When Wii Sports was first released, many gamers fell in love with the baseball minigame. It was simple, fun and really showed off the Wii Remote's capabilities. Most of us assumed that a Mario-themed iteration was going to come eventually and it's finally here in Mario Super Sluggers. Unfortunately, this is one promising prospect that falls just short of making it to the big leagues.
BOTTOM LINE: Poor controls, frustrating gameplay and a repetitive single-player mode mean it's three strikes and you're out for Mario and his friends.
The regular season of Major League Baseballis over. Washington took the cup, and the boys of summer are off to hibernate until spring. For the baseball superfan, this means many long months without their sport of choice, so they've turned to the virtual world. And rather than the super-sims or manager games, a Mario spin-off baseball series seems to have captured people's attention.
Mario Superstar Baseball hit the GameCube in 2005, and its sequel Mario Super Sluggers landed on the Wii in 2008. There hasn't been a new baseball spinoff since developer Now Production's closure, unless you count Super Mario Party's baseball toybox, but the decline in Mario sports games hasn't deterred the dejected baseball fans of the r/baseball subreddit from picking the game apart.
Nintendo trademarks four new titles. The names of the titles are Wrecking Crew, Rhythm Heaven, Mario Super Sluggers, and Golden Sun. Let us hope something new will come from these trademarks, either a remake or a new title.
Wrecking Crew and Rhythm Heaven sound like they could be cool new IPs.
A.J. says: "I don't like sports but for some reason I love playing baseball video games. Here, I'll cover all the bases as to why this sport appeals to non-fans like me so let's get this ball game going."