Celebrating 20 Years Of Baseball In The Mushroom Kingdom
Monday 21st July marks the 20th anniversary of Mario Superstar Baseball, so to celebrate Jonny is taking us out to the ball game…
My first gaming memory: waking up in the middle of the night, heading downstairs, and booting up Mario Superstar Baseball’s campaign mode on my GameCube.
It was completely out of character, according to my parents, who still tell the story of my midnight gambit to this day. I had never dared transgress the norms of bedtime before, but my love for Mario and his cadre of ball-playing desperados drew me there – in front of the television in the wee hours of the morning, having the time of my life playing my favourite game. I was six. It was 2005.
Mario Superstar Baseball is reviewed as a completely mediocre game across the board. An ancillary Nintendo sports title developed primarily by Namco and released in the fog of the GameCube’s dying breath. Yet it deserves its moment in the spotlight for its ability to show sports kids what makes Mario fun, in a gentle and approachable way. It made video games accessible to those of us in the mid-2000s whose inner nerds waited patiently just beneath the surface. For that reason, Mario Superstar Baseball is more than a nostalgia trip. It’s a connector that encourages players old and new to come out of their shells (blue, red, green, or otherwise) and explore the colourful world of games.
When you isolate its core mechanics, Mario Superstar Baseball is pretty close to a rhythm game. Fielding is mostly automated, outside of a few button presses and the option to control players as they race to get underneath pop flies. Thus, the overwhelming majority of gameplay is spent performing baseball’s two other essential functions: pitching and batting.
To pitch, you aim over the plate with the sticks before holding and releasing the ‘A’ button on time with your character’s specific pitch motion. Part of the game’s nuance is perfecting the timing of these motions across different characters while learning the little tricks that come along with tossing change-ups, curveballs, and special pitches that make use of your character’s “Star Power.” Pro tip: Even though Kamek doesn’t come to mind off the bat as a dominant athlete among the roster of Mario characters included, this Magikoopa’s change-ups rank among the most brutal salvos the game has to offer. Have a go – you’ll be impossible to hit in no time.
Batting, on the other hand, is all about subtle choices. Beginners will charge up their swings by holding ‘A’ before each pitch, but doing so can throw off your timing, especially on fast balls. What’s more, a lot of skill-based characters, like Daisy and Luigi, are optimised around getting on base with a single button tap at the right time rather than hitting home runs with a supercharged cut at the ball.
Therefore, mastering the art of the bat also requires getting to know each character in your lineup. Knowing how to react when it’s Shy Guy’s turn in the order versus a power hitter like Bowser or Donkey Kong constitutes a large part of Mario Superstar Baseball’s catalytic joy. Each character’s play style matches their personality and special traits.
While Mario Kart titles might get all the hype these days, especially in this new era of the Switch 2, Mario Superstar Baseball should not be forgotten, as it is a key example of what Nintendo wants to do with its Mario Sports titles. That is, to provide a whimsical on-ramp for new fans to access the joys of the franchise while staying true enough to its roots to delight even those disciples that have enjoyed Mario since the Jump Man days. If you’re ever looking for more blasts from the past in this same vein, have a look at Mario Hoops 3 on 3 for the DS (Mario Slam Basketball in Europe). Oddly enough, it was developed in collaboration with Square Enix and thus features characters from the Mushroom Kingdom competing against mainstays from the Final Fantasy franchise. A true handheld treat!
Speaking of handhelds, now that the Switch 2 has hit store shelves, Nintendo has managed to reclaim the video game industry spotlight. Every time they release a new console, I can’t help but think back to my favorite hardware from the Nintendo canon – and that frosty night back in 2005, just before New Year’s, when I crawled out of bed and braved the pitch darkness so that I could play a few more delightful innings with Mario and friends.
Though Nintendo and the gaming world at large appear to have all but moved on from Mario Superstar Baseball — especially since the release of Mario Super Sluggers for the Wii and Mario Sports Superstars for the 3DS — it’s essential to look back at what makes this game and its quirky little cube-shaped console special as we move into uncharted territory.
While I hope Nintendo does continue to innovate, I also enjoy keeping the lamp lit for less heralded titles from its past that have made a difference larger than the sum of their parts, mediocre reviews and all. Mario Superstar Baseball is one such title, and a reboot in this era of gaming could have the potential to bring us all back to a simpler time. A time when twangy harmonica music played us into a pristine cutscene of Mario making an athletic play at his home stadium, finding a flyer from Bowser challenging his crew for the title of best baseball team in town, and questing from ballpark to ballpark all in the name of good fun and weird minigames. With nothing on the line that a secret midnight foray into the family room couldn’t fix.
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