Mario Superstar Baseball Review

By Jim Rossignol Published 21 November, 2005

Home run or stuck at first base?

Version tested: GameCube

It's nice to see that enemies can put aside their differences in the name of sport. Just as the hyper-violent females of Dead Or Alive are placated by a bit of sunshine and beach volleyball, so the head-bonking and surreal rampages of the Mario cast are put on hold for a few rounds of baseball.

A 50-strong cast from the recent games populates Mario Superstar Baseball, including walk-on parts from such unsung talents as the freaky bloke in the mask, Shy Guy, with whom I feel a strange affinity. There are also visitations from the goombas who (if you get a chance to play the game) you'll notice have an amusingly rude way of holding the bat... Thanks to this line-up of ghosts, mushrooms, and pseudo-dinosaurs, the baseball antics are occasionally mesmerising, routinely mad, but ultimately rather unfulfilling.

As with other Mario sporting remixes, Superstar Baseball features numerous bat-and-ball-related challenges, usually either requiring pitching or batting talents. Both actions are simplified, making a curveball easy to pitch with a simple left or right of the thumb-stick, while an error is almost impossible to deliver. Batting meanwhile allows you to bunt and steal bases, but it's all too easy to smack that fly ball and get caught out by a ghost in the field. These two skill sets pretty much deliver the rest of the game to you, with all Mario's esoteric challenges being based on the application of throwing a ball and/or belting it off into the stadium. It's representative of Nintendo's entire game philosophy, with just a couple of buttons giving you the whole game, with a little more subtly hidden away in the use of the controller once you have command of things.

'Mario Superstar Baseball' Screenshot tennis

It's this year's Monkey Tennis.

There are five mini-games that allow you to practice all your basic baseball skills, even including a base-running game, where players must practice legging it back and forth without getting blatted by that barking-ball-on-a-chain. It's worth playing the batting practice mini-game for a while just so that you get the hang of the timing required to bat; it's not at all obvious, and you'll regularly get struck out for the first couple of dozen balls.

Then there's Toy Field, a four-player mode where the baseball pitch is re-imagined as a kind of giant pinball machine. The batter can light up segments of the field by landing a ball there and the three fielders must run about collecting coins as he does so. This mode is fairly mystifying, and although it has trademark Mario cute-cum-surreal presentation, it really begins to falter straight away. There's no satisfaction to be earned from it and almost no development of your skills occurs in play. The crudeness of this barely registers it as mode of its own. We began to wonder why it wasn't tied down into the mini-games section. We sat uncomfortably in our gaming beanbags, oddly dissatisfied, but nevertheless we can shrug and move on... Surely there's something more?

'Mario Superstar Baseball' Screenshot glove

Shirking the convenience of a baseball bat, iconoclast Donkey Kong goes for the comedic boxing glove.

And there is, but it's not much more. The core of the single-player game, the challenge mode, is next in line for scrutiny. This sees Mario wandering the land to take on baseball-related challenges. These challenges allow you to put together a customised team so that you can take on Bowser at baseball in a match to end all matches. Once an array of 'scouting' mini-games are completed you'll sign up the various major characters until you compile that all-star team. Items can be purchased in the shop, each set to imbue your batting and pitching with different (and regularly annoying) effects. Eventually you'll complete all the scout sequences and take Bowser on at a neat game of American Rounders.

Brief and shallow in what it delivers, the challenge game doesn't ameliorate our now-wobbly expectations, and it certainly doesn't live up to its name. It's a meagre offering when we expected some sporting meat to pummel with our bat and ball. The mini-games are too superficial to inspire love, and much of what Mario and chums gets up to feels like a default rendition of favourite animations. Yes, they're still as exquisitely realised and precisely turned out as ever, but they're simply not playing their best roles. If this baseball adventure was all there was to the game then we'd be marking extremely low. What might just save Superstar Baseball is the main multiplayer exhibition mode, which allows you to play two-player matches in five different stadiums.

'Mario Superstar Baseball' Screenshot flaming

Mario's flaming ball can be a little tricky to connect with.

Each of the stadiums has their own quirks. Donkey Kong's stadium has barrels plunging across the field, making things randomly hazardous for fielders, while Wario keeps some barking chain where the hotdog stand should be, again making life in the outfield a little more hazardous. The core baseball game remains the same in each environment, with a fairly genuine game of baseball taking place each time. You can nudge running batters back and forth to make the most of good balls, and the pitcher can do a great deal to defeat aspiring batsmen. Each character has a different level of ability, so you'll know who to expect a home run from when they step up to the plate.

Additionally there are 'star' moves, of which each team has five per inning. These allow, for example, Princess Peach to obscure her ball with a blizzard of hearts, while Koopa transforms the ball into a bouncing egg and Mario turns his into a superfast fireball. The batters can return the favour with over-powered balls that fly out into the field, making it tougher for the fielders to catch them. A tiny circle of stars indicates where a ball is going to land, and it is possible to make some diving catches to take out the ball. Returning a ball to base is a real muddle, as each direction of the thumb stick represents a different base. Since it's counter-intuitive to aim away from where you want it to go you'll regularly deliver the ball to the midst of embarrassing nowhere.

Despite this minor awkwardness, the exhibition mode is the most entertaining facet of Superstar Baseball. The squeaky eccentricity of proceedings leaves you charmed, if a little frustrated with the lack of a truly solid baseball game. It's never a great sports rendition, and nor is it a great arcade-tickling Mario game. The superficiality of the challenges and the clunkiness of general play mean it's a dissatisfying performance for Japan's most popular sport and its most popular plumber. It's a sad conclusion, but Mario really only ever gets to second base.

6 / 10

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About Jim Rossignol

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Comments (34) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • All_Action_Hero #1 6 years ago

    wow, go nintendo, another quality product...

  • All_Action_Hero #2 6 years ago

    cue a post wondering why it says 2 comments but none are visible

  • All_Action_Hero #3 6 years ago

    or even 3 comments now

  • All_Action_Hero #4 6 years ago

    yep thats 3.

  • All_Action_Hero #5 6 years ago

    oh wait, this'll be the fifth!

  • urban #6 6 years ago

    damn...i really want a good baseball game

  • Talha #7 6 years ago

    A Mario game gets a six? My day (and month, and year) is made!!!

    bring on the fireworks...

    /ducks behind desk

  • Xerx3s #8 6 years ago

    Meh. They should do a cricket game.

  • Talha #9 6 years ago

    @Xerx3s : And what if it turns out *better* than the existing games, which incidentally don't happen to be paragons of spectacular graphics and gripping gameplay?

    Given that when Ninty do something, they do it right 99% of the time, won't Mario Cricket be embarrassing?

  • Psi #10 6 years ago

    why has there never been a mario olympics game? the 80's we couldn't get shifted for a daily thompsons decathalon game or ten, mario olympics would be a great laugh....

    ninty hop too it, and stop giving us crap yank sports, should be called mario rounders over here nad you could only play as female characters...

  • afray #11 6 years ago

    Mario Cricket for teh win!
    *fumes at Vaughan's batting ability*

  • mattius30 #12 6 years ago

    If the GameCube was a dog - it would be put out of its misery. I can't believe what has become of the system I once so loved. Did Nintendo learn nothing from the N64? Furthermore is Mario even still relevent? Mario Sunshine was the last 'proper' Mario platformer and that isnt considered to be the best - since then, we have had a deluge of Mario spin-offs - none of which have been particularly great - cos Mario games have never been about the sparkling wit and character of Mario himself. I can't help think that Nintendo should call it quits and just pull the GameCube - transfer the new Zelda to the Revolution and actually learn a few lessons from Sega - cos if it aint careful, Nintendo will end up playing on a rival console near you.

  • Talha #13 6 years ago

    @mattius30 : You have just committed the ultimate sacrilege. See that mob outside your window?

  • Teeth #14 6 years ago

    He's right though.

  • Talha #15 6 years ago

    Actually I was AGREEING with him in an oblique but intense manner.

  • Sabre #16 6 years ago

    A few lessons from sega, you mean lose all quality and start putting out pap like Matrix Online and Shadow the Hedgehog?

  • Teeth #17 6 years ago

    Talha, I was neither disagreeing with you or suggesting that you were disagreeing with mattius :)

    People often say that it's all about the games with the gamecube and that who cares if it's mario as long as it's a good game, but really, it's really getting a bit much. Really. It wouldn't be so bad were it not for the notable lack of other games for the system; the only notable games recently have been Resident Evil 4 and Battalion Wars, as far as I can make out. Lamentable.

  • Aretak #18 6 years ago

    Yep, the Cube started off with so much promise, but died on its arse sometime late last year. It's been the N64 all over again, which is exactly what I feared when I bought the damn thing.

  • Talha #19 6 years ago

    @Teeth: I was neither suggesting you thought I was disagreeing with Mattius nor I was... oh, forget it already!!!!

    Actually what you said, I couldn't have put it better myself. They have this mascot and they use it as their excuse for being quirky and 'above it all' without fulfilling the demands of lowly masses - more games, for instance. Also I think that they are putting a lot more effort in their handhelds - it shows. They should either support their home console with a few more quality games (preferably without the Mario crutch) or call it quits from the home console market. Just do away with this holier-than-thou attitude.

    Take this baseball game for instance. Would it be ANY good without the Mario label? Oh wait, it is no good anyway...

    @bengalibengali : Are you in any way questioning my scholastic credentials? Cos you will be sorry and passing teeth out of your...., dude! ;-)

  • Mashum #20 6 years ago

    I have a top tip for mattius30: Pretend Nintendo have retired the Gamecube by throwing yours away and not reading any more Gamecube reviews.

    The Gamecube isn't a dog, it's a thing to make money with - as one of the few innovators in the games industry I hope Nintendo can squeeze every last penny out of it.

  • FairgroundTown #21 6 years ago

    I think that I am also getting fed-up with the Mario branding of everything. In fact, one of the better things about Mario Golf GBA was that it didn't seem to feature Mario (or Donkey Kong or Princess Peach) at all in the story mode. But I guess N are in a double-bind - if they remove the branding, the games won't sell, even if they are fab (a la Mr Pants, which if I understand correctly was originally a DK game, but had the banding removed and sold nothing, despite being very good).

    I'd agree about moving Zelda TP to the Rev, but they probably can't because of controller issues - having to bundle it with a "traditional" controller would be a marketing disaster in terms of the whole concept of Rev.

  • Talha #22 6 years ago

    "As one of the true innovators in the gaming industry.....'

    Not for the GameCube at least, no. If you call a different disk format or gazillion Mario titles innovation, sorry. And they will only make some money if (a) a few more GC games come out, (2) they sell, and (3) the console itself sells. Sadly none of that seems to be happening right now.

    Edited by 1 at 21/11/05 @ 12:20

  • Mashum #23 6 years ago

    "Not for the GameCube at least, no. "

    That's fair comment. The console is cheap & the games are OK but not great... I'm talking about innovation in the DS and hopefully the Rev (fingers crossed).

    "And they will only make some money if (a).. (b) .. (c)..."

    That's debatable - I would say most of Ninty's investment into the Gamecube project has already been made - any games or licences that can turn a profit from now on are a good thing for them and will help them carry on as a company that does innovate.

    Sorry to break up and comment on your post - man I hate it when people do that.
    Edited by 1 at 21/11/05 @ 12:48

  • Talha #24 6 years ago

    @Mashum: I think your reply is well considered, meaningful and enlightening. There is nothing about it that I hate. :)

  • mattius30 #25 6 years ago

    Thanks for the advice Mashum and it's already done - I just have to decide now what I will do with the £20 credit note I got by trading the plastic handbag in.

    And you are right, the GameCube certainly WAS a thing to make money with - but to squeeze pennies out of it would require them releasing a good schedule of games that everyone actually wants to play. And also bear in mind that nearly all retailers are now cutting back on GameCube - see Friday's MCV. Nintendo is making money from their handheld sectors and Pokemon.

    And I wish I could agree that they are innovators - maybe next generation, but certainly not this, in terms of a home console at least. Does a carry handle make the Cube innovative? Does a multitude of themed Mario sports games? Does a limited and sporadic release schedule? Dual screens and experimental games for the DS do indeed make them innovative - but I have seen none of this in their GameCube.

    And to be fair - I aint even fussed about innovation - I just want good games and LOTS of them. Something that the two competitors have achieved for me.

    Don't get me wrong - I want Nintendo to be huge - as I do Microsoft and Sony - it means the games get better!!!! But for me, five new Mario games in the space of a month, disguised as 'Mario's Birthday Celebrations' is naff and not what i had expected from the graphics and gameplay powerhouse that the Cube can be. If they were that proud, could they not have celebrated with one amazing new Mario platformer?

    Maybe its because i am 30... I feel like I was cheated with the N64 and now stupid for being sucked in again with the GameCube. Maybe I am just too old for Nintendo now. They got me hooked with the promise of 'lots of shorter games' but it never came to fruition. As it stands, there is now a gap between my Xbox and PS2 for the next big thing - just not sure which one yet - but it will take a lot of persuading from Nintendo before I even dare consider another Nintendo home console.

  • joey #26 6 years ago

    ^^indeed!

    Oh dear.

    Well it's Mario's 20th birthday, so they are releasing everything they can with that fat little sod in it.

    I love Nintendo, but this is just plain crap, and Mario deserves much better.

    All I can say is thank god for the DS and MK! See you all on Friday??
    Edited by 1 at 21/11/05 @ 13:23

  • Genji #27 6 years ago

    I'm one of the "who cares if it's Mario, as long as it's a good game" people. I honestly don't care about all the spinoffs. I know why they're putting Mario in there: brand recognition = more money. But they are (mostly) GOOD GAMES - having Mario in them doesn't make them any better, sure, but it hardly makes them any worse. Mario is the initial attraction, but the gameplay is what keeps me there.

    And no, I'm not going to be standing ouside your door with a flaming torch if you say otherwise. Most Nintendo fans aren't at all rabid - well, no more so than Sony or Microsoft fans, at least.

    And I've been playing plenty of non-Mario GC titles: Fire Emblem, Battalion Wars, RE4, Killer7, etc. There aren't a lot coming out but, as people have said, the GC is on its last legs.

    Baseball, though... well, I don't really know all that much about baseball. One wonders why they bothered to release it out of Japan and the US.

    EDIT: psst, bengali, but this thread isn't *about* MKDS. Try the forums.
    Edited by 1 at 21/11/05 @ 14:01

  • caligari #28 6 years ago

    "Ask any online mario kart question here I'll answer it."

    Okay...errr...what is Mario's middle name?

  • Mashum #29 6 years ago

    @Talha, aw thanks.

    @mattius30 but..but.. Goldeneye, Mariokart64, Mario64, Zelda, PD, Turok...the worst Star Wars game of all time and Banjo Kazooie's revoltingly tight shorts. The 64 felt like bleeding edge technology and as such it was expensive and a bit niche when it came to software support but it offered something far ahead of it's time. It would have been nice to have more good games but I still don't regret a penny of that student loan.

    I have little arguement with what you're saying about the cube except: it's cheap and there are a few good games, enough for me anyway. It still gets more use than my PS2.

    The DS is far more inventive and importantly loads of fun...

  • Ymir #30 6 years ago

    C'mon guys! Where's the football?! It's not often we lowly Europeans get something before our cousins over the pond ...

  • ekko #31 6 years ago

    Only review of the Mario Smash Football is 58% so it doesn't hold much promise either... even if it did look quite fun from the advert, although I guess its there job to make it look fun.

    Sigh, come on Nintendo, get Zelda out and then we can move on.

  • Balfa #32 6 years ago

    What have you got against this game? Granted it got a six when Mario Power Tennis got an 8, it's only two points away, but this review is so full of hate and the mario power tennis review so full of love.

    When you say an error is almost impossible to deliver, do you mean a "ball"? If so, they're easy to do if you're trying to make it difficult for the batter to hit, which is kinda the whole point of pitching. In fact, in baseball, you'd often deliberately throw a "ball" trying to get the batter to swing wildly at it.

    If you keep hitting fly balls, hold forward on the stick when you swing and you'll keep them down. Some characters (like in mario golf) have naturally higher trajectories than others, and of course you have to accomodate for this.

    I don't know what's "not at all obvious" about timing your swing. The ball comes towards you, you hit the A button. It seemed pretty intuitive to me.

    I'm not a huge fan of the minigames, but I do think they're actually better than those in Mario Power Tennis. That colour-in-the-Yoshis was way more random than anything in this game. I do think Toy Field is pretty cool though if you get three or four people playing. It's well balanced and fun.

    As for the main challenge mode, how is it much more hollow than the tournaments in mario power tennis? Each tournament in power tennis involves playing three matches against random opponents and that's it. After no time, you've unlocked all the characters and courts, and the only reason left to play the tournaments is star characters. I'm not saying that's any different with Mario Baseball, but at least each tournament is a bit interesting.

    Which leaves the standard multiplayer exhibitions as the best bit of each game, and rightly so. And they're both a lot of fun, especially if you have people who know what they're doing. Fielding is my favourite part of the game, especially if you turn off the landing ring to make it a little trickier. Pulling off a diving catch and getting a triple play is pretty satisfying. As for it being counter-intuitive to throw to bases, this has become a standard in the console baseball game since NES Baseball and is as common as the three-point swing in golf games and it works fine for most people. If you can't manage to throw to the right base, you could always just press A by itself and let the game automatically choose for you.

    I don't the control system is awkward or clunky for any part of the game. I think it's all pretty fluid. Don't get me wrong, I dislike watching baseball, but I do find this game enjoyable. At the end of the day, it seems like you're scoring it down just because it's baseball, which is something that europeans just don't get. Maybe that's okay, though, because it's a european review for a european audience. And if that's why it gets 2 points less than Mario Power Tennis, so be it. I'd give it a higher score purely because it's the first game ever where you can play as a goomba :D

  • Balfa #33 6 years ago

    Oh, and yeah, give us a Mario Smash Football review! Although it's pretty damn annoying having come away from Mario Baseball with it's more-mario-characters-than-ever-before and find that mario football gives you a tiny amount, and all your teammates are some soulless so-and-sos. Since it's only five-a-side, why couldn't they have given us the opportunity to make a team filled with varied and charistmatic mario characters?? They should have got someone better than NLG to develop it :(

    Although I do like the darkness of it. Everyone in the game looks angry and cool, instead of cute and cuddly like most mario games :)

  • Balfa #34 6 years ago

    I don't know what the european box art is like, but the US box art is really cool:

    image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxsho ts/6/928286_67343_front.jpg

    That's the anger I'm talking about :) It's in the intro cutscene as well, and throughout the whole feeling of the game :)

    edit: Oh, just saw the european on. It's pretty cool, too :)
    Edited by 1 at 21/11/05 @ 19:23

  • CosmonautX #35 6 years ago

    Well, I've got just over 40 'Cube titles and around another 15 or 20 on my "to buy" list. My library includes pretty much all of the major first-party releases, and a bundle of cross-platform titles (Beyond Good & Evil, Prince of Persia: SoT etc. - even if the graphics & gameplay on PS2 and GC aren't wildly different, something as simple as sensible load times makes a huge difference to the experience ;-) )

    By comparison I've got something like 50 PS2 titles, and another 50-odd I still plan to buy, and only around 25 N64 games.

    The GameCube may not have been as successful as I had hoped, but I have been far happier with the software selection - and, crucially, with third-party releases - available for it than I ever was with the N64.

    ...and, as is always worth pointing out, Nintendo have actually made decent profits off the wee blocky bugger :-)

  • Nikanoru #36 6 years ago

    The N64 all over? In the sense that the N64 was home to some of the greatest classics of all time you mean?

    Go pick on someone else, kids.

  • PuffyPipe #37 6 years ago

    Mario lawn bowls

  • mazefreak123 #38 6 years ago

    Nintendo shouldn't of bothered realising this in the UK. Who likes baseball here?

  • ShadowTheHedgehog #39 6 years ago

    This game tries to be good it always fails