Topic: Mario Strikers Battle League

@Pizzamorg I’m all for it, just think about how awesome it would be too!

@Pizzamorg a league? or a club? I imagine that once it's up and running, plenty of folx here will be playing, so either a league and/or club could be very doable.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but if we made a club, would we all be controlling individual characters on the same team? Whereas a league would be us playing against one another, right? I just assumed playing against one another would be logistically easier than trying to put a club together with all of us. But admittedly I don't really know how all of this works.

Yes and no concerning more "single player content" (I air quote since I am pretty sure most of it could be done with up to 4 players vs. the AI) in Super Mario Strikers. Technically, there were eight cups to win (four regular and four super versions of each), but not only did they lack what little story flavor Charged peppered in concerning your choice of captain in Road to The Striker Cup, there was nothing stopping you from keeping the opponents at the lowest (or second lowest for the super cups) difficulty the whole way. The wealth of customization you could apply to how those cups would play out was kind of interesting, but also kind of takes away the feeling of accomplishment. And there was only one real surprise, the robotic Super Team at the end of the last cup. That being said, the implication that the whole event was being run by Bowser, and not even as the result of some plot of his, was interesting when sporting events were usually hosted by Peach, if anything (it would also explain the more liberal rules leading to violence).

@Pizzamorg I feel that we should temper our expectations on how different the characters play here. With the emphasis on up to eight player multiplayer, it looks like they do not want the players to be so distinct that there's constant arguments over things like who gets to be "the captain" or just reacting badly to people picking characters considered too weak or strong. It's more about picking the character you personally like and using gear to customize their stats, the main point of distinction, to your liking. To that end while I do to a point understand those who are bummed by the current roster and not having your favorite available, the importance of having a lot of them in this specific game is greatly exaggerated. It's a lot like the first Strikers game honestly, the differences between characters in that game was quite subtle.

New, unedited gameplay from Nintendo France of all places.

@Fizza The standout of this video was Peach for me. There is absolutely no reason for her to do the splits after firing an airborne one-timer before she even confirms her shot went in, but she does it anyway. And yet judging from salty Youtube comments you'd swear she did things like flash for the cameras in Charged based on how "soulless" this game looks.

We also learn how defending from Hyper Strikes works: unless the opponent nails the gauge timing perfectly, you'll have a chance to button mash the shot away as Boom-Boom, with the difficulty of this likely varying based on how good the meter timing was.

So, I just saw an entire match on Gamexplain and the game honestly looks like tons of fun. It seems to be closer to the first Mario Strikers than Charged and I welcome that personally as that game was too chaotic and fast. A bigger roster is always good, but I prefer more polished and balanced gameplay over that. Also, wow, the animations are fantastic.

I didn't even know Rosalina's called Harmonie in French.

@ophone Thanks for pointing that out! I didn't know that either, but love it.

I think the pacing of the game looks really good. It doesn't seem quite as chaotic as Charged, which I actually kind of like. It looks more articulate and strategic than the previous entry; I guess we'll have to see that for ourselves, though. It also looks super polished and buttery smooth. I love the character's clothing designs and their animations as well. Really excited about this one; I hope it turns out well. I just hope we get more than 10 characters. I think it's super likely that we do, but you never know.

@StarPoint I like the pacing a lot too! I did enjoy how chaotic the pac of Charged was, but it could get out of hand sometimes and influence a result just because of the chaos. This looks like you have to be way more deliberate than in Charged by rewarding skill over just aided-chaos-success (I love Mario Kart 8DX, but I strongly prefer time trials over online races with items b/c it rewards skill).

If we only have 10 characters, I will be shocked.

My fan fiction (if I can call it that?)for more fun details, would be to have Lakitu be an ironic referee. Ironic in the sense that there should be no foul called for shoving a player into an electronic fence. But I'd love to see some fun animations with characters (imagining Waluigi here) complaining to a floating Lakitu for not making a call.

@ophone https://shantae.fandom.com/wiki/Harmony

That character has made me think of Rosalina, what a coincidence that the latter has the same name as the former in at least one language.

Things like charging your tackles (probably how you deal with characters with high strength that can resist them), your characters falling flat on their faces if they miss them, or even fencing themselves, along with how genuinely difficult it seems to actually get a chance to fire a Hyper Strike unopposed definitely seems to point to a game where you're constantly weighing your options, your positioning and risk vs. reward. Things like, is it worth smacking down players without the ball to secure or stop score attempts even if it means they'll have more items to use later? How long should you try to bait a deke from a player you are chasing?

I don't know if anyone here has noticed, but there seems to be a trend lately of people making competitive scenes out of Gamecube era Mario sports games, like Superstar Baseball and Super Mario Strikers. While there will always be the dilemma of whether this relatively radical shift was the right call as opposed to making essentially Charged 2.0 with better graphics and more of everything, especially since the formula arguably hadn't really gotten stale yet, at least those burgeoning communities have to worry too much about Battle League obsoleting their efforts, for better or worse.

You know, everyone is going on about how Daisy is missing, but what about Chain Chomp? His absence as an item is possibly an even greater indicator of the game's focus.

@meleehunter
Good catch there. I loved/hated chain chomp. Another detail we haven’t got much information on is the stadiums/fields. I liked how they had different environment effects in Charged (random tornadoes removing players, different sandy areas affecting speed, etc.). If anything, I hope the stadiums are more than just aesthetics.

@sisodinr Chomp is the one major headache of the Super Striker scene it seems. Not surprising, he buried everyone he hit for ridiculous stun times in the GC game and didn't even have the friendly fire risk that made the Charged version more of a double-edged sword. Very much the game's answer to Mario Kart's lightning.

It's very unlikely there will be stage hazards in this game. The somewhat more liberal item distribution and smaller size of the playing field probably makes things chaotic enough as is. Super had no inherent stage hazards besides the optional Bowser attacks, and I doubt things like sitting out the game for 14 seconds for falling off Thunder Island or Crystal Canyon just straight up deciding you don't get to play until a goal would fly in an eight-player game.

Cool, nonchalant update from Nintendo: you can see all of the character's Hyper Strikes in new videos
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/mario-strikers-battle...

(you have to scroll down and cycle through each character's video)

Rosalina is intent on getting her money's worth out of that ice planet she made for Mario Kart it seems. And she's so casual about punting a ball into space.

Can someone tell Bowser that he's not actually in a new Mario baseball game yet?

@meleehunter Rosalina’s Hyper Strike and Toad’s Hyper Strike were my favorites. I totally agree on Bowser. It was very predictable and underwhelming.

I’m actually starting to like the look of the features here more than the previous versions. At first I was a bit concerned by lack of sidekick characters, but I like how this version is a bit of a different direction.

@sisodinr I'm not gonna act like I can come up with a better one, but it is funny that most of the recent sports titles that have super moves have him do pretty much the same thing.

There's always the chance at least some of the sidekicks will come back as equals like Toad did here, but that would probably take more animation work and time than most people would give it credit for. Let's not act like Charged didn't cut corners by recycling victory animations, and leaving most of it's newcomers with a whopping two while veteran Waluigi gets like 6.