The Wide World of Mario Sports | So Many Sports, So Little Time

over the last 35 years or so mario has done a whole lot more than just some platforming and throwing some parties he and his crew have dived into a ton of sports as well baseball soccer you know golf and tennis even basketball sometimes with square enix characters sometimes with real live humans it's kind of crazy all across the board and i thought it would be fun to take a look at every single time these games have happened but before we get to that i have a message from today's sponsor keeps i get it you know sometimes you watch my videos and you think to yourself you know what his hair did you know that statistically two out of three males by the time they hit 35 suffer from hair loss it's all a ticking time bomb for whether or not this glorious mane of mine sticks around and that's a level of uncertainty that i am not happy with adding all of this youtube stress on top of it certainly doesn't make things any easier well thankfully keeps is the easiest way to prevent hair loss a subscription service that delivers the goods straight to your door all of the different treatment plans you have on offer are personalized and doctor recommended and include a year of unlimited messaging with expert medical advisors prescribers and care specialists to ensure that you can keep your hair goals a reality and also all the testimonies show that within just a few months the changes are immediately noticeable sounds like to me is a pretty good deal well boy that information was handy and useful i'll be sure to keeps it in the forefront of my mind so i i never forget it can we run that back hair loss starts with keeps so to get 50 off of your first order go to keeps.com antutude or click the link down in the description below that's k-e-e-p-s dot com slash am dude and now on to the main event [Music] [Music] all right so you mean to tell me this poorly italian man has not only been adventuring for his entire life but on top of that he's also not only played but mastered like a dozen sports as well i don't know man this series is definitely not one to have realism as its strong suit but this is a bit too unbelievable for me mario sports games for whenever you think the red guy and his ragtag group of friends are doing just a bit too much jumping princess saving or even car racing for almost as long as mario has ever been around he's been picking up some form of sports accessory and appropriately themed ball and honing his skills in a handful of new hobbies and yes i can hear you now yeah of course this all started back on the virtual boy with mario's tennis no you now may be taking a trip further back in the time machine to the nes to plain old black box golf and i mean this looks like mario right it has to be well while nintendo did once consider this to be mario that would later be retconned with the japanese wii exclusive captain rainbow which gave us osan who in this game is the washed up old golfer from that nes classic and in this game he like regularly scratches his golf balls that he stuffed in his overalls yeah okay yeah i i understand why this game didn't get localized now but yes to answer the convoluted trivia question naturally this leads us to the actual originator of mario sports games game and watch donkey kong hockey of course you must have known about this one it's a gem point being this whole wide world of mario sports is a lot more diverse and vibrant than i thought it was going to be before starting to work on this video you know you're probably thinking oh you got a couple of golf games some tennis games and then just a few other stragglers here or there but no i can assure you that is not the case as someone who has now played every single game in this side genre it is one of the most inconsistent side genres in this franchise and i am excited to go through all of them i figured it would be fun it wasn't always fun but i thought it was gonna be so let's let's get on to it mario golf and mario tennis when you hear the phrase mario sports there's a good chance that this is where your mind would wander to and it makes sense with only a few exceptions if a nintendo console existed one of these wasn't too far behind all of the mario spin-off hype and buzz tends to hover around mario kart and that makes sense too but in my opinion golf and tennis were usually just as big of a deal usually it didn't really start off that way of course i did just mention mario's tennis on virtual boy yeah mario's tennis this one was his it's just a boring standard tennis game with far too much red what a surprise it's essentially one step below ultra smash honestly but golf did have an early equivalent as well with nes open tournament golf for brace yourself the nes nintendo may have been able to retcon mario out of black box golf but no matter how much time passes they won't be able to do it with this one i mean that's that's him no mistaking it can't change it here no extra mario brother that's him even donkey kong shows up i mean i i think i think that's him he speaks perfect english here maybe this is the dk that would then go on to become cranky kong i don't know i'm not really sure where this fits on the timeline it is an 8-bit golf game so keep your expectations in check but honestly it's actually pretty good even nowadays it's certainly pretty difficult to be precise with your shots but the sprite work is really nice the soundtrack is catchy mechanics are solid the usa outfit that mario has in this game would even be brought back in recent years with smash ultimate mario odyssey and even super rush that's so neat but as we got deeper into the n64 generation it was clear that something would need to change if mario were to maintain relevance in the sports field we don't want simple old golf and tennis games with mario in them we want mario games with golf and tennis in them if that makes any sense we already had options for normal sports games if you wanted to play as a realistic tiger woods and a boring realistic golf course while avoiding lame realistic scandals you already had those games to choose from i wanna golf with the goombas and thus a champion entered the arena camelot oh wait sorry hamlet yeah yeah he says it way better than i ever could by this point in the company's timeline camelot definitely had a track record but clearly it was their work with hot shots golf on ps1 that was enough for nintendo to trust them with their top ip i can't say too much about that series as a whole i've only ever played the first one but hey it's the only one that camelot actually worked on and uh wow it's it's pretty uncanny with just how similar it ended up being to mario golf 64. you can see the framework all over this one and right out of the gate the rebirth of mario sports hit the ground running opening cutscenes for both golf and tennis we start off being greeted by the cast enjoying their day and getting into mischief and man i just i love this so much it's pretty rare to get full-blown cutscenes with any of these characters it injects so much personality into a genre where you really wouldn't expect it the human character starts showing up plumb who many of you have seen in the smash brothers melee trophy uh this is where she made her debut what do you mean you forgot about plum this is also where we got our first whiff of waluigi a character so many people love for some reason yeah i don't know honestly i never really got the massive appeal i apologize to the waluigi fanbase out there i'm a bit more of a blue mario guy myself he made his debut in this game too and nobody talks about him he's the true underdog but this level of charm is exactly what these games needed when i said we wanted mario games with sports in them this is what i meant this translates to the gameplay too for both golf and tennis we do have options to of course play a standard game with normal rules but if you dig into the menu a little bit more you can play tennis with item boxes in bowser's castle go for a round of golf on yoshi's island golf 64 has a mini golf mode that we haven't seen in any of the other mario golf games and i don't know i always liked it or partake in a ring challenge in both sports it's such a fun concept for an additional challenge and it's simply great having more stuff to do this whole ring idea works in both sports perfectly and yes it helps that the rkd vibe is perfect here as well everything is so snappy and punchy the soundtracks to these games are incredible too and man going back to that cast of characters i mean we got plum maple harry i'll give them credit they got their one game they got their money and they got out that's that's true goals and if you loved those opening cut scenes well that charm carries into the whole animations in golf and the trophy celebrations in tennis dude the the trophy celebrations these are like the best part of the game short clips of mario characters just doing things with a trophy in frame i i love this wario talks like a damn pokemon in his that's amazing i am a nintendo fan therefore i am easy to please on the gamecube though oh boy this is where camelot ascended to a higher plane mario golf toadstool tour and mario power tennis damn these games are good at their core as you would expect they are more of the same but they look better sound better they run buttery smooth and again we got absolute godlike opening cutscenes that basically tell their own short stories at this point all of these years later they have not lost one ounce of entertainment value they are so good hell power tennis's opening even has a blooper reel when do games have blooper reels i want more of them everything about the presentation in these games is on point however uh bowser's voice uh it's it's it's a little bit [Music] off oh no it sounds like it was me screaming into a microphone but no that's that's that's in the game it's all of the additional stuff that makes these games so special mechanically there's been some improvements like now in golf there's additional inputs for shots giving you finer control than you had before and tennis now has the power shots that add some more flair to your player on both an offensive and defensive front and plus pd piranha is playable in this one i just appreciate people trying new hobbies and then for options we have additional challenges like the treetop congo canopy course in golf where every hole is par 3 and hell and then all of the crazy gimmick courses in tennis i don't know why camelot went this hard they didn't need to but there are so many wacky things to do in mario power tennis it's amazing in 64 we had fancy courts that i threw pngs of mario characters on them and called it a day but here not only do we have special courts that all slightly change the mechanics like having this goo on isle delfino or ball direction changing arrows in the warioware themed factory court oh my god warioware got a reference in something that's really cool but each one even has an associated mini game in an entirely different menu you get to paint mario's face avoid all of these ghosts in luigi's mansion god i love i love this game so much toadstool tour didn't go as wacky as power tennis did the imbalance and creativity between both is honestly pretty severe but you would still be hard pressed to do much better when it comes to either of these two sports and of course shout outs once again to the fantastic trophy victories in tennis and the whole completion reactions in golf still really really good [Music] but oh you may be saying to yourself what about the game boy versions released alongside the n64 in gamecube games we got mario golf and tennis on the game boy color and game boy advance as well the simply titled mario golf and tennis on the color an advanced tour and power tour on advance and hell not too long after mario tennis gbc released we even got snoopy tennis released exclusively for the console as well tennis fans and game boy color fans were eating pretty good in 2001 it's all i'm saying if you wanted that tried and true gameplay experience but in the palm of your hands well you got it here both consoles both sports the core experience is all here but as you already know yes each of these games also comes with a fully fledged rpg mode as well i mean hey it was the reason to play these games in the first place as a human character of your choice you attend a golf or tennis academy in the effort to rise the ranks gain experience points to put into specific traits and better yourself and eventually go one on one against red luigi himself and these modes are simply amazing don't get me wrong it's not like we have these grand sweeping rpg adventures with all the twists and turns and varied gameplay mechanics you would expect in the genre this isn't golf story we're talking about here but they're still really good i was just happy to talk about golf story i love the idea of using a blank slate of a character as a means to sort of immerse yourself in this academy bullying the other students and making them question why they even signed up in the first place it's so satisfying i will say though uh the cast of characters in these academies it's filled with some of the biggest nobodies i've ever seen i could be wrong but i don't think anybody's gonna be coming back to mario tennis here after a few years and they're gonna be like oh man it's that guy they would even go on to make some of these characters playable too oh boy i can't wait to play as uh flit should have taken the golf superstar plum and put her in the tennis academy that would have made a lot more sense we would still be seeing the character to this day you goofed up nintendo you goofed up you put your money on flit and no one cares about flint the champions in these two games are pretty cool though each of the two academies basically has a few boss fights so you have to get through before getting to the big italian man at the very end and i don't know i always kind of saw them as like an elite four from pokemon equivalent i like that for this and the icing on top of all of this you could even transfer your characters to the console versions you don't really see too many people talking about this feature nowadays because with the re-releases of the n64 games people being nostalgic about the gamecube games it's kind of just falling by the wayside but thanks to the n64 having a transfer pack as well as the gamecube having the gba link cable you were able to take your characters put them on the big screen and it was so so damn cool dude the fact that your human character has their own trophy animation in tennis that's amazing that's me that's me getting a trophy from red luigi ah oddly enough though when we get to power tour the final game of this game boy bunch it's the only one where you can't transfer your characters to the console game and there was never any explanation why either it just kind of wasn't here now please buy the game anyway i guess remember when nintendo was hyping up smash 4 and they said the handheld game and the console game was gonna combine together in some sort of magical way i was kind of hoping for something like this uh it wasn't as cool what we ended up getting uh so all i'm saying is get these games on a game gameboy service for nintendo switch online bring the connectivity back and we're golden nintendo it's a simple thing don't make me beg for it now after this is when we enter a bit of a weird phase with these games you would think with the console next being the wii oh of course these games are gonna be perfect for this console naturally we're gonna have a mario golf and tennis game no during the new play control phase of the wii's life nintendo ported power tennis to the console and it's not very good this was not a game built with motion controls in mind just swing the wii remote to swing the racket sure but it more so it feels like a swing is simply activating a button press instead and it just doesn't really feel all that good it's functional don't get me wrong and hey the new wide screen is nice but it's not a version i would recommend there is a brand new tutorial sequence here though explaining how the new controls work so that that's something i mean really mario golf would have fared a whole lot better but considering this whole new play control thing barely lasted even a year it doesn't seem like toadstow tour would have ever stood a chance but when nintendo fails leave it to capcom i guess instead of mario golf camelot would give us we love golf published by capcom it's it it's just what mario golf would have been on the wii without the mario characters and the addition of motion controls so if you really liked plum harry and maple from mario golf 64 this is basically the same thing it's just the human characters and it's it's okay the controls work decently but it doesn't really feel like you're swinging the club one to one you kind of just pull back the controller just enough so these symbols will cross each other and then you swing when the next set of symbols cross over each other and that's it it doesn't feel one to one it once again feels like you're just activating button presses all while a sentient weir mode yells at you the entire time point me down oh boy that's exciting similar to the hot shots golf game of before i know many golf games tend to play similarly but it's bizarre playing something that feels and looks like mario without actually being mario and since capcom is the one who published this one not nintendo there's actually some unlockable costumes for a load of capcom characters apollo justice ryu jill valentine this is the best part of the game for those who are in need of a mario golf game on this console you do have a few other options but i think this one is the one that's going to fit that bill the best and on the topic of weird golf games check this out mobile golf a pseudo sequel to mario golf gbc that was japanese exclusive until recently when we got a fantastic english fan translation incredible alright so follow me here late in the tail end of the game boy colors life like months before the gba released late nintendo put out the mobile game boy adapter which would allow players to connect to compatible mobile phones and essentially just go online and this was for both game boy color and advance you could race other players in mario kart super circuit of course you had a slew of options in pokemon crystal it seemed like only two dozen games had some functionality with this device but the most interesting one to me is rather than making a direct follow-up to mario golf camelot simply reused the engine and filled it with a ton of new content and it's not just more of the same mario golf experience that the last game brought us there's entire modes here that the mario golf game didn't see like you have this one mode where you're aiming between these pillars that are all set up and even the mini golf mode that was also in golf 64. seeing all of this new content and otherwise forgotten characters is really cool and what's extra cool is in the original release some of the characters were unlockable only after connecting to the internet and in that fan translation the unlock conditions have been modified so you can access a bulk majority of the content without ever needing to worry about that pesky internet connection some of the menus that were based around said online functionality are still here and it's something that we can experience nowadays it's just kind of here taunting us but other than that the full experience is here good on you mark max putting in the good work and doing what ninten won't do themselves and then there's that weird phase i mentioned earlier you know with the 3ds we started getting some regular releases again we got mario tennis open and mario golf world tour and then fast forward to the switch we got mario tennis aces and mario golf super rush i'm not gonna say these games are bad right out of the gate i don't think that's fair to those titles but it's very clear that this whole era is very different than what we were used to on the n64 in gamecube and yes ultra smash also happened mario tennis open is is so boring they somehow managed to remove all skill from the gameplay now you'll regularly see these color spots pop up on the field and each color correlates to a specific shot that's also indicated on the touchscreen i know it's possible to resist the temptation to do so but the gameplay loop now is you kind of just run up to the spot tap the area on the touchscreen that's glowing and and there you go that's that's the game now there are some neat minigames uh the me customization is kind of cute but there's no rpg mode in sight so uh who who really cares this is a pretty dire experience honestly it's a functional game and i'll give the game credit i guess but coming from the previous games what a massive downgrade and that's doubly so an ultra smash oh wait i'm sorry you want me to go on this big old mega rant about this game like everybody else does quite frankly i'd rather give this game as little time as possible it is easily one of the laziest games in the mario franchise i would dare call it trash and i mean there's no opening cutscenes in these games either this was a telltale sign that these titles were destined to fail but then what about the golf outing on the 3ds there's mario golf world tour and this is the best game in the series oh god yeah that oh that that whiplash really hits like a truck okay so i'm gonna assume that camelot must have felt really bad for how lazy tennis open was cause they overloaded the hell out of world tour you know that discrepancy between mario power tennis and toadstool tour when it comes to creativity you flip that on the 3ds and that's world tour and open the controls are as tight as they've ever been the course design is all over the place with these bright and vibrant colors and unique landscapes like underwater there's a bunch of proper mario themed locations like a full-blown donkey kong country returns course a bunch of great new whole celebration animations for each character a massive challenge mode with over 100 different challenges to go for something all of these games should have done honestly and there was even paid dlc that brought back these six courses from golf 64. four of them do use the old layouts with a new super mario bros and mario galaxy art style which is kinda strange because the first two are back in their full glory with the original art style and the original music that's fantastic and while there's no rpg mode here and that is kinda missed we do have the castle club instead a quasi story mode where you take your me throw on some fancy outfits and just do some good old-fashioned golfing there's like a world map that you can travel to access all of the courses i i guess by definition it's an rpg but i'm i'm not going to say it is and at the time when this game was new there are even a ton of weekly online tournaments that featured a wide range of different modes and rule sets and participating in them is what gave you the costumes that were based off of a bunch of nintendo consoles they actually released a game with an online component and managed to keep things interesting for months after the release this isn't a subtle jab at the current state of golf and tennis at all world tour man camelot killed it with this one far and away my favorite mario golf game yet and i would also say this is one of the finest examples of post-launch game support nintendo has ever done [Music] so what the hell happened on the switch mario tennis aces and mario golf super rush what an oddball pairing we got here i know this isn't the most controversial opinion out there but while these games aren't necessarily bad you could have a lot of fun with them you can tell that this camelot just doesn't have the same dedication to quality of the camelot a few years prior each one provides a brand new game altering gimmick tennis has a new slow down mechanic that combined with either defense or offense with new power shots leads to some really epic 1v1 moments and in golf the traditional putting process has been changed up with a brand new meter this ring system for gauging your shot's distance and the option to play with multiplayer golfers at the same time and run after your ball after hitting it and you got it you got to sit there and watch everyone else finish their shot even if you're playing with computer players the changes done to tennis and aces are undoubtedly better i would argue it is the best a mario tennis game has felt yet and to be fair in super rush when you're not messing around with all these new tweaks implemented and just boil it down to the classic golf experience that we're all used to it is still a really fun game it's all that new stuff that kinda sucks the sport of tennis was always a more competitive and frantic game anyway the dynamic with the intense risk and reward powershot system here with the slow-mo meter god a damn near feels like a fighting game at times it's amazing as for golf though i i don't know man i can tell a lot of this effort was to speed up the process but for this sport i always figured it was supposed to be slower and more tactical so a lot of these changes just didn't make sense to me i always valued seeing how my opponents would take their shots to see if there was anything that i can do differently when it's just a non-stop mad dash to the hole for every single hole i don't care what happens just do the furthest shot in a straight line book it to where it landed and then you rinse and repeat maybe you win maybe you won't i don't know have fun i guess keep the rules simple take a stroll through new donk city and super rush is still a blast the mario golf part not so much the super rush part the biggest problem that plagues these two games is that there's just not a whole lot to do in them you can play offline and online that's basically it all of those quirky modes we got in the previous games they're mostly gone super rush has this brand new battle golf mode which doesn't really have a whole lot of staying power in my opinion there's only two maps most of the games play out the same way in my experience but clearly they thought it was going to be a big deal because the opening cutscene is like all based on that one mode they put all of their bets on that one mode and then didn't do much with it it's weird it's just very weird and then over time after launch ace has received a bunch of fun modes like the returning ring mode but even still the previous games had a lot more to offer at launch it was a lot more dire than it is now we do have story modes in both games though hearkening back to the old game boy games except not the story mode in super rush is dreadful you play as your me and you go up the ranks by doing the same thing over and over again it is so boring and repetitive at least in the game boy games you have the charm of being in this academy with a bunch of other humans but now you're just like this one guy i missed a bunch of mario enemies it's it's it's it's not good it's not good and then you got the cross country section where there are a whole bunch of holes available in like an open world and you have a limited set of shots to make them all with terrible terrain changes and a bunch of wind bs oh my god it is so bad if i never do this again for the rest of my life i will not be upset by it the story mode in tennis is still a bit rough but it is way better essentially it is more of a series of missions set up on a world map i appreciate that gameplay loop a whole lot more and the story is like this evil tennis racket is mind controlling all of your friends because it's been awakened from its slumber in like this tomb by wario and waluigi and now you have to travel all the different lands and find these special stones to conceal its power it is dumb it is so so dumb and that is exactly what i want it is still repetitive but it is way more in line with what i think a story mode should be in a game that doesn't really need one then we get to the whole conversation of nintendo releasing a game with content blatantly held back just so they can give us updates months down the line i mean we're even seeing this with switch sports mario's not the only culprit here releasing with a sport being hyped up to release later on but i don't know man it's just the time we live in now i'm not that big of a fan but it is what it is i still think the approach of overloading us with content and rewarding us with extras like in world tour is the better approach but i'm not a multi-billion dollar company so maybe i don't know what i'm talking about and especially if you look back at the update history of mario tennis aces because like they clearly had no idea what they were doing roughly a year after the game's launch is when they dropped an opening cut scene it wasn't there at the start but a year later oh hey cool now i know what the story is instead of just a bunch of text boxes and we had just the most high quality voice editing to boot luigi i feel like that's a voice line from like 10 15 years ago good job good job it's the laziest thing i've ever seen in my life the best thing the best thing i can say that the switch has provided these two sports is how fast mario golf super rush boots from the switch's menu there you go that's it that's it the game is now loaded well how how is that possible that's magic but when all is said and done while it is very easy to go on this hate train of saying that the modern games are the worst in the franchise i would argue the opposite the 3ds and the switch are where you can find some of the best experiences that golf and tennis games have to offer i know very very hot take i guess now obviously we've only talked about two sports thus far golf and tennis but to be fair this is where mario and crew spend most of their time but now let's shake things up a little bit let's add two more balls to the equation gamecube was truly the haven for mario sports games man not only did camelot grace us with great golf and tennis games but now we have baseball and soccer in the mix too or football if any of you europeans out there feel the need to correct me lord knows nintendo felt the need to put football in the titles over there uh j just so nobody got confused i guess they probably guess uh europeans gonna look at mario strikers and just be completely lost i have no idea what that could be but hey it doesn't even matter this isn't dinky old mario soccer in line with what golf and tennis are this is super mario strikers damn it your favorite plumbers are gonna die next level games the team responsible for nhl hits pro and eventually uh ticket to ride on xbox 360. huh took up the task of taking the world of mario characters putting them on a big soccer field and making them incredibly violent first and good at kicking around a ball second dude the level of intensity in these games is fantastic passing the ball around to teammates to power it up items being handed out for being ruthless on the field and shoving your opponents into an electric fence oh my god charging up these ultra shots in a glorious flashy fashion before ah just shooting it into the goal like it's a shotgun blast super mario strikers is one of the best multiplayer experiences you can find in my opinion it's bombastic and over the top but it's still very easy to understand making it very accessible in this first gamecube entry there's not much more to it it's not like we're inundated with a bunch of modes and options here what you see is what you get just an intense time either solo or with friends god even the artwork is incredible these hard colors bright lighting insane line work it is so so good the style in these games is unparalleled i guess like the only thing i can think of is like sonic riders kinda that gamecube error man we were edgy for like 20 minutes and this artwork shows and that level of intensity is just opt even more so in the wii sequel charged oh my god this opening video is incredible you would think all of these characters genuinely want to kill each other this is a side of the mushroom kingdom you can't get anywhere else and i love it so much dude bowser with the red shell that's all i need man it's so so cool on him in essence this is more of the same but there's a lot of small things added here and there to add to the complexity all the characters now have unique specials you have a whole lot more freedom and what your team consists of all of the fields now have additional gimmicks and that whole charge thing you were able to charge shots before of course but now by passing the ball enough it starts to glow white and if you can nail a power shot when it's in that form you can go for upwards of five points in a single attempt where it is then up to the goalie to use the wii remote's pointer to block the shots yeah this is why i prefer the original game honestly charged does so much so well the music is sick waluigi does crotch chops the title screen is a zoom in on mario's crotch there is so much crotch in this game but the overall gameplay loop is just about constantly passing and hoping to nail a super just keep doing that and in my opinion the simplicity of the original allowed for more options in terms of strategy plus you can also play as a weird robot in that one not really sure what that's about we kind of just let it happen and we didn't ask enough questions super team basically the game's final boss which can then become playable yeah i don't know these things are just kind of here these games are also notable for being the introduction of daisy getting to truly shine you see before this it was all about hi i'm daisy but now she's here to say that while also being incredibly badass this is why she's become my favorite princess at the time of this video the newest entry mario striker's battle league is just about to release but it's looking like it's going to be really good you can combine two different types of fields at the same time there's customization options you have this mechanic where you can bump your teammate forward to get a head up on the opponents it's really great and then rosalina's here that's even greater provided the end result is not a monumental screw-up this will easily be one of the best multiplayer experiences on the switch despite the fact that daisy isn't in the launch roster so if she isn't post game dlc i'm gonna be very mad around the time of the original mario strikers next level was also set to work on a volleyball wrestling hybrid under the name super mario spikers there's not too much known about this one outside of the general concept but from what's managed to make it out into the public it looks like it would have been pretty cool here's some footage of yoshi body slamming himself it would have been great and then we have baseball courtesy of namco with superstar baseball on gamecube and super sluggers on the wii do you think anybody was confused about what that second game was without the sport in the title super sluggers oh god what are they slugging oh that's a baseball juggles jaggers and just like the other sports games thus far we start off with fantastic opening cutscenes camelot was such a trendsetter here and it's for the best honestly there is no better way to get hyped up for these games than with these little movies they're fantastic look at this luigi almost dies but he actually caught the ball and the crowd goes wild so yes this is in fact baseball with a very arcadey vibe the biggest thing being this power meter that you can use both as the pitcher and the batter giving all the main characters a unique shot depending on when you use it you got plenty of themed fields to play in bringing in a whole bunch of gimmicks you have items that you can use as well a lot of minigames that all play off basic baseball skills like pitching power and running between bases i love those this is exactly what you think about when you would hear mario and baseball we have no aura of death like we have in mario strikers but it's it's fine and these rosters too oh my god they're gigantic the fact that we had to resort to the piantas and nokies from sunshine baby donkey kong is here you know from yosh's island ds and that's it in general like the titles before it both of these play almost exactly the same it's just that in the sequel all the pitching and batting is done with semi-decent motion controls they're not terrible but they are better than new play control mario power tennis and i i don't know maybe worse than wii sports baseball uh there there's the middle ground i guess both these games also have single-player modes where you run around a little map and play a bunch of different games to build up a sizeable team to take down bowser and all the teams have these cute little names too there's the yoshi islanders mario sunshines peach monarchs somebody got paid for this the mode is very similar in both games including most of the characters speaking full english that's very bizarre fortune street did this too and every every time it happens every time a full sentence comes out of these characters mouths it's very unsettling things are slightly more complex with the overworld puzzle solving and super sluggers but i don't know i can't help but feel like these were pretty forced these single player modes in these sports games only work if you either play it straight and make it a full-blown rpg or you give us an absurd save the world plot like an asus the stuff we have here in baseball it's too middle of the road to really be seen as anything interesting oh be sure to trace the lines on this wario sign why are we doing this thankfully when we're not playing basic old baseball or diving into some of the mini games we do also have the toy field mode where instead of playing traditional baseball it's all a mad scramble between four players to land the ball on these special panels on the field you get a bunch of items and point multipliers it's great i love this one there is no shortage of options from multiplayer fun in these titles it's just the single player that kinda sucks and i do hope that once battle league comes and goes we get a return to baseball as well a modern take on this formula with some new tweaks here or there would be really cool and make sure daisy's there at launch or so help me god and also the menacing red dry bones too this is clearly the most evil thing in the roster and i want to see it again it deserves a chance to be better and now that covers the four main sports golf tennis baseball and soccer and no matter what at the end of the day these games do offer a lot of really good things you got really great opening cut scenes you got arcady fun with a lot of mario charm and just excellent multiplayer offerings in general not every game but in general i mean hell even stupid old ultra smash can be fun over drinks with friends and you just complain about the game the whole time it's fun it's not what they were going for but it could be fun but of course we do have some of those stragglers as well that you don't really see too often of course we have the mario and sonic at the olympics games games i do think those technically count but i've already covered them in the past so we're not going to talk about them here let's uh let's really do something that you wouldn't see coming let's talk about square enix what mario hoops three on three by square enix god what three on three basketball for the ds strangely enough the only dedicated mario sport game to hit the console okay i always figured a mario tennis game where the court took up both screens made all the sense in the world but like i said before what do i know i guess i only have good ideas not enough money to make these games let's get squeamix to do a basketball game instead the big gimmick here is doing all of your main actions on the touchscreen oh joy swiping the screen to attempt stealing a ball tossing items onto the floor or going in for a jump shot and tapping the screen a whole bunch to dribble like a lot a lot a lot a lot of tapping probably destroyed a lot of ds demo units at walmart i can tell you that much and it's okay once you get past the novelty of this even being on the ds it gets pretty old pretty quickly since every game just revolves around you dribbling the ball a whole bunch of times on these question mark blocks to accumulate some points so you can make over 100 points in a single shot why that's so excessive it has the perfect amount of mario charm like there's a stage where you use pd piranha as the hoop and that's just fun but i feel like the point system is just a bit too nonsensical to have any lasting power and then you got final fantasy characters playable here too okay why not i mean square enix didn't make the game so it makes sense but also doesn't make sense at the same time a ninja a white and black mage cactoir this is a fever dream i'm playing the game right now and i still don't think it's real and then nintendo said hey do it again but with even more sports in one package on the wii mario sports mix right off the bat well not not literally there's no baseball bats in this one things are looking up an opening cut scene thank goodness now you have all of your favorite characters finding themselves in a white empty void to play a variety of sports i guess it would be pretty difficult to properly convey all four of the included sports and anything but a white void so in that essence job well done but yes we have four sports in one game the returning basketball volleyball hockey and dodgeball and why these four sports specifically well because the selling point to sports mix is simply providing a fun arcade experience rather than trying to infuse these sports with as much mario juice as possible and in the case of basketball you can still rack up coins to get more points when scoring but it's a lot less severe and that change alone makes us a much better time just imagine all four of these games with the motion controls that you would expect that's that's what we have here and like before it's it's okay the traditional modes offer a safe basic game with some of the quartz offering just enough of a gimmick to spice things up and when you want to go a little extra each sport also has an associated mini-game in the party mode you get to dunk fruit in petey's mouth dodgeball bombs volleying balls in a co-op rhythm game this stuff is pretty cool god there's there's even a boss fight against a behemoth king like what what in the holy hell is going on here square enix this is one of the most insane things i ever witnessed thank you however single player is terrible there is like a story about this comet falling from the sky and having crystals that have sports balls in them that's dumb and amazing but it all just results in a basic tournament mode which is painfully easy and i mean just disgustingly mopping the floor with opponents in every single sport easy and you have to go through said mode with all four sports in order to unlock everything it doesn't matter if you already unlocked a court or character in hockey you gotta go through it all over again in volleyball and then the remaining two sports you gotta go through four things to full completion in order to beat the game that's terrible what is it sonic heroes luckily there is an unlock everything code if you just want to get in there with some friends immediately with all of the options so i would just recommend doing that and bypassing the story mode all together you can play as a slime in this one damn it and that should not be held back from the wanting public i mean if your choice of teammate is either a damn slime or nba legend rick mahorn well i mean i think your choice is obvious look at those rep points poor old rick doesn't stand a chance oh god oh god i always forget this happened you really want to see a fever dream we'll hear nba street v3 and ssx on tour for the gamecube oh featuring featuring the mario brothers in peach for some reason i guess this was in the same vein of putting link in soul calibur you just have this big third-party game put a nintendo character in there it'll sell more i guess so why not put mario into real life sports games what we got here is more or less the same title that you can find on other consoles just with a couple additional characters and like a new stage here or there there's a bunch of sound effects and ssx on tour this is a sin these all look like mediocre pc mods but i assure you i don't like it but i can assure you this is real and amazingly enough this wasn't really enough to swing the pendulum in nintendo's favor at the time and sell more gamecubes my god i'm stunned this edge that nintendo tried to have in the mid 2000s man they gave mario a tribal tattoo nothing was off limits here the games may be painfully easy in single player but i think i still gotta hand it to mario hoops and sports mix in the basketball 1v1 department here these real life sports games look like you just have humans versus humans in mario costumes i don't i don't like it if anything i just gotta give square enix credit for managing to get a decent final product out of four sports in a single game it's not amazing but if you ever find yourself in a multiplayer wii session with some friends this isn't a bad choice so when camelot the head honchos tried to do the same thing on 3ds with mario sports superstars oh boy was i ever excited ah holy sh this game is bad you see you would think oh wow we're getting golf tennis baseball and soccer in one package and there's horse racing in here too oh my god yes finally this is a dream come true ah it's just it's just the five sports games and that's it like devoid of variety options and mario theming that's that's really it it's just the sports there is technically a mini game per sport but they are hidden in like the training menu for some reason the golf and tennis modes are fine you're losing a lot of the options you had in the core titles that were already on the console and as it turns out camelot can't make good soccer and baseball games you see the problem is when you tell mario fans you're getting those sports in a brand new game finally people want more of what they were getting on the home consoles this is just the most basic adaptations of these sports you could find it's dreadful oh but what about the one shining asterisk of the bunch horse racing the one thing the mario franchise had clearly been missing all this time well the horse designs are kind of cute oh hey look at this a first person mode it's like i'm really on a cartoon horse i think it's obvious that this is another byproduct of the early amiibo craze like amiibo festival was you see alongside the game's release was a brand new set of amiibo cards for each character and each sport and hey made total sense at the time sports trading cards are totally a thing let's capitalize on it and then they reused ddr mario mix art for bowser on the soccer card this was doomed to fail from the start plus the in-game amiibo breakout mode is terrible this whole this whole thing is just a non-stop onslaught of bad you dare make a game where pink gold peach is one of the few unlockable characters and you expect me to be excited about that at the tail end of the 3ds's life there was a bit of an aura of nintendo simply trying to fill out the schedule as we got closer to the release of the switch and while it's not as insulting as ultra smash was this is another example of what i meant when i said earlier that the camelot from the early days was a whole lot different than the camelot we have here but at the end of the day with all of these sports games finally wrapped up yeah you know i think this whole mario sports concept was a massive success in modern times we certainly got issues to be concerned about like super rush's post-launch content strategy and battle league's glaring omission of daisy but in the grand scheme of things these games do exactly what they need to they take the characters from the mario universe throw them into an arcade sports atmosphere with a good dose of mario influence with items and gimmicks aplenty and just give us these really fun games to play single player and especially multiplayer and clearly with battle league this trend won't be stopping anytime soon so whether or not the upcoming outings are fantastic just average or even flat out bad this will forever be one of the best things to come out of the mushroom kingdom they're also essentially totally responsible for all the personality that daisy and waluigi have so yeah i think it's all a net positive i know for many people out there sports video games aren't necessarily your thing and honestly same here but when mario gets involved and we get overloaded with options there's a ton of mario charm just a great overall multiplayer experience oh i'm on board 100 i love that stuff i loved going through all the games that have come out thus far and i am very excited to see whatever happens in the future i think uh i think this was a good call for me to go through this whole comprehensive look i had a lot of fun and i think i covered everything uh no okay wait sorry i forgot there is one there's uh also luigi's hammer toss it was an early lcd watch game that came out i want to say 1990 and when you boot it it plays it apparently plays la cucaracha because of course it does [Music] you

Channel: AntDude

Views: 544,953

Keywords: AntDude, Mario Golf, Mario Golf Super Rush, Mario Tennis, Mario Tennis Aces, Super Mario Strikers, Mario Strikers Battle League, Mario Superstar Baseball, Mario Super Sluggers, Mario Strikers Charged, Mario Power Tennis, Mario Golf Toadstool Tour, Mario Golf N64, Mario Tennis N64, mario golf game boy, mario tennis game boy, Mario sports games, Mario Golf switch, Mario Tennis switch, Mario Sports Mix, Mario Sports Superstars, Best Mario sports games

Id: jAiU1PunrFY

Length: 48min 10sec (2890 seconds)

Published: Sat May 21 2022