Mario Baseball

[bigbadwolf]

(Super Mario Stadium Miracle Baseball to give it it's full awkward name)

Game works and saves fine with freeloader (a relief from Namco given the Konga issues), and starts off impressing with a meaty intro sequence and a plentiful menu; an exhibition mode, a decent training mode, a separate minigame section with 5 games (plus 2 unlockable) on 4 difficulties, and a dictionary - not much use to me.

The meat of it is the challenge mode where you pick a team and wander around a world map between different stadia, playing minigames and buying stuff. You'll face certain challenges in each game (stop someone getting a single hit etc) to unlock other characters to be selectable for your team.

The game mechanics work pretty well, pitching and batting have a good 'feel' to them and are good fun, fielding and base running less so. Unfortunately the stop-start nature of baseball isn't really softened here and this can get pretty frustrating - annoying even.

A good range of selectable players from the mario universe, with 12 main players with their own teams, comprising of many others. Unfortunately Nintendo may have shot themselves in the foot by banging on about over 50 characters as there're only actually 32 (6 unlockable) but they were including colour variations...

Overall, still feeling a bit undecided over this, verging on meh. Having a lot more fun with mario DDR to be honest

--
bbw

[m4xheadroom]

Is it better than backyard baseball though on GC or The baseball sub game on the bomberman game on the ps2, I really havent played an enjoyable baseball game since gamba league baseball on the snes 10 years ago

[dno]

Been playing the US version for a couple of days now, don't know the first thing about baseball and am pretty rubbish at it but really enjoying it. There's a really good tutorial/practice mode to teach you the basics and the main mode is reminiscent of the Virtua Tennis World Tour with matches and mini-games to earn cash. Where the game really shines is head-to-head, especially if your opponent knows as little about the sport as you, as the mind-games between pitcher and batter make for a lot of laughs. If you liked Mario Golf/Tennis it's worth a try.