I don't like baseball. It's conventional nine inning structure as well as the strategically optimal way to play it being drawn out just makes it an absolute chore to watch. It's because of this though that I think it was an absolutely incredible choice for a Mario sports series adaptation and Mario Super Sluggers delivers on most fronts with that.

The area that Mario Super Sluggers really shines is its core gameplay. There are of course all the hallmarks of a Mario Sports game here with captain specific special moves and items that you can throw onto the field to halt the opponent’s progress while you score runs but I think what I appreciate more here are some of the more unique mechanics that can be used by all players. Things like the buddy jump which allows two of your fielders to boost one another up and grab a would-be home run ball or the buddy move that lets you throw a ball to base at the speed of sound to get a runner out, it’s things like these that give the game depth and make it a blast to play. The character roster in this game is expansive and each character has their own strengths and weaknesses, chemistry with other characters, and unique attributes that makes building the perfect team before starting a game feel like a game in and of itself. Perhaps the aspect of gameplay I enjoy the most though are all the unique ballparks to play in. The game has nine stadiums each with their own theme and gimmick, my favorites being Daisy’s stadium which takes place on Daisy Cruiser from Double Dash and will occasionally have a giant squid (Gooper Blooper if you wanna get technical about things) come and tip the ship sideways and Wario’s stadium set in the middle of a city and complete with bursting water grates and a giant golden idol of Wario in a fancy top hat for all to stand and admire. All these aspects add up and turns a sport I find incredibly boring into one that’s really deep and a blast.

Despite having such fun gameplay, in terms of content and unlockables the game is just fine enough. As a kid that didn’t matter, me and my brother would play this game so much to the point of making our own championship brackets in the exhibition mode where we would face off against each other using different teams and have a blast in the process. As an adult with only one functional Wii remote and a shortage of friends who are the right kind of dysfunctional enough to play a game while silly Mario baseball league with me though, there’s just not a lot for single players like me to do here. The main event here is the challenge mode, a story mode of sorts where you explore around the island the game takes place on and its many baseball parks and solve puzzles, recruit teammates, and play mini baseball challenges that test your skills on all the game's various mechanics. I have to commend the ambition here as this kind of thing hadn't been done in any of the prior Mario sports games, but in execution I find this mode kinda lacking if I'm being honest. It only took me around 2-3 hours to 100% the whole thing and no part really posed any significant challenge, least of all the severely anticlimactic final baseball match against Bowser which I won by scoring 10 runs and triggering the mercy rule within the first inning. Apart from this mode there's a handful of really hit or miss minigames and the Toy Field mode which is just not fun at all. There's a load of unlockable characters in the game and a few unlockable stadiums but you get everything naturally by playing through the aforementioned challenge mode so the unlockables here aren't really feel exciting or worth anything.

There was a time where I was absolutely enamored with this game and had it up there with Mario Strikers Charged for one of the best Mario sports games, as it stands now though it's just not that game to me anymore. Growing up means looking at things from your childhood and coming to the realization that some of them weren't good, at least not as good as you remembered and that's kind of how I felt when replaying this game. Mario Super Sluggers is still a game that I enjoy because of it's really fun core gameplay and it's a blast if you can find someone to play it with, but as it stands, I think the most fun I have had and probably will ever have with this game remains in my nostalgic memories.

I was really looking forward to playing Mario Sports Mix again. Like all the other Wii Mario sports games I had this one as a kid but for some reason or another either lost it or gave it to a friend in exchange for one of their games soon after getting it, and therefore don't really remember a lot about the game. After finally having replayed it though I can say in all confidence that this is it, this is the game where Mario sports games lost all their soul.

Instead of focusing in on one sport specifically like all the games in the Mario Sports subseries have before, Mario Sports Mix has four separate sports to play and master being Basketball, Volleyball, Dodgeball, and Hockey. I get that the point of the game was to make it a mix of sports as the title implies but in doing so each sport loses its depth and uniqueness, something that was very present in Mario Sports games past. Each sport has extremely simplistic controls that I learned within the first match and no real in-depth mechanics that you have to master to succeed. Of course there are the Mario sports game staples present here like items, character abilities, and different stadium gimmicks but they feel so toned down here and like they effect the gameplay very little. The simplicity of the gameplay just leads to an experience that is incredibly easy, once you know how to score nothing is stopping you from doing so, especially not the extremely easy to beat CPUs. Another problem that this leads to is each individual match feeling too long. In the sports that rely on clocks to end (Hockey and Basketball) it felt like said clock was going in slow motion and it only gets worse once you realize that every second you're scoring is another second that the clock isn't running, and because the game is super easy and the CPU's not at all challenging you'll be scoring a lot. In Volleyball there's no clock but you are required to get a whopping 15 points to win a set and you have to win 2 sets to win the match, combine that with the slow gameplay of the sport and it's not very fun either. This led to Dodgeball being my favorite sport of the bunch here as it's the only one where you're in control of the game's pace, instead of a clock the game relies on life bars and every time you successfully hit an opponent with the ball their life bar depletes and it goes until you've fully defeated both your opponent's life bars, you still have to do two sets of this but it's much quicker than the other sports.

In terms of content and unlockables the game certainly delivers, but I'd argue not in a good way. Each sport has three championship cups to go through, complete one and you unlock the next one, complete the final match of the final cup and you get the grand trophy for it. Upon getting all four grand trophies for all the sports you'll be treated to a special final boss fight against the Behemoth, a creature that looks ripped straight out of a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest game and due in large part to Square Enix's co-development on this game. The boss fight incorporates moves from all of the specific sports and is actually a bit difficult, by that I mean I still beat it first try like everything else in this game, but it had me low on health a few times. Once you complete that you unlock another sport of sorts being the "Sports Mix" mode. Sports mix takes the tournament structure and just has you play a random sport for each match, where the CPUs are a little noticeably harder but that's about the only difference. I'd like to say this mode was an interesting and valid inclusion but really, it's just more padding to pad out an already heavily padded game. That's not all though because after you beat all the cups in each sport you unlock a hard mode for each of them, which surprise surprise, is once again only slightly harder and just more padding. Apart from the tournament mode there's one minigame for each sport but I didn't find these to be all that fun either if I'm being honest. And then there's the unlock system, which is quite frankly, just a mess all around. In order to unlock things you have to reenter a tournament you've already completed and look for secret paths on the map screen between matches, it's almost completely random if a secret path will appear after you win a match and it's also random whether a hidden character will appear along that path once you do get on it or of you'll even be on the right path to get that character at all because there are several different paths. Because all of this is random, I found myself constantly restarting tournaments to see if I got lucky that time and it was just exhausting and unsatisfying to complete. On top of this when you finally do unlock something it's only for the specific sport you're playing, meaning you have to repeat this arduous process 3 more times which is exactly where I said screw this and gave up on the game. The game has content in spades but none of it is meaningful or fun to complete, just tedious and frustrating.

Finally, I come to the game's presentation, and it's probably the most unlikable aspect of the whole thing to me. In sharp contrast to literally every other Mario Sports game up to this point, Mario Sports Mix is just so bland and generic. Where other games had fun and hype intro cutscenes Mario Sports Mix has a cutscene of Mario and friends playing the game's sports in a plain white void, where other games had various fun victory or loss animations with personality Mario Sports Mix has one very basic animation for each character when they score a point, where other games had stylish UI and music that matched the tone of the game perfectly Mario Sports Mix has sterile UI and so-so music, and the list goes on. Mario Sports Mix took the genuine fun out of these game's personality and replaced it with artificial fun, Mario isn't here playing these four sports because he wants to be he's here because he's contractually obligated to be.

Maybe I was wrong to look forward to replaying this game, it's gameplay was much worse than I remembered it being, the loads of content it offers isn't as meaningful to and adult with limited time as it was to a kid with unlimited time, getting all the unlockable is much more of a tedious process than a fun one, and overall, the style just feels like the heart is gone. The game can still be kind of fun on a base level, but for the miserable process of completing it and the bad precedent it set for future Mario Sports games, I can't in good conscious call this a good game anymore.

It was my intention to play this game for my marathon (I mean honestly does anyone actually play this game for any other reason than pure obligation?) but because my shitty Wii U disc reader refuses to recognize the completey spotless disc I guess I have to skip it now. I know I'm dodging a bullet here, but honestly I can't help but be a bit dissapointed tbh, if Nintendo was actually good at preserving their games, even the bad ones, I wouldn't have had to skip another game on this marathon like this.

Looking back now, I really, truly understand why Nintendo didn't make a new Mario Kart on Switch and instead opted to simply port the one from the previous gen and make it better, because honestly, how do you even begin to try and top Mario Kart 8? The pure levels of fun, innovation, and creativity present in this one silly Mario Kart game are insane and more than other games could ever even dream of. If Mario Kart 8 was on the brink of perfection, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was the push that got it there.

Starting out with the gameplay, it's the same old tried and true kart racing formula that's worked for the series for many years now, only this time with a few notable inclusions that refine it to feel the best it ever has. The customizable vehicle parts system from Mario Kart 7 returns here and it works tremendously, there's so many interestingly designed vehicles and so many combinations to try. Experimenting with different combinations till you find the one that's just right for you can be a fun process and switching it up every once in a while to try a different playstyle or to impose a challenge upon yourself can be fun too. Then there's the game's main new feature, the anti-gravity racing. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's tracks almost all have an element of anti-gravity infused into them, allowing you to drive on walls or ceilings of the tracks you're racing on which ultimately just leads to some of the most inspired track designs in the series. Some of my absolute favorite tracks in the entire series originate from this game and its legendary track design, such as Mount Wario, Toad Harbor, Wild Woods, Big Blue, and Shy Guy Falls just to name a few. The game is no slouch in its retro track selection either, choosing just the right amount of fan favorites as well as left field picks that got remakes that completely redeemed them. The base track selection is the biggest in the series as well and yet never at any point feels like it values quantity over quality, each track has the same expert amount of care and details put into it and that's what really sets this game apart.

In terms of content there's nothing really different from any other Mario Kart game here, but when the base gameplay is as fun and distinct as it is, I'd argue that there doesn't really need to be. The main mode is of course Grand Prix mode and there certainly is a lot to tackle here. There are 12 cups worth of races in the base roster of the game (being doubled entirely in the Booster Course Pass but I'll get there momentarily) which means you'll have a lot to do if you want to master them all over the game's five CCs, surprisingly though this process never felt tiresome or drawn out as it might seem to be (I should note that in this playthrough, I didn't go through and do all of this, as I had already done so and didn't feel like starting my file over again, I instead just opted to playthrough every course in the game once and call it a playthrough). The game combines the 50, 100, and 150 CC modes progress into one, meaning if you get the gold trophy on one cup's CC, you get it for all the corresponding CCs as well, meaning you don't have to tediously go through each grand prix three times and have roughly the same experience each time. The other two CCs are Mirror mode and 200cc. Mirror mode, being a staple of the series at this point, has you race through the courses on 150cc just flipped, so it does feel kind of similar but overall offers enough of a different experience to justify its existence I guess. The main event here though is clearly 200cc. 200cc is a blisteringly fast game mode that really captures the chaotic and fun vibes of Mario Kart perfectly. It made me not even care that I was completing the same tracks over again for the third time because the adrenaline pumping speeds made it a blast to play through. Apart from this there's also the online mode, which surprisingly enough for NSO, I've found to work pretty darn well. The online mode places you in a lobby with other players and allows you to choose between three different course selections or just choose random if you don't like any of the selections and honestly I've always been a fan of this system. In Mario Karts past the games online modes would allow you to choose whatever course from the roster that you want, the only problem being that everyone would always choose the same few fan favorite courses and there would be no variety, this system however lends itself to variety every time you play the game and lets you see more of the courses while playing online with people around your skill level and it's honestly just refreshing to see it work so well. In terms of unlockables Mario Kart 8 Deluxe takes a different approach than any other Mario Kart game before it. The game has every character unlocked already, which some might see as a bit of a bummer, and even I'll admit it does take a little bit of the excitement out of things but its also just kind of convenient at the end of the day. Apart from that the only other unlockables you get are car parts which you get by collecting coins in races and hitting certain milestones. While this is a bit disappointing as it doesn't really test your skill at the game, I can see understand why they did it and it doesn't bother me that much.

Finally I get to my last talking point about this game, being it's pretty great DLC in the form of the Booster Course pass. The Booster Course pass took the number of cups from the base game and doubled it in a massive expansion that's main goal was to bring back mostly fan favorite retro tracks from the series' past as well as sprinkling in some surprises like a few entirely new tracks, new characters, and extra game customization modes to really make this game the ultimate Mario Kart. This happened over the course of six waves of DLC, each introducing two new cups worth of tracks to the mix spaced a few months apart. This made the release of each new wave an event to look forward to and I have plenty of fond memories of waking up in the morning and seeing the reveal trailer on Nintendo's YouTube page of what 8 new courses would be in the next wave of DLC, it was a really exciting time to be a Mario Kart fan and one that I'm glad I got to experience as it happened.

Overall, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is just the definitive Mario Kart experience in every way and definitely one that has earned its great reputation and sales figures. The game achieves nearly everything it sets out to do by being just pure unadulterated fun and having so many good ideas that it doesn't know what to do with them. The game's longevity is a testament to its staying power and even in a few years when we have the next Mario Kart in hand (hopefully) I'll still always look back fondly and appreciate everything that this near perfect video game did for the series.

I had never actually played Mario Tennis Aces before now, but because of my short experiences with the other two Mario sports games on Switch and just the way that Nintendo currently makes their multiplayer party games like this nowadays, I wasn't really looking forward to it. As my rating would suggest however, Mario Tennis Aces was actually a really pleasant surprise of a game to me.

Starting with the gameplay, I'd say it's the best that Mario Tennis has ever been. There's a lot of variety in the kinds of basic shots you can do and each shot feels like it has a specific use as compared to another. Then there's the focus bar which builds naturally throughout the match and is used for several things being zone speed, zone shots, and special shot. Zone speed allows you to slow down time and move to where the ball is, it actively and pretty quickly depletes your focus bar as you use it though, so you have to be deliberate when you use it. Zone shots are able to be used when your bar is around a third of the way full and allow you to zoom in and use the gyro on the Switch to controller to aim directly where you want the ball to go, this is good for taking advantage of the spots on the court your opponent isn't covering and getting a point. Specials shots are nearly the same as zone shots, but you can activate them any time before you hit the ball and your gauge has to be completely full to do so, they do make the ball move much faster and are for the opponent to block however so there is reason to use them. Another unique mechanic in this game is the tennis racket durability system. Instead of being completely at your opponent's mercy when they use a zone or special shot you have the ability to block these by hitting the ball at the right time. The timing on this block is really strict and if you swing to hit the ball too early your rackets durability will go down, missing the timing like this three times will result in your racket breaking and the opponent getting an easy score because of it, this means that you always want to be intentional with how you're blocking shots like these otherwise it'll be detrimental to your chances of winning. In fact, the games and abundance of options makes it really stand out in the sea of Mario sports games, the depth when all of these skills are combined in a match is surprising and leads to matches that never feel like they play out the same way. The character roster in this game is also huge, you have your mainstays like Mario, Luigi and Peach but then you have the out there picks that I can't help but love like Spike, Fire Piranha Plant (no idea why it had to be the fire variety specifically but it's more random that way and therefore funny) and my beloved, Chain Chomp. If I had to say a weakest point of the gameplay though it'd probably be the tennis courts themselves. A lot of these are just basic tennis courts with no gimmicks but the ones that do have gimmicks don't really feel all that standout, this isn't a big complaint though as the gameplay is deep and fun enough to make up for the lack of outside factors effecting it.

I'd say the biggest thing that brings this game down though is its content or lack thereof. Like the other Mario tennis games there is a tournament mode here but unlike the other tournament modes (and to my great relief) that isn't the main single player mode here, that role is filled by the adventure mode. Adventure mode sees Mario hunting down five power stones across the island that this game takes place on in order to stop an evil sentient tennis racket that has possessed Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi, and I mean if that isn't peak storytelling, I don't know what is. This takes place across a top down large interconnected world map with challenges and different areas along the way. What was refreshing about this was that not everything was just a simple tennis match, there were tutorials, minigames, and unique boss fights along the way that were actually pretty fun and taught you the mechanics of the game in a way that felt natural. For the most part this mode was great, but my main complaint is that it was over just as it was getting started, to put it in perspective I started this today and finished it within 3 hours. Another minor gripe is that you have to play as Mario the whole time (except for a one doubles match where you play as Peach and Daisy), I would've appreciated a system that allowed you to recruit characters and change into them as you go but unfortunately that just wasn't the case, I'm sorry Chain Chomp, you'll get your spot in the sunlight one day. Apart from this there's all the other modes you'd expect in a game like this, free play, ring shit, and of course tournament mode but that's about it. A reason for this game being light on content is that this was the beginning of the wi-fi era of these games, meaning that the Nintendo would focus on pushing you to play online to get your money's worth here rather than actually filling the game with super meaningful content like in Mario sports games past, it's a bad excuse but there's nothing to be done about it.

Overall, I'd say I had a surprisingly good time with Mario Tennis Aces. The core gameplay is really deep and fun to master and the adventure mode, though short, was pretty good. It might be light on single player content and the online might be dead empty now, but I still had a decent amount of fun with the game for what it is.

After Mario Tennis Aces proved my assumptions about the Switch Mario Sports games being generic and middling in their gameplay, I was kind of excited to play through Mario Golf Super Rush and see if it was any good, only to find out that my assumptions were true all along and Mario Tennis Aces is just an outlier. Now yes, overall I'd still say that Mario Golf Super Rush is a good game at the very least but there are several aspects that really hold it back from being anything more than that in my eyes.

The gameplay here is easily my biggest problem with the game. Instead of focusing on just making really fun and deep golf mechanics like Toadstool Tour did, the developers decided to tone things down in that area and instead decided to focus on the new feature of running to your ball after you shoot it. This feature is used throughout 90% of the game modes and it's really tedious as opposed to fun, you can use sprint to get to your ball but you have a stamina bar that runs out really fast, so you end up kinda just walking to it while you wait for your bar to replenish. I found this new feature to be incredibly tedious and the antithesis of fun, it's almost like previous games in the series left this out because they knew it wouldn't be fun. The base game courses here are kinda what you'd expect from these games, the courses added in free updates though are really fun to playthrough though, my favorite being the New Donk City course which feels straight pulled from Super Mario Odyssey and works surprisingly well as a golf course. And then the character selection here is also great, having all the characters you'd expect and some out there ones that are fun to see like King Bob-Omb and Ninji. As much as I enjoy the roster inclusions though, the playstyles of each character feel very much one in the same here and there isn't much reason to choose one character over another besides personal preference.

In terms of content there is quite a lot here surprisingly, but none of it is all that good. The main single player mode is Adventure mode, which again is refreshing to see rather than just another tournament mode where you play through all the courses in order to win. Adventure mode sees you taking control of your Mii character running around an oversold and completing golf challenges and tournaments on each of the game's various courses. Unlike Mario Tennis Aces before it however, Mario Golf Super Rush plays things incredibly straight with its story mode, no deep story, unique minigames and much fewer unique boss fights (though there are a few), it's just the generic and easy kind of adventure mode that you'd expect from one of these games and it's over before you know it. Apart from that there's the online mode (which seeing as this game came out in 2021 and was forgotten about in a few weeks is of course now mostly dead), the solo challenge mode which offers a few more challenges to hone your skills at the game but really isn't anything more substantial than filler here, and the basic golf mode and that's it.

With its removal of meaningful depth in favor of tedious gameplay mechanics and lack of substantial content and charm I cannot say that I found Mario Golf Super Rush to be a great game, still though it's courses and basic golf gameplay are slightly fun enough to me saying its entirely bad either. I really wanted to like Mario Super Rush more than this, I wanted to believe that Nintendo still can make really fun Mario Sports games like they used to, but with its mediocre showing and the incredibly disappointing Mario Sports game that I know comes right after it I cannot in good conscious believe that they can.

I still remember the exact moment that this game was revealed, I was ecstatic. Nintendo hadn't forgotten about Mario Strikers after all! They knew what we wanted and were gonna give it to us, and to make things better it was coming out in just a few months! I couldn't have been more clueless. Mario Strikers Battle League is to this day the most disappointing game that I have ever played and has little to no redeeming qualities.

Of all the aspects to dislike about this game that gameplay is the one that I hate the least, granted that means I still hate it quite a lot but it's not as bad as the rest of what makes this game bad. The general gameplay here feels like they completely forgot how to make a Mario Strikers game, because it just straight up doesn't have the balance or fun of those games at all. The captain and sidekick system are completely gone, now there's just a roster of like 16 or so Mario characters to choose from, none of which are all that surprising to see present or different in ways that makes them feel better. What's even stranger about this is that you can break all continuity and just choose four of the same character to fill your team, so if you want four Bowsers or four DKs you can have it, and nobody will say a thing. It's like if in real soccer four Messi's walked onto the field for a game, you'd think that would be bizarre and pretty unfair, but it's done completely straight faced here and it just shows that they really put no thought into this game at all. The way items are handled is really bad here as well, instead of the game giving them out to a team that fills the requirements to earn one in the situation, the game just drops random item blocks on the field from time to time. If the current match is at a neutral state an item block that anyone can grab will drop, if one team is at even a slight disadvantage though the game will drop team specific item blocks that only the disadvantaged team can get and will continue to do so extremely frequently until that team gets its shit together. Another feature done for the worse here is the Hyper Strikes, this game's equivalent of the captain specific special shots from the previous games. In this game you can no longer pop one of these whenever you want, you have to wait for a Strike Orb to appear on the field, grab it and then you'll have around 30 seconds to pull off a Hyper Strike. Pulling off a hyper strike is insanely easy, given that you get to a spot on the field with ample distance between you and your opponents all you have to do is press "A" twice on a meter that determines the shot's accuracy, if you press the button twice while on the smallest blue section your shot will go in no matter what and score you two points instead of one, the problem is that this timing is incredibly easy to hit leading to virtually no challenge when it comes to these other than finding a safe spot to use them. The fact that you can't use them whenever you want though and that any character on the field can use them, rather than just the captain, makes them quite useless in the long run. These kinds of shots were so useful in the other games because they were a risk and reward type scenario to use helpful for tying the game when you got desperately behind or pulling farther ahead, here they just show up to infrequently to strategize around and to be considered any kinds of useful.

Like I've already mentioned, I was extremely hyped for this game before it came out and bought it Day 1, I remember coming home and playing like 2 to 3 hours of the main tournament mode before inevitably getting bored and putting it down, hoping I'd never have to play it again. What's funny is if I had only played a like 2 more hours of the tournament mode I would have seen all that the game has and ever would have to offer in terms of content. Mario Strikers Battle League is easily the most barren and worthless Mario Sports game in terms of content and surprisingly enough it wears that on its sleeve unashamedly. I am not joking when I say that literally all there is to do in this game is the tournament mode, which consists of six tournament cups, each having a four-match bracket within it and that's all. Now there is of course also the online mode that Nintendo was clearly putting all their stock into when making this game but clearly after seeing how bad this game is everyone who bought it as a whole decided to forego the online and move on with their lives and I don't blame them. This is quite honestly one of the lightest games in terms of content that I've ever seen and it's absolutely shameful, then again perhaps I should thank it because if there were more content here I'd be forced to play this game longer.

Finally, we get to the most egregious aspect of Battle League, the presentation. I loved the style of the other two Strikers games and have already gone on in lengths about that in the reviews I've done for them, so you can imagine my distaste when I'm presented with a game that throws all that out the window. Battle League attempts to copy the former games' style visually and musically in some places but completely misses the point of it but toning things down and not allowing the characters to be unhinged like they were in the previous games. Instead of actually charming and funny win/lose animations like we got in the previous game we instead get the most homogenized cutscenes of Mario characters doing typical Mario character things that fit Nintendo's evergreen vision for them rather than one that makes them more fun and interesting because God forbid these characters be interesting. And it's not just the characters either, the stadiums are no longer fun or different instead just being basic stadiums with themed backsplashes that do nothing but change the color of the grass, the UI is abysmal and boring to look at, and the music tries so hard to be crowd-pleasing only to be the most forgettable few notes repeated that I've ever heard. It's because of this game that this series that I loved has lost its soul and Nintendo refuses to let it go and find it again.

I can say in confidence that Mario Strikers Battle League is the both the worst Mario Sports game and just one of the worst games I have ever played in general. It is a spit in the face to the legacy of Mario Sports games and those like me who grew up enjoying them and now that I have finished it, I am glad I will never have to play it again.