Kyle Orland writes:
0:00 Oddly enough, I'm relatively sure I've played every single Mario sports game extensively ... EXCEPT for this game's prequel on the GameCube. I know it's not baseball season anymore, but this game doesn't involve shooting people. Or hitting them with swords, which makes it perfect for me today.
0:01 "Let'sa play ball ... woohoo!" says Charles Martinet (as the voice of Mario) on the preview screen. A big Namco/Bandai logo is in the corner ... I didn't know they were behind this...
0:02 A boat on a blue ocean filled with Mario characters. Daisy enjoys the spray (heh) as they sail towards some sort of baseball theme park island-thing. They arrive and climb a tower to look out over the park. On the ball field, Wii remotes become bats in the characters' hands. Wait, they have Wii remotes? How does THAT work? Montage time: Toads slide around an ice field and get frozen. Wario is all wet! Yoshi falls in a warp pipe going for a diving catch! Diddy is almost crushed by a giant barrel! Everyone throws bombs at Yoshi! Donkey Kong knocks over Luigi as he goes for a double play. Everyone's worried, but Luigi held on to the ball, so they all cheer! Never mind the concussion ... and title!
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.
Newegg has released a 72 hour sale.
Deals begin at 12:01am PT on Friday 15th June.