Mario Sports Superstars

Mario Sports Superstars is a 2017 sports game released for the mh:awesomegames:Nintendo 3DS. It was developed by Bandai Namco Studios and Camelot Software Planning.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The game was probably rushed because there is a noticeable lack of content and options.
 * 2) Somewhat lackluster character roster. Metal Mario and Pink Gold Peach return in this game yet again as reskins, but their roles and stats are different, and it doesn't help that some characters are missing such as Toadette, Dixie Kong and many other characters.
 * 3) *Some characters, such as Toad, Koopa Troopa and Shy Guy are only playable as teammates in Soccer/Baseball.
 * 4) Each sport lacks the charm of the Mario series and overall, they feel very generic.
 * 5) *Soccer is very unbalanced at times. The other team is highly aggressive and will do anything to get the ball in the goal. It's hard to get the ball in the enemy's goal unless you know what you're doing, because their goalie rarely ever misses while yours misses all the time. If you kick a player from the other team, Lakitu calls a foul, but if the other team kicks you, Lakitu doesn't call a foul (except in rare instances). It also lacks any of the cool mechanics from the Mario Strikers series, including Mario Strikers: Battle League.
 * 6) **Also this one does not have a darker and edgier tone comparing to Mario Strikers, such as semi-violence and female characters' skimpy clothing, instead, it has a light-hearted tone with no signs of semi-violence, being realistic/generic Soccer.
 * 7) *Baseball can also be unbalanced at times. It's very easy for the AI to throw you off with their pitches so that you aren't able to hit them in time using the B button, and even if you do manage to hit them, you are likely to either hit foul balls or straight into the glove of the opposing team. Even using special power does not help much, because sometimes using it while batting could still get you a foul ball or straight into the glove of the opposing team. The computer has no issue hitting the ball, however. If you set the out fielding to Automatic, sometimes, the AI may be so stupid they may end up screwing you over instead of helping you.
 * 8) *Tennis reuses most of its assets from Mario Tennis Open and its gameplay from Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, but this time there's no powerups.
 * 9) *Golf just reuses all of its gameplay and most of its assets from Mario Golf: World Tour, with the only exceptions being the babies, who get brand-new animations. What?
 * 10) *Horse Racing is the only new sport in the game. It plays like Mario Kart, but without the items and chaotic fun that the series is known for. The computer rubberbands frequently and no matter how much you boost on your horse, the computers will still catch up.
 * 11) Speaking of Amiibo:
 * 12) *Most of the Amiibo character cards lazily reuse character artwork from various Mario games, and they are mostly badly photoshopped. The worst offender has to be Bowser's soccer (from Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix) and horse racing Amiibo card.
 * 13) *You need 3 different Amiibo to claim all 3 of the free card packs per day, and the cheapest way to do so is to buy a single pack of Animal Crossing Amiibo cards (yes, even the Non-American packs that only give 3 instead of 6) and use these. This was likely done on purpose just to push more Amiibo sales if players didn't want to grind for coins.
 * 14) *There are over 100 character cards. You could be wasting hundreds of dollars on these cards because duplicates are very common. Scott The Woz did a character card unboxing and he got over 30 duplicates.
 * 15) * Unlike the Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards (with the exception of the Series 5 cards released specifically for New Horizons, unless using them to get the free daily card packs in this game), they can only be used in this game, making them pretty useless for those who don't have this Mario Sports game in particular.
 * 16) *Since Road to Superstar requires 3 Amiibo made specifically for this game, you'd have to buy another pack if you wish to play it because the game only gives you one card (sometimes none if its a used copy).
 * 17) *Because the game flopped financially, you cannot find the Mario Sports Superstars Amiibo cards easily, if anywhere at all, especially now that they've long been out of print, due to the fact  that they only work on this game, as mentioned earlier. Despite this, more Amiibo card packs were made for this game than copies of the actual game itself sold.
 * 18) *Road to Superstar is just a Breakout clone.
 * 19) *In spite of the above, the game is not Pay to Win in the least and it's possible to complete the game without ever using them, the Amiibo cards are only need to unlock the titular Super Star character variants via Road to Superstar and collectable Amiibo character card packs.
 * 20) The only thing you can do with coins is buy card packs, in which these cards are nothing more than collectibles that don't affect your stats, unlike the Amiibo cards. After you get a certain amount, it's very easy to get duplicates, so much so that getting 100 of them lets you trade them for a special card pack that nets you 3 cards without duplicates, which is WAY too much for a measly amount of non-duplicates.
 * 21) Should the CPU score too high to the point where you can't catch up to them on a certain game, like Baseball, for example, there is no way to restart the game you are currently in without exiting said game first and going all the way back from the menu into the game, wasting more time than necessary. Even an unrelated sports game made by Nintendo, Wii Sports, had a restart button.
 * 22) Missed Opportunity: The developers could have added volleyball, badminton, bowling, basketball, hockey, and chambara (swordplay) just like Mario Sports Mix, the mh:awesomegames:Wii Sports, and mh:awesomegames:Nintendo Switch Sports games (making it a total of eleven sports), which would have had more content rather than just five lackluster sports. Also, they could have added Mii customizations as well to make it look even better.
 * 23) Average soundtrack, with most of it sounding more like generic sports music half the time. The music was made by the same composer of all of the Mario Tennis and Golf games and those modes have similar sounding music to their standalone counterparts, though usually not on the same level and some music is reused from Mario Tennis Open and Mario Golf: World Tour. Additionally, there aren't any Mario themed melodies and beats that most Mario Sports games including those have, and this is most notable in Horse Racing where it sounds low-tempo and generic as it doesn't fit the tone of the Super Mario series and is just out-of-place in general. In the same vein as Horse Racing, Soccer likewise sounds rather generic at times.
 * 24) Some of the voice clips were lazily reused from previous Mario spin-off games. In fact, (Pink Gold) Peach, Bowser, Rosalina, Diddy Kong, and Bowser Jr. have their voice clips (Sam Kelly, Kenny James, Laura Faye Smith, Katsumi Suzuki, and Caety Sagoian) of their current actors lumped with their predecessors (Jen Taylor, Scott Burns, Kerri Kane, Chris Sutherland, and Dolores Rogers).
 * 25) It lacks a lot of features from previous Mario Sports games, such as Mario themed stages and gimmicks, power-ups as items, special shots aside from special moves in Soccer/Baseball, a few mechanics in Tennis from Ultra Smash and Power Shots from World Tour, many staple features from each individual Mario Sports side series (like Electric Fences and 2-point special shots from Mario Strikers, additional modes from Mario Tennis/Golf, and many other staple features from those separate side-series') and alternative skins for Yoshi to change what color you can change him to your liking.
 * 26) It isn't a very good comeback for Namco (or Bandai Namco, as it is known nowadays) to develop a Mario game after nine years since 2008 with Mario Super Sluggers, since the game is barebones and doesn't have the charm of previous Mario Sports games, especially the ones that the studio developed, which were the Baseball games. This could be seen as a missed opportunity since the company does a great job at handling many of Nintendo's IPs very well and have some of that Namco charm to them, especially with all the arcade Mario Kart games and Pokkén Tournament, so seeing that they would develop this game is just disappointing, especially after making the amazing baseball duology.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The idea of compiling different sports done in other Mario spin-offs is great, even if the execution could have been better. Mario Sports Mix and the Wii Sports games (including Nintendo Switch Sports) are compilations with more content.
 * 2) You can raise and breed your own horse in this game, which could've made for a good standalone Mario game, in the likes of the Nintendogs duology.
 * 3) New copies come with one amiibo made specifically for this game at random.
 * 4) The graphics are nice to look at.
 * 5) If you do lose a tournament, or quit out early, you are able to replay them at the exact point where you lost without losing any progress (except Horse Racing, given how short it is), preventing hours of grind, and a lot more frustration.
 * 6) The Tennis/Golf modes introduced additional features that Mario Tennis Open (Rosalina as a playable character, the Jump Shots and Classic/Simple Tennis modes) and Mario Golf: World Tour (online Match Play instead of just tournaments) lacked.
 * 7) Baseball is also playable online for the first time, something that Mario Super Sluggers didn't have.
 * 8) While the game is rather barebones compared to other Sports compilations (especially Wii Sports and Nintendo Switch Sports, though both are still decent games) and the standalone Soccer/Baseball/Tennis/Golf games, as well as lacking the charm of other Mario games, the game still offers a decent realistic playable take on the sports that can be fun, if simplistic and bland.

Reception
Sports Superstars received mixed reviews, with the game scoring a 62 on video game review aggregator Metacritic based on 44 reviews and a user score of 7.3 based on 46 reviews.

Videos
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