Gamertell Review: Mario Super Sluggers for Wii

Title: Mario Super Sluggers
Price: $49.99
System(s): Wii
Release Date: August 25, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Nintendo (Namco Bandai)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone” for comic mischief.
Pros: Plenty of enjoyable Mario Party-style baseball minigames. Great utilization of both the WiiMote and the Nunchuck attachment or the option to play sans Nunchuck. Can play many modes as your Mii.
Cons: Often irritating ferris-wheel style background music, sometimes touchy Wii controls and depth issues makes fielding unnecessarily difficult. Not the a pick-up-and-play game it promises to be.
Overall Score: One thumb up, one sideways; 80/100; B-; * * * out of five.

If you’ve played a Mario-themed sports game, you have about half of an idea of what to expect with Mario Super Sluggers. It’s far more wacky, cartoonish and fun than your standard baseball sim but not nearly as simplistic or arcade-y as most Mario sports-based games. Even so, a few important fundamentals have unfortunately been benched.

That’s a Spicy Base-a Ball

Super Sluggers is, at the core, a baseball game that includes the Mario-style minigames, players and power-ups.

It includes a single-player story (really just an elaborate tutorial mode), a necessary and formal Training (aka tutorial) mode, a Minigame mode, Exhibition mode (play 3- to 5-inning games against opponents) and a secondary minigame mode called the Toy Field.

You play with the WiiMote using the motion-sensing capabilities for real-time, motion-accurate bat swinging, pitching and throwing. Faster running (aka dashing) is accomplished by shaking the WiiMote and the sensor is used for aiming to launch Mario franchise objects (turtle shells, banana peals, etc.) at opposing fielders. You can also use the Nunchuck attachment which serves its purpose well for several extra features.

Each of the 40 playable character (plus several color-based alternates) has baseball-esque attributes and a character-specific special fielding moves. Team captains have extra special moves that can be utilized when pitching or batting.

A buddy system also allows for a pair of friendly players, when together, perform a super homerun defying catch or a super speedy infield throw. Pitchers and batters can also charge up for better performance by swinging back the WiiMote and timing the release with on-screen cues.

Yay, He’s-a Safe!

In terms of a Mario sports game, this is surprisingly complex. If you play with just a WiiMote, you might be able to learn the controls in less than an hour thanks to the Tutorial Mode. With the Nunchuck, however, you’ll want to run through each practice session twice so you can actually enjoy playing. With only a WiiMote, for example, the nearest fielder automatically heads toward the ball and you don’t have to worry about runner management. Add the Nunchuck and you can also steal bases, bunt, throw curves/sliders and pick off base leaders.

Although the Nunchuck’s additions help make this less like an arcade game, it creates buttons combination that can be quite a task to coordinate when you are the batter managing multiple base runners with the Nunchuck while using the WiiMote to a) bat c) run faster and c) send runners forward or back to bases d) aim and e) toss shells at opposing fielders.

The game’s buddy system, the object tossing and some in-field Mario-style fields and obstacle are all a bit silly but, if you can learn the controls, you will win many, many games and have a good amount of fun.

And, of course, winning is even more enjoyable when your Mii avatar is on the field.

Is-a the Umpire Blind?

As for the Mario Party-style minigames, they offer some fun and useful elements, such as learning the nuances of pitching by breaking colored glass and perfecting your hitting by landing hits in certain parts of the field. Most, however, are pretty useless and not that much fun.

Is it me or are the Mario princesses getting hotter?

Likewise, some elements keep this from being an entirely enjoyable baseball game. For example, it’s very difficult to tell where your fielders are in relation to where a ball has been hit. The game auto-centers the camera on the ball’s destination and the a small arrow that points to your closest, auto-selected off-screen fielder is not very helpful for in gauging the distance from the ball.

Get caught jostling your WiiMote even the slightest bit and you could find yourself prematurely pitching or readying your bat too early to make a charged hit possible.

The Nunchuck direction control also switches orientation so that you point at the base you want to throw to when on the field but, for base runners, you point to the target runner’s next base (to move the first base runner to second, you point to second base even if when a runner is on second).

Pitching and batting are also a little tricky due to the face-to-face orientation with minimum perspective reference. Following the ball’s shadow is barely useful and, making things more confusing, are the multiple HUDs (heads-up displays), mini icons and hints that crowd the screen (assuming you don’t have a ginormous widescreen TV, of course). Also annoying is that the HUDs flip sides for lefties.

My pettiest complaint is that the background music has an unusually shrill, Ferris wheel style score that repeats ad nauseam. It’s cute and fun for the first few minutes but after that you may want to stuff meatballs in your ears.

It’s a Close-a Call

Complaints aside, Mario Super Sluggers does offer a fair balance of cute and fun Mario style amusements with a bearable baseball game. It’s (thankfully) more complex than the earlier, more simplistic arcade-style sports games, which helps keep it just above an average rating.

Even so, there are still some flaws and this is certainly not a pick-up-and-play-right-away game. You will definitely want to rent or borrow this before you buy just to test your tolerance level, especially if you have a standard shaped TV screen.

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