This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Aaron Thomas.

With Mario starring in seemingly every sport out there, it’s no wonder that he hasn’t had the time for a follow-up to Mario Sunshine. His latest foray into sports is in Mario Superstar Baseball from Namco. Much like Mario’s other sports titles, it’s easy to pick up and play, but unlike the previous Mario sports titles, it’s not a great game that will occupy hours of your time. It can be fun for a few hours, or when played against friends, but overall it’s underwhelming in many ways. 

Mario Superstar Baseball has a standard array of gameplay options. You can play a quick game against a friend, or you can take on three buddies in some minigames. These are simple games like homerun derby, and others that involve base running and pitching. They’re fun for a little while, but they’re hindered by the game’s poor controls, which will be discussed later. The meat of the gameplay is in the story mode, where you must defeat teams led by Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Wario, and others – recruit beaten players, and then take on Bowser.

Many people feel that baseball games have gotten too complex, or they feel the games take to long. Anyone who falls into that category will enjoy the simple gameplay mechanics and the short (usually three or five) innings of a full game. Obviously if you’re into stats and realism, this isn’t the game for you, but Mario Baseball makes no pretense of being a realistic baseball experience. The action is viewed from an elevated point of view behind the plate; much like 8-bit games of the olden days. Hitting is done via the A button, and all you’ve got to do is figure out if the pitch is inside or out of the line, move your batter and time your swing properly. Pitching is just as simple, with A throwing the ball, with control being done after the ball is released.

There are over 50 characters from the Mario universe in the game including Mario, Wario, Luigi, Goomba, Koopa, Donkey Kong and more. As they do in Mario Kart, they all have their own unique strengths, animations and personalities - Wario will turn his back and tap his backside a few times to taunt the other team, and Mario will perform his trademark jump after a big win. If anything, there are too many characters, as you’ll be stuck with some of the lesser (pretty much anything from Mario Sunshine) characters for quite a while. It’s also a stretch to see Petey Piranha “standing” at the plate trying to hit a ball with one of his leaves.

The game’s stadiums are a mixed-bag. Along the way you’ll play in a traditional stadium like Mario’s, as well as parks that borrow themes from other Nintendo franchises. The Donkey Kong stadium has a jungle theme, and even a moat that runs along the base paths, while Wario’s stadium is outside his castle, with chain chomps in the outfield. The stadiums become ‘hit or miss’, however, when you consider all the various hazards and quirks they feature. It’s cool at first to see Chain Chomps or Piranha Plants in the outfield, but after getting hosed by them knocking balls away from you, or swatting your hits foul, they get a little frustrating.

The visuals are right on par with all the other Mario-themed games. If you’ve seen Mario Kart, Mario Strikers, or Mario Tennis, you know exactly what to expect from Mario Baseball’s graphics. They are bright and colorful, with lots of personality, but they won’t win any awards from a technical standpoint, as they are hardly pushing the system.

The music is primarily remixed tracks from classic Nintendo themes, which is never a bad thing. It’s virtually impossible to tell the difference between the voice samples in this game and Mario Kart, so if you’ve played that, you know what you’re getting here.

Mario Superstar Baseball’s biggest problem is that it’s just not a whole lot of fun. Everything about the game feels sluggish. It’s a chore to navigate menus, find challenges, run the bases, throw the ball, field, and upgrade your team. The whole concept of impressing players to get them on your team is interesting, but because you don’t get them unless you win, you end up playing games over and over because you couldn’t score runs with your pathetic team. Which leads me to the next problem; a lack of scoring. For an arcade-style game, there is a dearth of scoring. Sure it’s fun to manufacture runs here and there, but that’s not why people are playing Mario Baseball. If it’s possible to go through the first ten games without hitting a homer (like I did), then the balance needs to be adjusted.

A huge problem with Mario Baseball is its poor controls. The biggest issues are running the bases and fielding, but even hitting has its problems. First off, charging your hitter up before the pitch by holding down the A button is incredibly pointless. It seems to do little more than cause fly-outs, and it’s hard to do if you’re playing against someone that pitches quickly. It’s actually not hard in the sense that pushing the A button is difficult, but if you swing and miss, your batter’s animation takes a long time and doesn’t give you ample opportunity to adjust your position at the plate and charge up before the pitch comes. Hitting is also frustrating because you’ll swing through balls that you know that you hit. Even if you have perfect timing and the ball lined up just right, lots of times you’ll just swing and miss. It feels like the developers had to find some way to make people miss the ball every once in a while, so instead of making a greater difference between pitch speeds or making the ball break more, they decided to make the ball go right through the bat. The “special” pitches are another cheap way that the game uses to get you out. For example, Yoshi has a pitch that turns into an egg and bounces on the ground, often ending up two feet away from the plate, but even if you don’t swing at it, the pitch is called a strike. That’s called “cheap” and it’s not fun.

Fielding is a victim of poor camera angles and slow player speeds. As soon as the ball is hit, the camera zooms out, but it does it so quickly that you’ll have trouble following the ball and figuring our what player you are controlling. A sharply hit ball up the middle almost always gets through because you never know if you are going to get the second baseman or the shortstop – robbing you of valuable time to get to the ball. Throws are also weak and sluggish – like something out of R.B.I. Baseball on the NES.

Base running is an absolute mess. The runners are slow, and the radar on screen doesn’t accurately reflect your position on the base paths. Runners that look like they’re just feet from the bag end up being thrown out before they can even get the chance to slide. Your runners all take off on contact, and they are very slow to react to your button presses, which means that any sharply hit ball will result in a runner getting doubled off a base. You can turn on auto-base running, but when you’re issued a challenge to steal a base, the computer won’t do it, so you’re kind of out of luck there.

The only bad thing about the audio is the horrible, horrible sound of the umpire shrieking “STRIKE!” after every strike. It’s nothing short of unbearable.

It’s really hard to pinpoint exactly what Mario Superstar Baseball is missing. It has all the characters and play modes you’d expect from a Mario sports title, but the bottom line is that it’s just not that much fun to play. The action on the diamond is rather boring, and there’s a frustration factor that you don’t often have to deal with when playing one of these arcade-style sports games. It’s worth a look as a rental, as you can certainly have a good time with the game over the course of a weekend, but its flaws keep it from being worthy of a purchase.

It’s okay, but it’s nothing great. Underwhelming.

Nintendo’s getting plenty of mileage out of these character models.

Nintendo’s getting plenty of mileage out of these sound clips.

It’s fun for awhile, but it’s frustrating and lacks depth.

If you can squeeze more than a weekend out of it you're special.