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Mario Baseball

Some of the most fun sports titles in gaming have had Nintendo’s famous plumber’s name attached. Golf, Tennis, Soccer…and now Baseball. While it was only natural to attempt an arcadey, Mario-ized Baseball title, what with the success of all the previous sports mentioned, the fact of the matter is that Nintendo skipped some of the fundamentals needed in the sport, most notably base running.

The rather loose story of Mario Superstar Baseball has all of the Mushroom Kingdom’s inhabitants being caught up in the Baseball craze. Having friendly tournaments on a daily basis, it seems likely that their addiction to the sport would enrage the Mushroom Kingdom’s most narcissistic resident. Let’s face it folks, Boswer loves the spotlight and now that everyone is having such a grand time playing the game where being successful one out of three time makes you a superstar, he wants to get even.

How does he do this? He drops banners from the sky challenging one and all in a game of Baseball. Once you pick your team captain, you’ll start out on your journey to take on and defeat Bowser. Your journey has you going up against every other team in the Mushroom Kingdom first, which isn’t really all that much. Teams all have their own Captain, such as Mario and his Mario Sunshines. Each team also has their own home stadium, with Peach’s being outside the castle in the courtyard and Donkey Kong’s in the vast thick of the jungle.

Each Captain also has their own set of strengths and weaknesses, and also special Star moves. Peach is a great pitcher and lacks a lot in the hitting department, Mario is your all-around guy, possessing natural ability in all facets of the game but no outstanding ability in any one area, and Wario is one mean slugger, but naturally a slow runner on the bags and in the outfield. As you progress throughout the game, playing each team, you’ll uncover recruiting missions.

These missions are small goals set forth to you during each match, designed so that when you accomplish each goal and win the missions, you recruit that player for your team. For example, say you’re playing against Mario’s Sunshines, Mario is the pitcher and you’re playing as Peach and her Roses. So stepping up to hit as Peach, you’ll see a brief cinema stating what the challenge is, something along the lines of get a hit or score a run. Should you successfully complete that goal, you’ll be one step closer to recruiting that player for your team. Usually all it takes is 2 or 3 mission completes and the win for that player to be yours.

Each character also has a set amount of Star Moves at their disposal, on both sides of the ball. Using a Star Move while pitching makes your ball do something specific to the character, with Mario’s ball turning into a blazing fast ball. When hitting, you can use a Star Move to put a lot more power on the ball to get a homerun. You’ll start out with 5 at the beginning of each game, with a couple of Star Chances occuring throughout. These will reward you a star if you’re hitting by getting on base, or when pitching, if you manage to strike the batter out.

All of the Star Moves in the world won’t save you from the game’s horrible base running AI though, which is the game’s single most outstanding problem. In Baseball, it’s fairly well-known that on any fly ball or drive to the outfield that the runner must tag up before advancing. In the Mushroom Kingdom though, noone knows this, so what you get is the CPU trying to run for it on EVERY SINGLE HIT, regardless of what the situation calls for strategically. Sure, this gives you an edge should your hit actually land in the outfield without being caught, as your players will have a head start running, but should the ball be caught they’re already two-thirds of the way to the next base and once they turn around to make it back, they’re out from the outfielder’s throw. This makes for an insane number of double plays throughout each game, and while you could curb the advancing during the base running by manually controlling the runner, it’s just common sense to implement it into the game’s AI as most of today’s Baseball titles with the lowest production values include it.

The game’s graphics follow the cartoonish approach of previous Mario titles, with everyone looking like their same old self and sporting an appropriate bat (Bowser’s bat is just too cool). The stadiums you play in follow that Captain’s theme perfectly, with Donkey Kong’s stadium believably in the heart of the Congo and Wario’s to actually be located over a giant tomb where he stashes all of his gold. More stadiums and Captains could’ve helped in the variety department, but it’s nothing that’ll deter from the overall fun presentation of the game.

Mario Superstar Baseball is just what you’d expect Nintendo’s take on America’s pasttime to be; fun, fast, and easily accessible to all gamers. While the AI durng base running makes the game very frustrating at times as it’ll undoubtedly lose you a few games, it’s not so bad as to make the game unplayable. With a little tweaking of the gameplay and a bigger variety of stadiums next time around, Mario Superstar Baseball could be as good, if not better, than Mario’s other sports outings.

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Tags: Mario Baseball

Posted by David Hinkle on Oct 28th, 2005 and is filed under Game Cube Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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