mario Power tennis
2005: Mario superstar baseball
2006: Mario hoops 3-on-3
2007: Mario strikers charged
2008: Mario super sluggers
2009: Mario and sonic at the Olympic winter games
I will continue to purchase the olympic games as long as they continue to put rugby in them.
Past that, I’m good.
(Make a full release for Mario Rugby, you cowards!)
I feel like being excited for a new Mario Sports game is the real hot take, given how people generally seem to be doomposting about the potential new Mario Baseball game.
Hot take. Mario sports games were never anything to get really excited for. They were always just nice little filler games that were always light on content, that only really shined with local co-op, which sadly doesn’t happen as much anymore
Lol same. I love, LOVE Mario games and usually anything with him in it, but the sports games I’ve tried and just can’t. They aren’t appealing to me.
Not a hot take. There hasn’t been a Mario Sports game that was better than middling in over a decade.
I’ve only ever been a fan of the baseball one on GameCube. I thought that had great content: reasons to choose each captain, mini games, superstar missions. Had a good time 100% completing that one, and had tons of multiplayer fun with my brother too.
IF they could match that experience, I’ll be quite pleased with this new leak that I’m just now hearing about. But with the recent releases, it’ll likely lack the same amount of content and/or motivation for single-player adventures. I’m still interested to see how it goes, but won’t be preordering or anything. If it turns out alright I’ll get it later.
Games looking good is meaningless. Its a new age triple a game. The graphics are guaranteed to look “good”. That is a given. The graphics are bullshit and dont mean anything. I dont even know why people add that stuff in their reviews. Its a useless positive
Nintendo in general has been producing lower quality games. They arent the same as they used to be. In the switch era, theyve just been pumping out low quality releases with bad content on tons of titles. Every release has to be scrutinized.
The sports games have definitely sucked though
Would love a full fledged mario basketball game
The lack of content and holding stuff back in modern day Mario Sports games has gotten so bad that you can’t even count on Daisy being in the base roster anymore. It’s close to bare minimum as you can get without edging into Ultra Smash territory, and it feels like we’re gonna end up back in that area again soon if this keeps up. It just kills any momentum or excitement games like a new Strikers, something people have been asking for for years, could have had.
Besides that though, what bothers me about Mario Sports games isn’t just how empty they feel content-wise, but also in how they completely lack any creativity or personality. These games aren’t Mario Sports games anymore, they’re sports games with Mario in them.
Characters who used to jump around and ham it up after a good play now just lethargically pump their fists or do a little pose. Even the animations in Strikers Battle League, while they (mostly) don’t feel stiff as animations in the past few Tennis games and Super Rush, they at best still feel very restrained. Like Nintendo sent them back five times before a compromise could be reached. At worst, you got Peach, who feels borderline lobotomized.
Nobody says real words anymore. I know Mario characters aren’t the most talkative to begin with, but if you compare all the taunts, encouragements and general lines the characters had in games like Toadstool Tour, to now where besides “yeah” and repeating their names like Pokémon, all anyone does anymore is make hooting noises. Rosalina has had three voice actresses and not a single one of them has said a full sentence as the character.
Then you got what happened in Super Rush where they patched out Daisy saying “whatever” and replaced it with a noise. That sounds like a Hard Drive parody headline, but it really happened!
The locations/courses/courts/etc are very generic and have so little Mario elements to their designs you could put them in any other sports game. When they DO have something more unique, it’s usually just the one. The mix and match stadiums in Battle League didn’t amount to much other than aesthetics, Aces’ courts didn’t take full advantage of each court’s theme and as a result they felt visually lifeless, and Super Rush didn’t even bother.
The menus and UI, I can kind of see what they’re going for, trying to make it look like the visual design of professional sports on TV, and while in some cases that can look pretty snazzy, in others, it looks flat and dull, as opposed to past games where they used Mario specific design elements and typefaces.
I know this sounds like nitpicking, but you gotta understand that stuff like this is what made the Mario Sports games feel like Mario games. Sports in the Mario world and all that implies. That’s what made them special and worth getting excited for. While we still get gameplay gimmicks, they don’t feel substantial enough to make up for everything else feeling so soulless and half-assed.
Hasn’t there been a Mario Sports game every year since 2003? Including Arcade Games which should be included.
EDIT: Game and Watch Gallery 4 has a boxing mini-game. If you want to be a smartass and include that there’s been one every year since 1999.
EDIT: If you’re a madman then 1998 since Wario Land 2 has a basketball boss fight.
I just got frostbite from this take
I always wanted a full mario basketball game . Not the one like in mario sports mix
The only good mario sports game is mario golf, change my mind
The coldest take in existence. I’m honestly, genuinely hoping we **don’t** get a new Mario Baseball because of it.
I highly doubt Piantas, Nokis, Toadsworth, Tiny Kong, Kritters, K Rool, Goombas, Hammer Bros, and Magikoopas would even be in the game at launch or even in DLC updates.
We’re all sick of Mario Sports. Nintendo has burned bridges if I’m being honest. I refused to buy any and all Mario Sports games – and I’m glad I did.
I’ve not really played the new sports games, but always wanted to try. Pretty much what got me to try the older games on the expansion pack.
Mario Strikers was so sad because the game was really fun to play whenever I hopped on the early access demo. Maybe I could justify it more if they were 40$.
Tennis Aces is the only I feel like I would enjoy and not feel to bad paying full price for, granted there are tons of other Switch games I want before I consider getting Mario Tennis Aces.
If they weren’t 60 bucks I’d love them. Can’t justify buying any of the switch sports games at that price.
> Mario Strikers Battle League: I’m pretty sure most of us forgot this game existed once Xenoblade 3 and Live A Live came out nearly a month after. After 15 years of nothing we finally get a new Mario Strikers… and it’s somehow got less to offer than the two previous games combined. I will give it credit tho, it looks freaking gorgeous and the core soccer/football mechanics can be fun to master, but I find it’s a real clusterfuffle to keep up with what’s going on in the field. But that didn’t change the fact that there wasn’t much we could do out of the box. You can play offline and online… and that’s it. This game was also arguably worse when it came to “free updates” than Super Rush, as it only added more of the same content. Heck, Daisy wasn’t even in the game at launch! At least I can say I played this one longer than Super Rush, but I’m not returning to it anytime soon. Next Level please just bring back Punch Out, that’s all I could ask for.
Mario Strikers Charged was one of the very best Wii games. I haven’t played Battle League, but does it have the competitive depth and online matchmaking ability of at least Charged? If it’s somewhat balanced and has some competitive, mechanical depth it could be great. I haven’t really looked into the community at all though since it’s been forever when I loved playing Charged competitively.
hot take but I thought Mario Sports Superstars was underrated. it’s nowhere near perfect but it has a decent amount of content and nice gameplay variety. I enjoy the whole game except golf which is World Tour but worse.
in all honesty the only games on this list I was actually hyped for are Mario sports mix (great experience all-around) and World Tour. throw in Superstars, Open, Olympic 2010 and 2012 and that’s all the Mario sports games I’ve at least enjoyed since last decade with the Wii u and switch lineup being embarrassingly bad.