With Super Mario Odyssey really showing what Nintendo's best teams are capable of, with all new voice acting and polished graphics, animations and world-building, I am reminded of how the recent Mario Sports titles were completely lacking that Mario spark.
Mario Tennis Ultra Smash was Camelot's first high definition game, but the graphics and solid gameplay wouldn't make you think that...however the lack of content did. Every single voice clip and in game art was pulled together from older Mario games, even the announcer spoke with recycled, generic clips from Power Tennis, a game that's a decade and a half old!
Mario and Sonic at the Sochi Olympics had very dubious motion controls and gamepad use, even though the graphics were polished. Rio mostly fixed this but like Ultra Smash, it had far less fantasy content than usual, and they cut corners with the limited "Guest Characters". The game got middling reviews and unlike the other games, did quite poorly on Wii U.
None of them were nearly as cynical as Mario Sports Superstars however. That game was engineered to sell you amiibo cards that were only useful for one game (yep, amiibo figures of the characters are not compatible!), and the game had next to no original animations, art, or content. Golf and Tennis were copy-paste jobs and Football was embarrasing coming off of FIFA and Mario Strikers. Unsuprisingly, the game did poorly at retail.
Now with the Switch being a success, could we see Nintendo finally allocating the time and resources that Mario Sports needs?
Mario Tennis Ultra Smash was Camelot's first high definition game, but the graphics and solid gameplay wouldn't make you think that...however the lack of content did. Every single voice clip and in game art was pulled together from older Mario games, even the announcer spoke with recycled, generic clips from Power Tennis, a game that's a decade and a half old!
Mario and Sonic at the Sochi Olympics had very dubious motion controls and gamepad use, even though the graphics were polished. Rio mostly fixed this but like Ultra Smash, it had far less fantasy content than usual, and they cut corners with the limited "Guest Characters". The game got middling reviews and unlike the other games, did quite poorly on Wii U.
None of them were nearly as cynical as Mario Sports Superstars however. That game was engineered to sell you amiibo cards that were only useful for one game (yep, amiibo figures of the characters are not compatible!), and the game had next to no original animations, art, or content. Golf and Tennis were copy-paste jobs and Football was embarrasing coming off of FIFA and Mario Strikers. Unsuprisingly, the game did poorly at retail.
Now with the Switch being a success, could we see Nintendo finally allocating the time and resources that Mario Sports needs?
