GBAtemp Recommends #113: Super Mario Strikers
Welcome to the 112th issue of the GBAtemp Recommends Revival Project! This project is a revival of our once-weekly feature where we share our favorite games and applications with you. The titles we recommend may be "old school" games, a piece of Homebrew, a ROM hack, sleeper hits, an application, etc, but one thing's for certain, we think they are fantastic and deserve your attention!
Nintendo fans, especially those of Super Mario, are probably aware of the many Mario Sports titles that have released through the years. Ranging from tennis, to golf, to baseball, and even Olympic competition, Mario has seen himself trying out many different sports in all these spinoff games. For today’s feature, we’ll be taking a little trip back to the year 2005, back to when the GameCube was soon to be replaced by the Nintendo Revolution, when online gaming was in its infancy, and back when sports games in general were at their peak. Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, Mario Power Tennis, and Mario Superstar Baseball had all been recently released, and were doing quite well in terms of sales. Then, thanks to developer Next Level Games, we were graced with one final Mario Sports game on the GameCube. Let’s get our cleats laced up and ready to go, because today we’ll be talking about Super Mario Strikers!
From the moment you start the game, you can tell that Super Mario Strikers (Or for our European friends, Mario Smash Football) is going to be something unique. There’s a clear personality to this game that the other titles lack, which is evident even in the menus. This time, Mario and Co. find themselves competing to be the best at soccer, and it seems the residents of the Mushroom Kingdom really want that championship trophy, because everyone seems to be a bit intense this time around. This isn’t just regular soccer; this is soccer with the intensity taken up to eleven. Each of the 9 playable characters you can choose from all have a bit of an attitude, from angrily growling at their foes during the selection screen, to running onto the soccer pitch to glare their opponents right in the eye and taunt them before the match. While this kind of tone is totally surreal for a Mario game, it fits perfectly here. This game is rough. Not in terms of quality, though, I mean this in terms of pure brutality. Strikers puts us against our favorite, lovable characters, like Mario, DK, Yoshi, and even some cute Koopas and Birdos, too. And as we play, we are to body check them, slam them into electric fences and watch them be electrocuted, trip them up, and do a whole host of destructive things towards them. You’re encouraged to not follow typical rules and just go for the most effective method of taking out the enemy team.
In terms of gameplay, Strikers has a very fast paced arcadey feel to it. It’s all very simple, but with how chaotic gameplay gets, a simple gameplay style is absolutely perfect for this. All the basics for a typical soccer game are here; you can pass the ball to your teammates, dodge incoming attacks, slide in order to steal the ball, or use a vicious tackle which will utterly take down whoever’s currently in possession of the ball. And of course, you can make attempts on scoring a goal with regular shots, charge shots, or if you’re one of the main team captains, a ridiculous Super Shot, which if pulled off correctly can net you 2 goals in 1!
As opposed to more serious soccer titles, Strikers really doesn’t have any rules. Each match is just a glorious uninterrupted mess of hilarity and fun. If you get a little too trigger-happy with your tackle takedowns, however, and start going after opponents who don’t have possession of the ball, the opposing team will be rewarded with classic Mario items, such as bomb-ombs, shells, bananas, and more. This multiplies the frenetic madness tenfold, making things even more entertaining.
The graphics are bright and colorful, and still hold up to this day. There’s nothing complex or amazing going on visually, but the game looks fine, and manages to be pleasing to look at, even when there’s dozens of things happening on-screen at once. The soundtrack isn’t very memorable, but offers some intense sounding tunes that fit in well with the early 00’s punk attitude the game clearly has.
Super Mario Strikers is perhaps one of the best sports titles out there, and is an incredible blast to play with multiple friends. With an easy-to-learn control scheme and hilarious sense of destructive fun, you should definitely check this one out the next time you set up your GameCube.
Genre: Sports/Soccer
Release Year: 2005
Developer: Next Level Games
Published by: Nintendo
Average Playtime: 5 hours
Released for: GameCube
If you enjoyed this week's edition of GBAtemp Recommends! Please leave a comment in the thread. This helps us monitor feedback and ensures we keep posting these articles in the future! If you would like to see the original archive of our previous entries, you can look at our archived content here.
Nintendo fans, especially those of Super Mario, are probably aware of the many Mario Sports titles that have released through the years. Ranging from tennis, to golf, to baseball, and even Olympic competition, Mario has seen himself trying out many different sports in all these spinoff games. For today’s feature, we’ll be taking a little trip back to the year 2005, back to when the GameCube was soon to be replaced by the Nintendo Revolution, when online gaming was in its infancy, and back when sports games in general were at their peak. Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, Mario Power Tennis, and Mario Superstar Baseball had all been recently released, and were doing quite well in terms of sales. Then, thanks to developer Next Level Games, we were graced with one final Mario Sports game on the GameCube. Let’s get our cleats laced up and ready to go, because today we’ll be talking about Super Mario Strikers!
In terms of gameplay, Strikers has a very fast paced arcadey feel to it. It’s all very simple, but with how chaotic gameplay gets, a simple gameplay style is absolutely perfect for this. All the basics for a typical soccer game are here; you can pass the ball to your teammates, dodge incoming attacks, slide in order to steal the ball, or use a vicious tackle which will utterly take down whoever’s currently in possession of the ball. And of course, you can make attempts on scoring a goal with regular shots, charge shots, or if you’re one of the main team captains, a ridiculous Super Shot, which if pulled off correctly can net you 2 goals in 1!
The graphics are bright and colorful, and still hold up to this day. There’s nothing complex or amazing going on visually, but the game looks fine, and manages to be pleasing to look at, even when there’s dozens of things happening on-screen at once. The soundtrack isn’t very memorable, but offers some intense sounding tunes that fit in well with the early 00’s punk attitude the game clearly has.
Super Mario Strikers is perhaps one of the best sports titles out there, and is an incredible blast to play with multiple friends. With an easy-to-learn control scheme and hilarious sense of destructive fun, you should definitely check this one out the next time you set up your GameCube.
Genre: Sports/Soccer
Release Year: 2005
Developer: Next Level Games
Published by: Nintendo
Average Playtime: 5 hours
Released for: GameCube
If you enjoyed this week's edition of GBAtemp Recommends! Please leave a comment in the thread. This helps us monitor feedback and ensures we keep posting these articles in the future! If you would like to see the original archive of our previous entries, you can look at our archived content here.
