Month of Mario: Mario Super Sluggers (Wii)

When I first played Mario Super Sluggers around 15 years ago, I stayed up all night to play this baseball game’s 5 hour story mode. For the Month of Mario, I once more was up all night as I once again tackled that story mode in its entirety, and both times left me with some quite memorable muscle soreness for a few days following it. Motion controlled bat swinging and pitching mixed with minigames and superpowers is about what one would expect from a Mario sports title on the Nintendo Wii, but by adding extra goals and considerations to the baseball play, Mario Super Sluggers manages to make itself a game where you won’t be regretting those sore arms later.

While Mario Super Sluggers does let you dive straight into the baseball matches against computer players or humans as soon as you turn the game on, many of its characters and extra features must first be unlocked through the game’s story mode. Confusingly called Challenge mode despite that term usually being what games use for a selection of small bits of side content, Challenge mode here sees the colorful characters of the Mushroom Kingdom heading off to a new kingdom Princess Peach built just for them to play some ball on. Baseball Kingdom has multiple stadiums, each of which house regular games and special minigames that make use of baseball elements, and the stadiums themselves are even themed around various team captains like Donkey Kong having a jungle field while Peach herself has decided to turn her castle interior into an ice rink. There’s a good mix of themes present, Princess Daisy surprisingly setting her games on a cruise ship where the boat can tip or even have fish flop aboard to interfere while Luigi’s field brings his common horror mansion theming along with a baseball field where disturbing graves can lead to ghosts haunting the outfield. The interference tends to be of the type where it won’t arise often, but you still likely won’t finish a game without something important being impacted a touch by whatever effects the field adds to the action.

However, Baseball Kingdom isn’t just a fun place for Mario and his pals to play, Bowser Jr. immediately crashing the party by ramming his own toy block baseball field into the island and scattering the players to the winds. His minions run amok on the island causing chaos for the other players, Mario needing to head to each section of the island to undo the damage and recruit a wide range of characters to join his baseball team. As mentioned earlier, the story mode might take you 5 to 6 hours to clear if you go for every character, but you aren’t just recruiting them by playing standard baseball. Some of them actually require you to navigate a world map, solve little puzzles, play minigames involving the Wii Remote like navigating a magnet through a maze, or use specific powers that different team captains have to investigate the area. More often than those other methods though is the need to impress potential recruits by playing a small baseball-themed challenge, these initially working almost like tutorials before eventually transitioning into challenges that might actually require some work and skill. At first, the players will ask for simple things like throwing the exact type of pitch they tell you to or you might have to successfully pull off a maneuver like a bunt or base steal while the game is quite happy to give you tips should you need them. Later down the line though, some athletes will start asking for a bit more finesse, such as hitting the ball to certain areas of the field reliably, but you can retry challenges until you clear them and you often even get multiple attempts before the game marks an attempt as a failure.

Between searching the areas surrounding stadiums, playing minigames, and doing baseball challenges, there will be times you play short baseball games against Bowser Jr. and his cronies, these also starting off fairly small with only 1 inning for the first encounter and even when Bowser himself gets involved it never reaches a full 9 inning game. This does keep things moving well though, the adventure a pretty nice way to get acclimated to the game’s mechanics so you can better make use of them in multiplayer matches against friends. The batting is close to what you might expect, you swing the remote when the ball goes over the plate and try to line it up and time it properly to hit it, although Mario Super Sluggers does not encourage a proper batter’s stance and instead wants you to swing the Wii Remote more like a tennis racket. Sometimes the game did seem to not detect the swing the best, but there is an on-screen marker to help you determine the point of impact and you’ll likely find a reliable motion for hitting the ball after some experimentation. Pitching is more reliable when it comes to the motion sensing, but that’s because again the game has you do motions differently than in normal baseball. Holding the Wii Remote forward, you pull it up and then slam it back down, more like a chop with a hatchet than a pitch. The Wii Remote’s motion sensing isn’t strong enough for accurate reading of baseball motions though and these were decent compromises that also make it less likely young players will fling their Wii Remotes into their television sets, but pitching is unfortunately a bit basic because the motion is more for immersion rather than having a deeper purpose. If you want to pitch at different angles or speeds, it’s more about buttons and directions you hold or if you want to make it harder on yourself, you can twist the remote a little for a slight deviation.

The pitching could do with more control to make the showdowns between batter and pitcher more interesting, but both do include another mechanic in the form of Star Skills. Both teams can build up star power by playing well and then use it to enhance a pitch or swing. While many athletes just get a bit stronger with star power, team captains all have unique powers. Bowser Jr.’s Graffiti Ball pitch will cover the screen with paint, making it hard to see when the ball is actually coming. Yoshi’s Egg Swing will cause the ball to turn into a bouncy egg, making it hard for fielders to catch it. These can definitely be a tide turner if used at the right time to earn a key out or get some batters on base, and surprisingly, Star Skills are one of the few things you can disable for every match of Challenge mode while other rules are still in play. For example, there is a synergy system at play where characters who get along well will have a few extra bonuses while playing together. One of these emerges when at bat, because if you have characters with synergy batting one after the other, you’ll get a random item you can use to interfere with fielders when the first character is at bat. These can be far more impactful than Star Skills, Star Skills taking time to build up to while the items appear at guaranteed times and can devastate the outfield a lot better than most super moves. Items cannot be turned off though in Challenge mode despite being a more common form of interference, but it does at least require some more rigid team design as a price for frequent fielder sabotage.

Chemistry between teammates is more important than getting those constant disruptive item rolls though. When in the field, athletes with good chemistry throw balls more quickly to each other, but you can have bad chemistry as well and you’ll only find out through experimentation if characters don’t get along well. Usually it’s fairly obvious if you know a bit about the characters, Diddy Kong isn’t going to get along well with his long time enemies King K. Rool and the Kritters, but even if the select screen didn’t tell you, it’s more reasonable to assume he will have some chemistry with family members like Tiny Kong and Funky Kong. Some characters get along poorly with other players in general, the troublemakers Wario and Waluigi only really playing well with each other or a custom Mii who matches their color, but then you have surprisingly friendly characters like Baby Peach who has four other babies, Yoshi, Toad, Toadsworth, and pink Miis on her side. Naturally though, a baby princess won’t be as capable as someone like the hulking plant monster Petey Piranha, and characters can have special fielding skills as well. Magikoopas can pull a ball towards them with their magic if they don’t quite reach it in time, and Paragoombas can use their wings to leap higher than others. Chemistry can even lead to moments where you can have characters team up on the field, enough so that you can counter a home run hit with good synergy… although since you only control one player at a time, the game seems happy to foil attempts at doing so. Chemistry is definitely a neat mechanic that adds a lot to team-building as do the abilities in general, but some concepts either see little play or in the case of items can feel a bit too disruptive at times.

Beyond the story of Challenge mode, Mario Super Sluggers doesn’t offer much more single player content. There are a range of small minigames and side modes, Toy Field for example about players trying to score in a tiny stadium by hitting their ball into special zones, but baseball in miniature does feel weaker than some of the concepts featured in other minigames. Graffiti Runner is perhaps the best for a group of friends, baseball mostly abandoned in favor of just running around painting the ground and trying to steal the paintbrush so you can be the one doing the painting, but others like Blooper Baserun add a dangerous giant squid interfering with your base running as you collect coins and Barrel Basher is a test of you ability to aim hits well so you can combo barrel smashes well without being crushed yourself. Some minigames are very bland and basic, Gem Catch feels like a fielding challenge you’d do to unlock a character more than an amusement, and Piranha Panic asking for you to throw specific pitch types isn’t difficult enough so it’s at best a race to identify how to throw better than others. Challenge mode and more standard baseball matches are the draw here in the end, and ultimately, the baseball is layered enough that it is enjoyable to return to even after you’ve unlocked everything in the story.

THE VERDICT: Motion controls and some elements like on-field items do make Mario Super Sluggers less of a clean experience than it could have been, but there is still a good range of creativity and variety in the game’s stadiums and characters that leads to a bit more depth to how the game is played. Character chemistry and special abilities pump up the game better than flashy Star Skills, and the game’s adventure mode does a good job of not only easing you into its style of play but providing a nice range of breezy challenges in both baseball and minigame molds.

And so, I give Mario Super Sluggers for Nintendo Wii…

A GOOD rating. Technically, Mario Super Sluggers does offer control methods separate from the Wii Remote and Nunchuck method I’ve been referencing here, but they each come with heavy downsides. No nunchuck means no control over fielding, and in a game with outfield gimmicks and items, you certainly don’t want to lose that level of interaction. The Wii Remote can stick itself into moments that didn’t necessarily need it too, such as shaking it to make your base runners go a little faster. I have no doubt my arms would be less sore if the game wasn’t consistently asking you to wave the Wii Remote to run those bases, but for people who aren’t trying to get in Challenge mode, minigames, and a good bit of standard play in a short period, it’s likely arm pain won’t come with the package. Instead, the Challenge mode offers a nice way of cutting up baseball play into smaller chunks for quick challenges while the exploration and other elements make it feel a bit livelier than if it was truly just a challenge mode. Chemistry is a fun extra layer for people looking to design a more involved team, Mario Super Sluggers pulling in strange character picks like the palm tree Pianta people to make a huge roster for some interesting mixing and matching of skills and synergy. There are a lot of fun touches in Mario Super Sluggers too, like certain characters using unique bats so you have something like Donkey Kong outright punching the ball for some fun color, and while the gimmickry can be a bit strong at points, it still generally provides more interesting play than if it had been baseball with standard rules.

Its predecessor, Mario Superstar Baseball, offers the deeper systems, but Mario Super Sluggers does provide some fun chaotic cartoony baseball and while it could have done with some more self-control in some areas, others lead to the delightful wackiness of a caterpillar hitting a baseball over the edge of a cruise ship. Perhaps less reliance on motion sensing could have helped the play feel cleaner and more strategic rather than leaving some people with sore arms twice over in their lifetime, but both times through I was less bothered by my aching muscles and simply wishing there was more to do in the game to keep me going. Challenge mode is a nice concept, but deeper mechanics and more activities could have lead to this baseball game hitting it out of the park.