The 3DS has turned out to be a huge amount of fun as a hand-held console and while it’s about to get a big brother with the duel console power of the Nintendo Switch, it looks like there’s still a fair bit left in the locker for the little device. The latest game on the roster is Mario Sports Superstars and it shaping up to add even more fun times to the much-loved Nintendo system.
You can check out the trailer below ahead of the game’s release to see how it stacks up to previous Mario sports games like Mario And Sonic At The Rio 2016 Games, but in general it’s essentially got fewer individual sports, but more focus on making them more rounded and complete. These include what it’s referring to as “full-scale” of football, tennis, golf, horse racing and baseball, which should cover a lot of bases for hand-held gamers.
Release date
Mario Sports Superstars has been confirmed for losses UK release date of Spring 2017, but we’ll be very surprised if it doesn’t coincide with the Easter break, so we’re expecting it to his the shelves and the download store around then. Easter in 2017 falls on the 16th April, so we’d be surprised if it doesn’t come out a little earlier in the month or at the end of March 2017.
However, the launch date of the Nintendo NX may have an impact on this as it’s expected around the same timeline.
Gameplay
Each of the five sports come with single player tournament modes, so you can game away in your own quiet way, but they will also have options for local and online multiplayer gaming. This will let you hone your skills on the single player before testing them out against your friends and the rest of the world when connected to wireless internet.
There’s obviously similarities between the different sports specialties with previous Nintendo games with Mario Striker Charged, Mario Tennis Open, Mario Golf World Tour and even Baseball on Wii Sports as the most obvious. There’s even a little link between the horse racing game with the Equestrian element of Mario And Sonic At The London 2012 Olympic Games. However, there are also a fair few big differences to give the compilation game enough unique gameplay to make it worth the effort:
Horse racing
This is essentially horse racing Mario Kart 7-style with Mario characters riding on super fast horses around tracks with jumps to make it over and power-ups to collect and unleash.
Football
This is an 11-a-side full scale football title with Mario Striker Charged scale and playing dynamics from the look of the trailer below.
Tennis
Think Mario Tennis Open, but with the option to play other sports on the side. Move your characters around to position you serves, returns, lobs, smashes and drop shots and mash the action buttons to unleash fury.
Golf
Again, this is shaping up to be a mini-pack little brother to Mario Golf World Tour.
Baseball
Choose what kind of play your going to make, whether it’s a screw ball or a fast ball, pick your location and let it rip.
Graphics
While the graphics aren’t hyper-slick as such, we like the general direction taken by Nintendo for the look and feel of the game. They’re pretty cute, focusing all of the emphasis on fun, without compromising too much on the visuals. The horse racing looks the best with some nice detail on your steeds and the tracks they’ll have to run on.
First impressions
There are too many similarities between the football, tennis and golf games to previous Mario games, so they don’t really do enough to make Mario Sports Superstars a must-have game. There is the 11-a-side gameplay of the football title to take into account, which does add a little interest in itself, but the real hero of the title is the horse racing, which looks like it could be a lot of fun and maybe even result in its own spinoff in time. The baseball game looks like it’ll be entertaining, channeling a little of the Wii Sports magic, but it’s all about the horse racing, so if it’s as good as it looks in the trailer below then we’ll be big fans, especially if the rest of the games deliver some surprises of their own along the way.
