Smash Character Review: Mario Sports

SMASH CHARACTER REVIEW

Today, let's go over all characters featured in the Mario baseball games, football games, and the "sports" titles. As most of these are heavily focused on team sports, we saw several playable characters, including several who had never been playable before, simply out of the need to fill up each side's rosters.

Most of the games here tended to include Team Captains, made up of the most famous faces of the Mario series. Although there was some variation, these more often than not featured the faces of Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Princess Daisy, Yoshi, Birdo, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Wario, Waluigi, Bowser, and Bowser Jr. You may notice they tended to come in pairs. Each frequently had super moves based on the sport being played that revolved around who they were (meaning its not a lot we haven't seen before. Mario almost always used fireballs, Luigi often did too or his vacuum from Luigi's Mansion, Peach and Daisy's were often accentuated with hearts or flowers respectively, Yoshi either used eggs or it was accentuated with a rainbow, Birdo's often had something to do with being "weird," the Kongs often used bananas or barrels, or Donkey simply used his strength while Diddy used his jetpack. Wario and Waluigi tended to vary a bit, with Wario's tended to involve him being sneaky, farting, using his strength, or throwing bombs, while Waluigi also tended to be sneaky, but also featured him multiplying himself, spinning fast enough to cause a cyclone, and using a machine to electrocute other characters. Definitely some stuff in there we can add to Waluigi's moveset. If there's anything in there that you think might work better being switched out for one of these, that's perfectly fine. Lastly we have Bowser and Bowser Jr., who frequently used fire breath, bullet bills, or Bowser Jr.'s paintbrush from Super Mario Sunshine.

Filling out the team, the games frequently relied on many of the most common species from all over the Mushroom Kingdom. Toads appear everywhere here, mostly on Peach and Daisy's team or generally as possible teammates. This includes both Toadette and Toadsworth, the latter in his only playable appearance ever (except in this hypothetical game this blog is crafting, obviously). Other frequent flyers appear here as well, such as Koopas, Paratroopas, Shy Guys, Fly Guys, Boos, Hammer Bros, Dry Bones, and Wigglers, alongside lesser seen faces like Piantas and Nokis from Sunshine, Monty Moles, Goombas and Paragoombas, Magikoopas, Bloopers, and Spikes.

Outside of enemy characters and captains, we also saw a number of other major characters making appearances across the games (especially in the baseball games), including the baby versions of Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, and Donkey Kong, DK series alums Dixie Kong, Funky Kong, Tiny Kong, King K. Rool, and Kritters (including an unusually prominent role as the goalies in the football games), and major bosses King Boo and Petey Piranha (who acts as a hoop in the basketball games (love it!)). Rosalina sadly only appears in Mario Sports Superstars, largely because most of these came out around the mid-2000s before Rosalina had been firmly established as a staple of the Mario series. Boom Boom and Pom Pom also appear in Superstars, as do Metal Mario and Pink Gold Peach.

The first two Mario Sports games were crossovers with Square Enix, and as such featured Moogle, Cactuar, Ninja, Black Mage, and White Mage as special guests from the Final Fantasy franchise, and Slime from the Dragon Quest franchise. While many of these likely will see slots eventually in this blog, I will not be covering them in full until I actually get to those respective franchises.

That just leaves us with a few series staples acting as background or obstacles. Lakitu more often than not plays the perennial role of referee, a role they seem made for. Piranha Plants, Chain Chomps, and Thwomps play the roles you generally expect them to as field hazards, as do Klaptraps from the Donkey Kong series. Finally, we have Miis, who were included as playable in Mario Sports Mix.

Thanks for reading! Now, let's add in our one new playable character, Super Mario Strikers' Super Team!