Mario Super Sluggers (Wii)

Cool Yule Rating: 4.5 stars

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Cool Yule Rating: 4.5 stars

Price: $49.99

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Description: Owners of the Nintendo Wii system already have the game Wii Sports, which includes a baseball game where players can swing their Wii Remotes like a bat, or mimic the delivery of a pitch. However, in Mario Super Sluggers, you get the added benefit of playing baseball with the assembled cast from the Mario series of games, including characters like Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Wario, Donkey Kong, etc.

Like most games with Mario, what starts like an easy day at the ballpark (Princess has some island with a bunch of different stadiums) turns dastardly, as Bowser takes over and forces Mario to gather a team to play a bunch of baseball games. This turns the game more into an adventure game with baseball mixed in, rather than just a baseball game. This was fun, yet annoying – mainly because I had gone through a bunch of the tutorials to learn how to play the baseball game – then when I started the story levels, it took a while to get to the baseball game – you first have to find enough people to play on your team, and in the process of finding them, you basically play the tutorials again. For example, one player will only join your team if you can throw a super-pitch or hit a power hit.

When playing the baseball game itself, the game adds a "Mario" effect, allowing for things like power-ups and other things to disrupt the game. For example, when on offense you can launch bombs and other obstacles to prevent the defense from fielding the ball cleanly. On defense, you can do a super-jump between two fielders (as long as they like each other, so choose your outfield wisely) to prevent a home run from leaving the park. This definitely makes the game more interesting – MLB should check the game out to possibly institute some of these ideas to make the games more fun to watch (just kidding!).

Like a lot of the games for the Wii, this game is much more fun when playing with multiple people – there's something very satisfying about striking out your friends with a 95 mph fastball. As with most of the Mario games, this is well designed and a joy to play. The regular baseball season may be over, but you can play all winter long along with Mario and crew.

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