Mario and his
Believe it or not this game actually has a plot to it. Mario and crew have been challenged by Bowser to beat his team in baseball. Not really original, but then again I wasn't expecting a story for this game.
The graphics in this game are pretty good although I am disappointed by some things. One of these things is the 2D fans that you can see in the stands. Granted, they are shaded so they look like they’re 3D, but smack a ball towards them and you’ll realize that they’re not. Also unimpressive are the shadows and reflections of the characters. If you have a minute and can afford a look you’ll see that they are very blocky. When the camera zooms out you can’t notice it at all, but batting, well, that’s a different story. The graphics aren’t horrible, they are very fitting for the Mario series, but after seeing DK in Jungle Beat and then in this it’s kinda sad. I like the furry DK look better than the matted down plastic fur one in this game. Other than that, it looks good.
The sounds are excellent with a few exceptions. There are times when the track stops completely before beginning again. It’s not a gradual thing either, it’s very abrupt. The songs for each stadium fit with each theme; DK has a jungle tune, the Mushroom Kingdom has the familiar Mario tune, etc. The other songs are equally fitting as they have a baseball organ sound to them. They’re catchy, but not to the point where you’ll remember them for all time like the classic Mario theme. The characters’ voices are also very well done. Even the secondary characters have voices that are unique and are easy to identify. However some, like Daisy’s charge, get a little irritating after a while.
Mario Superstar Baseball is very easy to pick up and learn. Even better, it requires little knowledge of baseball as it includes a handy Practice mode to teach you what’s what and although it is simple there is a bit of variety to make it unique and interesting. This uniqueness comes from the Team Stars that you can use. These five stars are available for anyone to use while pitching or batting but they get the best use by the major characters. Using a special ability will cost just one star except for the major characters that aren’t the team captain. It’ll cost them two. For example, if Bowser is your team captain and Mario, a potential captain, uses a star while batting it’ll cost him two. Using the Team Stars to your advantage is key because they will almost always guarantee a hit or a strike and will oftentimes make or break a game. Don’t worry about hoarding them until the end of the game. Every so often a Star Chance will pop up where you could earn a star. Some fields also have them hidden in the ground or in blocks and hitting them will give you the star. Every character comes equipped with some special moves that help them play the field. For instance, Yoshi can use his long tongue to scoop up a ball that’s a good ways out of his reach.
Superstar Baseball has several gameplay modes for you to choose. There are Exhibition Game, Challenge, Mini-Games, Toy Field, and Practice. Exhibition is your instant baseball action mode. Choose your team captain, which can be anyone of Nintendo's major stars. These are Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, DK, Bowser, Daisy, Birdo, Waluigi, Diddy, Wario, Bowser Jr. Each one has their own strengths and weaknesses as well as unique pitching and batting powers. After selecting your captain you can select the other eight players for your team. This is where Mario Superstar Baseball gets interesting. You can choose from a lot of Nintendo characters to be on your team. Koopas, Goombas, Magikoopas, even Drybones! Of course, not all players get along. One feature I like about this game is the chemistry between players that is indicated by a music note. See that note and you can throw faster or hit better. For example, Luigi doesn't like ghosts so he can't throw well to Boo. Mario, on the other hand, is a different story, toss the ball to him and watch it blaze by in a purple flame of speed. This chemistry also determines how many Team Stars you get at the start of a match. Pick any of the five available stadiums and choose your rules. These are just the number of innings, star skills, who bats first, and whether the Mercy Rule is on or off. For those that don't know, the Mercy Rule ends the game at the end of an inning if one team has ten runs more than the other. Once that is all chosen, have fun with your game.
Challenge mode is the story mode of the game; here you can choose just one of five captains to challenge Bowser. They are Mario, Peach, DK, Wario, and Yoshi and they all come with their own pre-selected teams. The purpose of this mode is to scout players from the other captains to build one powerful team to challenge the King of the Koopas. If you happen to miss a character by recruiting their captain first, you can always get them later by challenging Bowser Jr. and his ultra short game challenge. This mode is a little like an RPG as you can build up your players and purchase items to make them more formidable in a game. With the exception of the character items, such as the Fireball which allows Mario to throw his Star Pitch, the other items can only be used for one game and you're only allowed to hold one at a time. Items cost money and you need to earn coins somehow. The same Mini-Games from the menu screen appear in this mode allowing you to collect coins, but you are limited to playing each one only three times. Because of this you'll need to make sure that you can win otherwise you'll lose money and waste one of your allotted plays for the game. Bowser Jr. also offers you some coins if you can beat his challenge.
Anyone who's played any of the other Mario sports titles will be familiar with the Star characters. There's been a slight name change (they're now Superstars) and earning this status has also changed a bit. In Challenge mode every character has a list of star challenges to complete in order to unlock their star versions. The number of challenges varies from character to character, Mario has eight, Luigi has six, and a Shy Guy has four. Secondary characters have the least number of challenges to complete as compared to their captains. These star challenges include driving in a run, earning MVP, pitch a complete game and so on. Challenge is the only place where you can complete these requirements and you have to do them throughout the four cups because each one unlocks some more challenges. Mushroom has the least challenges, Flower cup has Mushroom challenges plus some new ones, Star combines Flower and Mushroom, you can see the pattern. Special cup has all the star challenges and playing this one is the only way to earn the star character. Fortunately every time you beat the game you can save all the stars you've earned from the previous cups and carry them over into the next so you don't have to redo them all. Some of the challenges are hard enough that you won't want to repeat them.
Mini-Games are the real multiplayer fun in Mario Superstar Baseball. Anywhere from one to four players can play in the five games (Bob-omb
Wall Ball has you breaking walls to earn coins. Every wall gives you some coins while the Bowser wall subtracts half of your coins and divides them up amongst your challengers. The wall you want to hit, though, is the music note wall which I call the Bingo Bonus wall. Hitting this one will guarantee you one hundred coins, that is if you hit it last. The last wall affects what you earn that turn and you don’t want that to be the Bowser wall. With only three turns to play the pressure is on to score high.
Remember Red Light, Green Light from Elementary school? That’s what Chain Chomp Sprint is. You need to run around the field collecting diamonds until the Chain Chomp wakes up. If you don’t stop when it does the Chomp will knock off some of your diamonds. It’s a really simple game that can be lots of fun.
Piranha Panic has you throwing eggs at Piranha Plants to score points. Sounds easy, right? It’s not; it’s harder than it looks. You need to hit the plants with a matching colored egg to score otherwise it shoots a fireball at you that will stun you for a bit unless you duck. There are also Bob-ombs that will either stun other players or earn you more points for every Piranha Plant you hit; it all depends on how you want to use it. This game gets frantic, but is still enjoyable. Trying to win in Special mode is exceptionally hard.
Barrell Batter was the worst of the Mini-Games, at least in my opinion. The object of this game is to hit the wall of barrels in front of you to score points. Individual barrels are only worth a few points, but hitting a barrel that’s touching like colored barrels activates a multiplier and gives you even more points. There is also a special Blast Barrel that appears once you break enough barrels. Hitting this one will destroy all the barrels on screen and will add on roughly 800 points to your score. This game sounds fun, but it is frustratingly hard to play. You’re required to tilt the control stick in order to direct the ball, but without an indicator it is hard to tell where the ball will go. The help screen says that pressing up will send the ball down and vice versa, but not always. Even pressing straight down resulted in the ball arching left or right slightly. The controls in this game are much too sensitive to work properly. Hitting left all the way sends the ball to the left at such an extreme angle away from the barrels that you need to take a few practice swings to actually find how far in either direction you need to press to make the ball go no further than the last barrel. Even then you’ll probably still mess up. I’ve found it much easier just to press A and let the ball fly randomly. It’s worked much better so far than using the control stick with it.
Toy Field is the last mode that you can play in. I really enjoy this mode although I never win in it. Toy Field plays a lot like stickball; there are only four players: a batter, a pitcher, and two outfielders. Who bats first is randomly chosen, but after that you can sort of decide. Whoever gets the ball last will be the next to bat. If the outfielder catches the ball they get to bat or if the pitcher strikes out the batter they’ll bat. If no one gets to the ball before it vanishes then whoever was batting gets another turn. Winning this game means having the most coins and to do that you need to get an out or score runs. Scattered across the field are special blocks that do a variety of things. The ? block activates the slot machine which could give you or take away some of your coins. The other blocks are labeled in an obvious way; 2B HIT gives you a double, etc. These blocks are the most important for the batter as they determine how they earn coins. This mode isn’t determined by innings, but rather by turns which are really the number of at bats. After the limit is reached the game is over and the one with the most coins win. This is my favorite mode in the entire game. Its baseball, but it’s not and it’s so different from anything that I’ve ever seen in any baseball game.
As if that weren’t enough to do there are several unlockables to find that include characters, Mini-Games, and fields. There’s not many, but earning all of them will take a bit of time. Also, there is a Records mode which obviously tells you about your records in the game. The best part about this is the entry for Exhibition. Under here appear the MVPs from your games with a snippet of information about them. Trying to make everyone an MVP won’t be as difficult as making them a star character will be, but it will take a little while to do it. Besides, the information is usually humorous. Wario was Mario’s childhood rival and best friend?! Interesting…
I enjoyed this game, but not as much as the other Mario sports titles. This game is very easy to play so anyone can easily enjoy it and I was glad for that. However there are a number of problems that bothered me. For starters the control in Barrel Batter is much too sensitive to be enjoyable and really ruins one of the more imaginative games. The other major problem I encountered was how the characters would get “caught” on something in the field during a dive and stop moving. You would think this would cause them to miss the ball, but it doesn’t. The ball will land where the player would have been if they weren’t stuck and it’s counted as an out. This wouldn’t be a problem if it was close to the character, but when the ball is a few head lengths away and it’s caught (without the aid of the individual’s special abilities) it’s disappointing. So far I’ve only seen this happen to the computer and it’s always in their favor. The other surprising thing I’ve noticed is that games can end in a tie. I can live with games only being three innings, but a tie? Ties don’t happen in baseball! Something I would have liked to see was a baseball dictionary. Mario Superstar Baseball throws some terms at you and hopes you know what it is in the challenge mode. Some of the star challenges are obvious, but when one says to “Drop a squeeze bunt” some people might not know what that is.
This is by no means a bad game, but it doesn’t feel up to the level of Mario Golf and Tennis. If you’re looking for an accurate baseball game you’d better look elsewhere, otherwise you’ll be disappointed. Fans of Mario’s previous sports outings will enjoy this game the most. This is definitely best as a multiplayer game so if you’ve got some friends with extra controllers you’ll want to invite them over to try it out. The most fun comes from challenging your buddies rather than the computer anyway.
Batting with the shorter characters is tricky making it harder to have them on your team.
The graphics aren't horrible, but this late in the GCN's life they should be better.
It's good. Only that track looping pause bothers me.
Getting everything in the game will take a good deal of time. After that, well, it depends on how much you loving playing baseball.
