This may shock my audience, but I’m not the most athletic person. I know, the guy who started a video game review column not being a gold-medal Olympian is likely earth-shattering. That being said, I still have an interest in sports.
While most of my exercise today comes from playing Pokémon GO, my parents made their fat son play sports. While my sport of choice ended up being theatre, I tried football, basketball and baseball before settling on one I liked.
Baseball is the sport I played the most. I competed in four or five seasons — it’s hard to remember exactly. While I struggled to keep up with other sports, I understood how America’s pastime worked. That is in no small part thanks to Mario Superstar Baseball.
Mario and crew were releasing a multitude of sports games in the early 2000s. The GameCube saw the plumber playing tennis, golf, soccer and more, with baseball being no exception. The game released on July 21, 2005 in Japan and Aug. 29, 2005 in the United States.
The game has a pretty complicated plot, so strap in. Mario and his friends are getting super into baseball. Bowser finds out and challenges them to create a baseball team strong enough to beat him.
I know. A Mario game without any kidnapping? Who wrote this garbage?
Jokes aside, the game is light on plot, but it doesn’t pretend to be otherwise. It’s good old-fashioned baseball with a Mario twist, and that’s great.
The story mode involves choosing one of five captains to start as. Each captain starts with nine team members, including a junior captain. The captains are Mario, Peach, Yoshi, Donkey Kong and Wario, while the junior captains include Luigi, Daisy, Birdo, Diddy Kong and Waluigi.
The player then traverses a small world map, challenging the other captains. When certain requirements are met, you recruit players from the opposing teams, including the captains themselves. Once you have beaten each team once, the option to challenge Bowser opens.
Romps through the story mode tend to be short. Even if you’re going out of your way to recruit every possible character, it will likely take about two hours.
But that’s fine. The story mode is really just a framing device to justify why Mario and friends are playing baseball. So long as playing the sport is fun, the story isn’t all that important.
I’m happy to report that playing baseball is fun in this game. The core mechanics of the sport are still intact. Three strikes and you’re out, run the bases to get a run — that sort of thing. So what did Nintendo do to alter the gameplay?
The most notable change comes in the form of star power. Captains and junior captains can expend the team’s star power to use a special star swing or star pitch. For example, the Mario Bros. set the ball on fire while Donkey Kong turns it into a banana.
Batting, pitching, fielding and running are all intuitive. Holding the button winds up your bat or pitch and releasing the button swings the bat or throws the ball. It’s really easy to control your characters in the outfield and on the bases.
Mario Superstar Baseball also features minigames and the Toy Field side mode. Minigames are fun little breaks from normal baseball, featuring activities such as hitting home runs with Bob-ombs and pitching balls through brick walls.
The Toy Field is a bit difficult to describe. It features four people. One pitches, one bats and two play the outfield. There are bingo-like tiles around the field that will assist the batter if the ball hits them.
Whoever is holding the ball at the end of the play is the next batter. Whoever has the most coins at the end wins (because you can’t score runs with just four players).
This game was formative to me. It’s one of my most-played games throughout the course of my life. I didn’t even touch on the soundtrack which genuinely lives rent-free in my head. If you like baseball or classic Nintendo whimsy, this game is worth checking out.
I give Mario Superstar Baseball a 4/5.
Tolbert can be contacted at [email protected]. Recruit him onto your baseball team.
