Mario Strikers: Battle League is the first entry in Next Level Games' Mario Strikers series for a long time, and while it's a familiar (and excellent) romp, this new match brings a few new tricks up its sleeves — we mean, football socks.

Battle League introduces Gear which you can unlock and buy in the in-game store. But being a Mario game, you'll need to collect some of those lovely gold coins to get ahold of the goods. It's a lofty task, but with perseverance and patience, you'll be able to build up a big pile o' money that even Wario would be jealous of.

In this Mario Strikers: Battle League guide, we cover some of the best ways to get coins so you can get some of that sweet, sweet gear.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Guide - How To Earn Coins For Gear

Below you'll find our tips on how to get coins in Mario Strikers: Battle League, as detailed by the lovely Alex from the Nintendo Life video production team. Don't forget you can also check out Alex's particularly lovely video at the top of the page to see how to get those gold coins pouring into the bank.

Bowser Mario Strikers Battle League
Image: Nintendo

How many coins do I need to unlock everything?

Each character has 20 pieces of gear that cost 100 coins apiece, and four that cost 400 a pop. That means each character needs 3,200 coins to unlock every item of gear, and with 10 characters at launch, that's 32,000 coins in total. Yikes!

Having said that, there's really no need to unlock all the gear the game has to offer. A full set of gear will only cost you 400 coins per character (unless you want some of the fancy Bushido gubbins). You'll absolutely want to play around with different gear in different ways but realistically this will probably be enough for 99% of players to have as much fun as they can.

Easy coin bonuses

Check out the Gear Settings menu

By simply going into the Gear Settings menu for the first time, the game gives you 400 coins to play around with. That's nice of it!

Complete a training match

If you go into the Training menu, scroll all the way to the bottom, and then complete the Training Match (which is very easy, by the way) you'll get an extra 800 coins for your trouble.

Complete all cup battles

The next bonuses total to a whopping 8,400 coins, but it'll take you a bit of time. You earn these by completing the Cup Battles in both Normal and the unlockable Galactic difficulty settings.

Each Normal Cup Battle tournament will net you 400 coins, and each Galactic Cup Battle tournament will grant you 1000. Not too shabby, but sadly these rewards are one-time only, and completing each Cup again will only give you a fraction of that.

Switch MSBL Screen 25
Image: Nintendo

How to earn coins online

Once you've got all of your bonus coins under your belt, and are a completionist, you might be itching to get even more to buy the rest of the gear.

Play in a Striker's Club Match

By playing online in a Striker's Club Open Match you can earn 30 coins for each win, boosted to 40 if you play with another club member as well.

This is by far the best method to earn coins. However, to acquire all of the coins you'll need after accumulating those bonuses, you'll have to play (and win) 560 Strikers Club Open Matches to accrue what you desire. If we optimistically assume that each standard four-minute match takes six minutes including matchmaking time and cutscenes, you'll have to play for 56 hours solid to reach the total, and that's without a single loss.

Participate in Quick Battle

While Quick Battles don't give you as many coins as Club Matches, Quick Battle will net you 20 coins for a win online or 10 if you're offline. Even a loss with a clubmate will get you 25 coins.

You might be thinking there's a more hands-off approach if you play Quick Battles offline with a second controller being used by no one, but sadly, even though you can set the duration to only three minutes the 10 coins you earn from a victory just aren't worth it. It would take you nearly three times as long and by the end of not actually playing 2,240 matches, you won't want to play the game anymore anyway.

We did trying turbo-enabled controllers to keep the game running autonomously, but not only did it barely work, it would take literally a whole uninterrupted week to get all the coins needed. You'd have to win each game and not have any draws, which when you're not actually playing isn't a reality because nobody's doing anything except mashing 'A' or '-'.

A draw nets you just two coins, so you're looking at 42 uninterrupted days of play (accounting for sudden death), and no matter which way you slice it, both of these options are a waste of electricity and probably not good for your console.

What's the best way to earn coins?

Our advice is to grab the bonuses we mentioned above and just have fun and play through the game. By doing that, you should eventually have nearly all the coins you need from these alone, at least until they add more characters.

If anyone finds 64,000 coins down the back of the sofa, those are ours.

Switch MSBL Screen 24
Image: Nintendo

That's all for our basic Mario Strikers: Battle League coin guide. If you're going to pursue a mountain of coins, make sure you brush up with our Tips And Tricks - 10 Hints To Help You Win The League guide before the whistle blows. If you have any coin-making tips, feel free to share them in the comments below.