Mario... Plumber, Princess Savior, Soccer Player....

Mario does so many things. Not all of it is done well, but still, he does a lot. I guess Nintendo decided their flagship series needed to break into sports, so they’ve released a Mario flavored game for everything from Golf to Baseball. Mario even appeared in a serious Basketball game. With the number of recognizable sports diminishing, Mario had to break into Soccer at some point. Well, Super Mario Strikers offers almost all the fun of an EA soccer title, but with the Mario brand of antics.

The game plays just like your usual bit of soccer. You can pass, shoot, and lob pass/shoot. Control is simple. Point in the direction you wish to run, and your character runs that way. Not, here’s the key. Like other Mario flavored sports, there are antics that you can use to your advantage. The most noticeable is the power shot. This is like the power return in Mario Tennis. Essentially you hit the A button and hold it for a second to charge up the kick. You can sometimes plow through the goal keeper with a power shot. Mostly, these are just nice ways to get a hard shot off, but they don’t improve your chance of scoring as much. Like most sports games (hockey, soccer, lacrosse, etc.), scoring is done through teamwork and coordination. As such, Super Mario Strikers allows for quick passing and the ability to set up your next move before you get the ball. This works to your advantage because you can do a touch pass instead of having to wait until the pass is completed and the ball held for a moment or two before you can pass to the next teammate. This allows you to set up a series of passes leading to a shot which can confuse the AI’s goal keeper.

Besides one touch passing and shots, the rest of the control works fairly well. It’s your typical dribble, pass, and shoot model for soccer. In other words, very easy to play. The only divergence from normal soccer is the deke system. Dekes make the character swing to one side with the ball. In a 1on1, these are used to confuse the goal keeper as to which direction the shot is coming from. Well, their deke system is confusing to me. When you deke, your character makes a huge swing to one side. The control for deking seemed to require some refining since my character would always deke in a direction I didn’t want them to. In addition to that, recovery from a deke didn’t seem to work well. It seems they wanted you to shoot after a deke. Other miscellaneous features included a turbo run. Like most arcade soccer games, this allows players to get that extra little boost to chase the guy with the ball. Pretty much, it’s standard soccer at the core.

Where Super Mario Strikers takes a divergence is with the standard antics Nintendo applies to “Mario-ize” everything. Somehow, the refs allow Mario and team to carry turtle shells, banana peals, and other typical Mario items onto the field. You can throw these at your opponents to hinder their ability to score. Like always, the Red Turtle Shells home in on target, and the Green Turtle Shells just fly straight. There are several other items to play with, but the most common are either Turtle Shells or banana peals. Adding to the chaos, at key points in the game, Bowser will step onto the field and growl while spewing fire. I’m not sure of the point of this, but it sure is annoying. When Bowser’s on the field, you need to avoid his flames and attacks while trying to score.

There are 9 teams available in Super Mario Strikers. Most of the common Mario characters appear. Oddly enough, although Daisy makes her appearance as a team captain, Peach decided to sit this one out. Not surprising, since I find Peach much more annoying in other games. Basically, your core Mario characters are your team captains. Although they each are supposed to have character specific attributes, I don’t find this to make a difference at all. After picking your captain, you can choose between 4 sets of teams. There are mushroom people (like Toad), Hammer Brothers, Birdos (a weird looking dinosaur with a mouth that shoots rocks), and Koopas (or Turtles). Although they tell you that there’s a difference between the optional teams, at the end of the day, I found no difference besides appearance.

When you first start the game, you have 8 teams available to you. The 9th team is unlocked only by completing the super tournament mode (which must be unlocked by completing the original tournament mode). Each team captain has their own winning and pre-game animations. These seem like more of a playful fighting game than a soccer match as they try to intimidate their opponent with some inane gesture. The victory animations can be humorous. I mostly note Daisy’s as she licks her finger then touches her rear and makes the sizzling sound (like to say, “I’m hot”). In doing this, she burns her finger. It’s somewhat humorous to see that take on an old antic. Other than the taunts, your team captain just serves to adjust the color of your team’s uniforms. Luigi gets the green team, Mario the red team, and so on. Honestly, they should have done a better job of implementing the captain system or allowed players to pick from a myriad of characters from all across the Mario franchise to add to the team. But, I guess Nintendo wanted to keep it simple.

The game presents an almost authentic soccer experience. First off, the characters are wonderfully rendered. Big deal… since Nintendo has proven that they can do beautiful graphics with their GameCube’s power. It basically has the same cartoony quality that is associated with every Mario game. What makes this feel like soccer is the usage of camera shots. The normal game is played from your standard (I’d go as far as to say, Old School NES) side view. Nothing dynamic at all here, despite the fact the field is fully rendered in 3D. When you score, the dynamic nature of the 3D engine comes into play. You receive a video playback of the shot that uses great camera work to intensify what originally seemed like a simple turn of events. Couple this with an over excitable announcer yelling “GOAL!”, and you have a Mario-ized version of South American soccer without the riots. Even the roar of the crowd helps the authenticity of the game.

Well, Super Mario Strikers is a great game if you don’t want a real soccer title. It is fun and does quite a bit. But, because it lacks the create-a-player as well as several other aspects gamers have come to expect from more serious sports titles, this is probably not the game to get unless you’re catering to your kids. Super Mario Strikers does everything any soccer game would do, but just doesn’t do anything more. Because this game is fun, I do RECOMMEND it. Quick action and loads of fun, but aside from the Mario antics, it’s nothing that EA couldn’t give you in one of their FIFA titles.