Despite its many shortcomings, Mario Super Sluggers is good enough to offer some solid entertainment to the right gamers. Collect-'em-all Mariophiles will dig the new challenge mode, and Wii party hosts will enjoy playing frantic multiplayer games. More serious baseballers will find satisfaction in facing off against one another, but will find the rest of the package wanting. While there's certainly fun to be had, it's a shame Super Sluggers couldn't find that balance between accessibility and complexity that has made past Mario sports games so successful.
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."