There's a heart of a champion hidden somewhere under those suspenders.
On+the+Golf+Course
It was laughable enough that an overweight everyman like Mario could become a running and jumping platformer hero 25 years ago, so our hero's first steps into the world of sports were luckily not too outlandish -- after all, just about anyone in any shape can still play the game of golf. And that's where he got started, first appearing with clubs in hand to shoot 18 holes way back on the NES.
The 1985 NES launch title simply called Golf featured a protagonist inspired by Mario's look, and later sequels to that game made the resemblance unmistakable -- by the time 1991's NES Open Tournament Golf came out, it was definitely him. Clad in a bold USA-themed stars-and-stripes outfit, he and his brother Luigi went head-to-head while Princesses Peach and Daisy took on caddying duties.
Mario's golfing hobby didn't come fully into the spotlight until the N64 era, though, with the release of the truly excellent and addicting Mario Golf. Simple, straightforward and easy to control, it was inspired by the already-popular Hot Shots Golf series and kicked off a string of sequels -- Mario Golf for the Game Boy Color, Toadstool Tour for the GameCube and Advance Tour for the Game Boy Advance. Most recently, the N64 original got a Virtual Console re-release -- though it's a bit odd that the Wii, with its club-swinging motion controls, has never received an all-new Mario Golf game all its own.
On+the+Tennis+Court
1985's NES launch lineup also featured Mario in a second sporting role, but only as a spectator -- he sat high atop the referee's chair to serve as the unplayable line judge in NES Tennis. He must have been itching to get into the action himself, though, and 10 years later he did -- in Mario's Tennis for the Virtual Boy.
It was the first and only time a Mario sports title has served as a pack-in game for a piece of Nintendo hardware, and it worked well to demonstrate the 3D depth that the Virtual Boy's display was capable of. The VB system failed shortly thereafter, of course, so most gamers became familiar with Mario's racquet-wielding escapades later, on the more popular machines.
There, Mario Tennis followed after Mario Golf on the N64 in August of 2000, and then had GBC, GameCube and GBA sequels the same as Golf as well. The faster action and direct head-to-head competition of tennis gave these games more of an opportunity to insert some signature Mario flair, though, and the Tennis series is where Mario's sports games first started to really see things like over-the-top power-up shots, banana peels and Koopa shells on the court and all-new character introductions. We wouldn't have met Waluigi if Wario didn't need a doubles partner, after all.
At+the+Ballpark
Golf and Tennis games dominated Mario's sporting activities throughout most of the N64 and GameCube hardware eras, but late in the Cube's life cycle our hero began to spread out beyond those mostly individual competitions and try his hand at some team sports. First up was the great American pastime, baseball.
Mario Superstar Baseball came to the GameCube in August of 2005, and inside its package players found the biggest lineup of Mushroom Kingdom mascots yet -- after all, there were lots of supporting positions to fill on the field. Goombas, Hammer Bros, Magikoopas, Boos and more were pressed into service on a variety of teams, each of which was headlined by the more notable Mario series characters -- Yoshi, Bowser, Wario and the like.
Superstar Baseball did well enough to justify a sequel, and it arrived as Mario Super Sluggers for the Wii back in 2008. The game was a good one, but beyond the addition of Wii Remote motion controls for bat-swinging it didn't add all that much to the formula. I'd be surprised if Sluggers were the last we saw of Mario out at the ballpark, though, as Nintendo's more invested in baseball than any other sport -- the company actually owns the MLB's Seattle Mariners franchise.
On+the+Soccer+Field
Though it's a much more popular sport around the world than it is here in our own United States of America, the ball-kicking contest we call soccer has still managed to make enough of an impact that Mario managed to take notice of it.
Nintendo published a couple of generic, no-mascot soccer games way back on the NES and Super NES (with Soccer, Nintendo World Cup and Super Soccer), but it wasn't until December of 2005 that Mario's first headlining soccer game appeared -- Super Mario Strikers for the GameCube. It made a name for itself in that late part of the Cube's spotlight years by pumping its action full of energy and intensity, a game design that was reflected by its killer promotional art.
That same electric style then got juiced up even further for the Wii's Mario Strikers Charged, which shipped to stores only about a year and a half after the first Strikers game. As with the baseball games, that short turn-around period meant the two titles were fairly similar to one another -- but Charged did separate itself by equipping Mario and his friends with bold electric armor. It also served as the kick-off game for Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection on Wii. Shocking!
On+the+Racetrack
It's kind of hard to know whether this section really belongs in a rundown of Mario's sports appearances, because racing games starring the Red Cap have become an entire sub-genre all their own -- the Mario Kart series could certainly hold down its own retrospective article all by itself. Mario's time on the track hasn't been all about Karting, though. In fact, he got started there in much more traditional manner.
F-1 Race was his first time behind the wheel, as Mario manned the controls for a formula 1 racecar and blazed around the track way back on the Japanese Famicom in the '80s. America never got that version, but we did get the Game Boy edition that launched four-player Link Cable support for that system in the States. F-1 Race's sequel, 3D Hot Rally, has also been back in the news recently too -- it was one of Nintendo's first stereoscopic 3D games, and a very early inspiration for the upcoming 3DS handheld hardware.
Mario wasn't too visible in any of those games, though, only really appearing on the boxart for a couple of them. He did manage to make tracks one other time, though, and it was unmistakably him -- in the Japan-exclusive Excitebike: Bunbun Mario Battle Stadium. That was a download-only title for the Super Famicom Satellaview-X peripheral, and was basically a 16-bit version of Excitebike with Mario characters driving the bikes.
Going+for+Gold
So Mario's played golf and tennis, been in command of racecars and motorcycles and even captained baseball and soccer squads -- but, even after all that, his lust for sport remained unsatisfied. He finally decided to just go all-out, taking on multiple different sporting events all at once. The place to do that? The Olympics.
Teaming up and facing off against long-time rival Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario traveled to Beijing, China in late 2007 (for Wii) and 2008 (for DS) to headline Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. It packed in everything imaginable from those classic summertime contests -- track & field, rowing, archery, fencing and even ping-pong table tennis. But he didn't stop there, as once the next Olympics rolled around two years later he was at it again in Vancouver -- for Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. That one saw our hero lace up his ice skates, hop into a bobsled, strap on a pair of skis and even go snowboarding all in a giant mash-up of nearly every cold-weather sport you could think of.
Interestingly, though, that wasn't the first time Mario had hit the slopes. His sportsmanship had become so well-recognized by the mid-'00s that he was actually included in a non-Nintendo-published sports game in a cameo roll -- SSX On Tour. That GameCube release saw Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach all shred snow alongside the series' more normal, human-proportioned characters.
Shooting+Hoops
The SSX On Tour cameo appearance happened through a partnership with Electronic Arts, and it wasn't a one-time thing either -- Mario, his brother and his royal girlfriend all also appeared on the courts of NBA Street V3. Playing basketball. Along with real-world NBA players like Kevin Garnett and LeBron James.
Weird stuff. That was in 2005, and with basketball being as popular as it is here in America, it was odd that Nintendo had waited that long to feature Mario playing it in any real way. The cameo prompted a full-on Mario basketball project, though, and one year later in 2006 we got Mario Hoops 3-on-3 for the Nintendo DS.
That was Mario-style basketball as we would have expected it. Facing off against the same rogues' gallery of friends and foes like Donkey Kong, Bowser, Yoshi and all the rest, Mario teamed up with two other players for over-the-top arcade hoops action played, in part, with stylus flicks. The game, oddly enough, was developed by Square Enix -- normally known only for big, epic RPGs. The studio managed to drop in some unlockables too, and if you played it right you could get their classic Black Mage, White Mage, Cactuar or Moogle to join your squad.
And+the+Rest+of+the+Mix
Which brings us all the way to today, and next month's impending release of the new Wii-exclusive Mario Sports Mix. Its development has once again been given over to Square Enix, so the basketball mode it features will certainly be firmly influenced by Mario Hoops 3-on-3. (You'll even be able to unlock the Square Enix cameo characters again.)
Sports Mix also offers three more sports, though -- dodgeball, hockey and volleyball. These three sports are lesser seen in Mario's past, but they're not entirely absent from his archives. Mario previously played hockey in Olympic Winter Games with Sonic, and you could also unlock a fairly robust hockey mini-game in Mario Party 5. The Mario Party series also gave gamers a Mario volleyball design in both its fourth and fifth installments.
And dodgeball? Well, that one actually does seem to be entirely all-new for our hero. The most notable dodgeball games ever seen on Nintendo systems have been the Super Dodge Ball games from Technos, but Mario's never gotten near any of them. Sport Mix will be his true debut for that particular sport.
And thus concludes our brief look back over the history of Mario's athletic achievements. He's certainly not done competing yet, and it's getting more and more difficult to predict which sports he might try next -- that he hasn't tried already, that is. American football? Rugby? Lacrosse? If you've got an idea for a Mario sporting event that hasn't happened yet, hit up the Comments box below and let us know what it is.
As for me, I'll be spending the remaining weeks before the release of Mario Sports Mix sitting back and trying to figure out how Mario's been competing in all these strenuous sports for years now, but has somehow never managed to lose a single pound.