The Games of Mario Sports Mix (Wii)

The recently released Mario Sports Mix for Wii is a collection of four arcade styled party Mario themed sports games. So in this blog, we’ll take a look at each one. Don’t think of this as a full review, though. Just my general first impressions of the game. I’m so busy right now with other things I don’t have time for a full review, but this’ll do for now, I think.

A lot of the reviews I’ve seen have bashed Mario Sports Mix, but I don’t think it’s THAT bad. It just takes the more “Wii Sports” approach, making the events real easy for everyone to get into, even newcomers. So it makes a great multiplayer party game. Controls are kept real simple and easy to understand, which I like, and nothing is very complex. You can set the CPU players to be incredibly easy, which is great so that even very little kids can enjoy this. But I imagine the Tournament Mode probably gets REAL hard later on. Some people have said they should’ve made each sports event be its own game, and just had them flesh each one out more. But I think they did the smartest thing by including them all in one game. If they did four different Mario sports titles, then people would complain that Nintendo was overdoing it. So I think this was the best solution.

Characters

All the typical Mario stars are here: Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Peach, Daisy, Wario, Waluigi, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Bowser, Bowser Jr., and Toad. That’s actually not as many characters as past sports and kart games, but that’s OK with me. I’m especially glad Toad is playable, as he is my favorite Mario character and the one I always pick in Mario Kart games. And he’s pretty darn good in this game, too! You can also use your Mii characters as well.

Mario Sports Mix was made by Square-Enix for Nintendo, so there are some secret characters you can unlock that are from Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games! This isn’t the first time Square-Enix has made a Mario sports game for Nintendo, as they also did Mario Hoops on DS, and it had secret FF characters and stadiums as well. And it’s also not the first time Mario characters and Dragon Quest characters have been in the same game either, because in Japan, Square-Enix makes a series of Monopoly styled video board games called Itagki Street (not sure if I spelled that right) and one of the games has Mario characters and Dragon Quest monsters in it!

Anyway, according to GameFAQS, the secret characters you can unlock are the Black Mage, White Mage, Cactaur, Moogle, Ninja, and DQ Slime. I really want to unlock those characters, especially the Slime and White Mage, but they sound hard to get. So who knows if I’ll get to them.

Stadiums

There are a bunch of Mario themed stadiums, too. You have your typical Mario indoors stadium, Daisy Garden, a DK jungle raft, Wario Factory, etc. Bowser Jr. Street is kind of neat because if the ball lands on certain spaces to get three in a row, you can get bonuses. Plus, it kind of has a Vegas vibe to it. But I think my favorite stadium is Toad Park. It’s an amusement park level, but circling the field is a go-kart track, so it kind of pays homage to Toad being the best in Mario Kart, too. Some of the fields can be played on in certain sports, but not others.

Anyway, let’s take a look at the four sports games you can play in Mario Sports Mix.

Basketball

It’s like a simplified version of Mario Hoops on DS. Pass and use items by pressing buttons and make baskets and steal balls by shaking the Wii remote. You can run over question blocks to pick up items to use like in Mario Kart, and coins help boost your score when you make a basket (item use and coins is common in all the sports titles here). So yeah, real simple to play. Prior to this game, I never really got into other basketball games aside from Mario Hoops on DS.

Volleyball

You mostly just shake the remote to serve and receive and spike, so it’s especially simple. But even on Easy, the other team can score a few times, so you still have to be on your toes. There’s actually another arcade styled volleyball video game I like better than this, and it was on the GameCube. It was Sega’s Beach Spikers, and it was really fun. I also liked it because you could play as Ulala from Space Channel 5, so you know it couldn’t have been ALL bad, right? 🙂

Dodgeball

I was really looking forward to playing this one, as one of my favorite sports games of all time is Super Dodge Ball on the NES and GBA. I don’t like the Mario version as much since it’s a little slower paced. But the rules are nearly the same, so that’s cool. Controls are a lot like the dodge ball game in Deca Sports, which was also fun.

Hockey

Depending on the field, your characters will either wear ice skates or rollerblades, and the controls really feel like you are on ice or blades. And you use a coin as a puck. I’ve never really gotten into other hockey video games before, and living in Texas, you really don’t play or watch hockey much either. I did go see a Dallas Stars game once. That was fun, but I had trouble understanding some of the rules about where you can shoot from which lines on the field and whatnot. But you don’t have to worry about that in the Mario hockey game. It turned out to be a lot more fun than what I thought it would be, and so now if anyone asks what my favorite hockey video game is, I’ll say “the one in Mario Sports Mix!” I especially appreciate the simpler controls. You just check someone by running into them, and you can even get into fights by shaking the Wii remote!

Party Games

There are also four sports themed multiplayer party mini-games, so let’s look at those as well.

Feed Petey

In this basketball themed mini-game, you must pick up hanging fruit and throw it into hungry Petey Piranha plant’s mouth for points. The problem with this game is waiting for the hanging fruit to drop low enough for you to get it!

Bob-Omb Dodge

For the dodgeball mini-game, you must avoid the exploding bombs and be the last one standing to win. If you time it right, you can either dodge the bombs or bounce them away from you with a spin attack. Not impossible, but it can be pretty hard towards the end.

Smash Skate

In the hockey one, you must knock the other players off the ice with super shots. Very much like a Mario Party game. But it’s really hard, even on the easiest settings, since you go slower when gearing up a power shot.

Harmony Hustle

OK, this volleyball mini-game is freaking awesome. They could’ve made a whole entire game out of this. You must serve and receive balls of your color in time with the music to keep the song going, and really takes teamwork with multiple players. You can tell which ball to hit by watching the shadows of the balls. It’ll be the same color that corresponds to your player. It reminded me of another under the radar music game that I really like: Technic Beat. But I bet most people don’t know about that one.

Most of the songs are from Mario games, but a couple of tunes are from Square. You can play variations of the Chocobo theme song, and even the level has an 8-bit Chocobo running on the floor. I’ve unlocked all the difficulty song modes with the Chocobo theme already! So at least I was able to unlock some FF references! It’s super totally awesome.

Conclusions

So that’s my short general impressions of Mario Sports Mix. In the comments section, tell me what YOUR favorite sports games are. Next time on my blog, I’ll be hopefully talking about Marvel vs. Capcom 3. I preordered it from Capcom directly, so hopefully I’ll get it at launch!

And another update, my mom made it through knee replacement surgery OK and she’s recovering very well. She’ll come home from the hospital on Friday, but we’re not out of the woods yet! Knee surgery patients have to watch out for blood clots and infections, and she still has to go through physical therapy. Plus we have the other knee to do later this year. So please continue to think and pray for us, and thanks for all your prayers and such so far!

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