While most people only associate Super Mario with Soccer through the Mario Strikers franchise. Football is actually a sport that Mario has a longer history with. We’ll take a look at every single point in history where Super Mario has intersected with one of the most famous sports in the world Football Soccer. It’ s not all just Golf & Tenniss.
Like many other early NES games that had a single title of just the sport, we got Soccer. Now unlike Tennis or Golf you don’t actually see Mario in the game or box art..However if this VS Soccer advertisement clearly shows Mario is there in all of these sports. I mean why not? Super Soccer on the SNES was not an actual sequel but a different series by a different developer.
We had to wait a long time until we got to the Super Mario Strikers series. Called Mario Smash Football elsewhere this was a radical change from normal soccer and was more like indoor soccer but with an American Football and 90s Xtreeme kind of feel. It was edgy and fun. We eventually got a sequel with Super Mario Strikers Charged on the Wii, some of the edgyness was no longer there in some ways but in others it still had more of that extreme vibe.
Sadly, while the series was great it was not a consistent one, we didn’t get a sequel until the Switch with Super Mario Strikers Battle League. This one missed the extreme part of it and the game suffered because of it. Hopefully wae get a few more in the series in the future as it’s easily one of the funnest Mario Sports titles. And the Football Soccer series fans are aware of but that’s not the only time we’ve had Mario playing soccer.
We did get Mario Sports Superstars on 3DS that gave us various sports including Soccer. This was the first time we got Association Football without the more extreme gimmick. It plays an in between a more serious and arcadey soccer experience and its fun. Not quite as imaginative as strikers but a solid experience that could’ve easily been expanded upon.
But Soccer is also played at the Olympics and thanks to Sonic & Mario at the Olympic games series we got Soccer in London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. That gave us a Soccer game to experience on Wii, Wii U, 3DS, and the Switch. These ones are not full on games even less so than Sports Superstars but you get the basics of Soccer and it’s not the most complex game in the end. The different controls change depending on the platform and usually involved some kind of special controls.
While this might seem like it’s it for Football Soccer for Mario, that’s not all. The most famous sport actually has had far more representation in the Mario series. All thanks to Mario Party. Featured in Mario Party, 4, 5, Advance, Top 100, Superstars, 9, 10 and possibly a few more I might be missing. Now some of these might not be the full on games but feature at least some part of related Soccer experience.
Not only that in a way they could be seen as more fun despite being just mini games, some are even almost a game you’d want to see more of. Don’t judge all these mini games. Here are the names of a few of them but there might be more that I’m not aware of. Goalis vs Shooters, GOOOO000L!!, Soccer Brawl, Soccer Survival, Shell Soccer, Mini Soccer, Shorty Scorers, Some of these made a comeback as well.
I see the Mario Football Soccer franchise continuing with how big the sport is. More mini games on Mario Party for sure but also either getting more games in the Mario Striker series or even a brand new Mario Soccer experience. Nevertheless there’s plenty of games for you to play around with if you’re in the World Cup mood.
