6 Best Mario Sports Games, Ranked

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Here are the six best Mario Sports games Nintendo has ever made.

6) Mario Super Sluggers

Baseball is huge in Japan, so it wasn’t a big surprise when Nintendo released Mario Superstar Baseball for the GameCube in 2005. Three years later, they improved on the original with Mario Super Sluggers for the Wii. It has a massive character roster, meaning gameplay is always fresh, and a fun adventure mode alongside traditional baseball.

That mode saw you recruiting your own team of baseball stars to go up against Bowser and Bowser Jr. It was a neat take on similar modes players were seeing in games like NBA Street and NFL Street at the time, albeit with a family-friendly lean. Unfortunately, we’ve never gotten a third baseball game despite Super Sluggers selling more than two million units.

5) Mario Power Tennis

Power Tennis had the incredibly difficult task of following up on the exceptional Mario Tennis for the Nintendo 64. It didn’t quite surpass the original, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great game in its own right. Power Tennis packs in a broad cast of characters, each of which brings their own unique flair to the court.

Toss in a handful of gimmick courts to keep things fresh, and you have a stylish GameCube game that paved the way for some of the wilder entries we’ve gotten in recent years. Power Shots gave on-court play more strategy, but hadn’t quite found that safe space between overwhelming and fair. That said, the Wii remake was a poor decision from Nintendo.

4) Mario Golf (GBC)

There are two versions of Mario Golf, and both of them are solid games. Some will prefer the Nintendo 64 version, which does have solid golf gameplay and was a blast to play with friends. However, I’ve always loved the Game Boy Color version, which turns golf into an RPG.

Look, there’s a reason games like Golf Story are so popular. Giving you a relatively simple version of golf and then letting you loose in story mode that requires you to carefully level up your golf skills is always a joy. It could even save your best shots to show your friends later. Just an all-around great golf game.

3) Mario Strikers Charged

While Mario Strikers: Battle League was a disappointment on the Switch, Charged remains one of the best arcade soccer games fans have ever played. It lives right up there with games like Sega Soccer Slam, giving players all kinds of wacky moves to dominate the opposition.

You’ll play through several tournaments with up to three friends, dishing out punishment to the AI while testing your own abilities. Players can also hop online for ranked matches if they want to go up against some real competition. And the visual style is jaw-droppingly good, making for an attractive package that soccer fans loved.

2) Mario Tennis (N64)

Mario Tennis gave the world Waluigi, and for that, we are eternally grateful. And yes, I am speaking on behalf of planet Earth, not just the fine people here at ComicBook. Mario Tennis isn’t the first Mario Sports game, but it was the one that made the franchise feel like it had arrived.

The tennis remains some of the best arcade on-court action fans have ever played. There’s the perfect mix of pick-and-play simplicity and in-depth strategy. If you just want to dive in with a friend, that’s fine, but players willing to put in the work will find a game ready to challenge them in ways they couldn’t imagine. It’s a shame Nintendo has never made a better tennis game, but it’s a testament to how great this one was.

1) Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour

Toadstool Tour had surprisingly exceptional golf physics on the GameCube. That system wasn’t exactly a technical powerhouse, but you wouldn’t know it after seeing how perfectly Toadstool Tour‘s shots simulated real life. There are sixteen distinct characters to choose from and an in-depth adventure mode that takes you across seven different courses.

The one big knock I have on Toadstool Tour is that it doesn’t have the RPG-lite mechanics we’ve seen in the handheld offerings. Those were present in its Game Boy Advance companion game, Mario Golf: Advance Tour, but the pure golf gameplay in Toadstool Tour is so good that it overcomes that slight knock. Super Rush on the Switch did try to incorporate some of those RPG elements, but felt a bit too gimmicky with Speed and Battle Golf to satisfy most.

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