Mario Smash Football (GameCube)

Nintendo and Next Level Games have released this great new game, where Mario, with other classic Mushroom Kingdom Superstars (including Wario, Donkey Kong and Yoshi), put friendships behind and battle it out for first place in special league cups on special football pitches.

Choose a captain for your team with the choice of picking Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Daisy, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Wario, Waluigi, and a secret 9th player, and get ready to have the most exciting match you will ever experience on a football pitch. Get ready to run down the wing of the pitch while a player on the opposing side runs after you, wielding a bomb with your name on it. Tackle your opponents to get possession of the ball; or better yet, hit them hard enough so they're sent flying towards electric fences that will leave them immobilised for a few seconds. Or, if you're really in trouble, unleash your giant Chain Chomp, and let it wreak havoc upon the opposing team while you calmly power-up to let off a Super Strike that will possibly give you two points if you score. All this fun in one match let alone the whole game. Before I forget, occasionally watch out for Bowser falling from the sky (make sure that when this happens, you concentrate at all times, Bowser can really disrupt your chances of scoring by breathing fire or shooting out different weapons).

Play for Special cups and awards that will unlock cheats to use in cup or custom matches. Get ready to use a variety of random weapons varying from normal green and red shells to giant Bombs. The Multiplayer feature in the game is great fun. Just get three more people to play, and have fun playing cup and custom matches with either two players playing against another two players, three players playing against one lone player, or four players playing together as one team against a computer controlled team. This game will just give you countless hours of fun with your friends, or even by yourself, and if you want to learn how to do things in the game, the game has a “Strikers 101” option that allows you to practice freely without worrying about the opposing team.

If you're a fun loving gamer who is a football fan and/or a Mario fan, and you have a Gamecube, get this game, it's well worth it.

No referees, No Injuries, No Rules; it's what Mario Smash Football is all about.

P.S Mario Smash Football is also known as Super Mario Strikers in America and Japan.

Having played this game through, I can safely say it is seriously fun. You will enjoy this game. It is rough and tumble football action with all your favourite Mario characters and sidekicks. Playing through all the cups a couple of times is great fun, and multi-player mode is quite enjoyable. This is a superb Mario sports game.

Super strikes are executed brilliantly, with a nice little cinematic where the control pad rumbles violently to really give the player a sense of power. These are a little samey though between characters, with the same sound effect present on everyone and the animation very similar.

So why is it "Almost there", well quite simply because Nintendo aren't quite there yet with difficulty settings. With Mario Power Tennis the difficulty levels are fantastic as they work you up gradually to becoming a pro at the game. With Mario Smash Football however, this appears to have gone out the window. There are still four difficulties, but the gap between the first and second is just too great. You will yawn at Novice after the first few games, but you will scream at Professional, the next one up, because tackles, power-ups and goals become all to frequent on the enemies part. Suddenly you find yourself 10-0 up in the first minute.

Another irritation I found with the game is the unnecessary giant Bowser that comes in mid-match. Nintendo have probably thrown this in to mix things up a bit and sprinkle some "Nintendo-magic" over the game. All it does is spoil the flow of the game, and when you're playing on Professional or above its the last thing you want. This should have been left out simply to let us play some fluent football. Why not give us Bowser as a character instead of an irritation?

All the above said, the game is well worth getting if only for the multi-player mode, which, like every Mario sports game, is where the party really starts!

The game could be improved by having more characters such as Goombas or Shy Guys being able to play on your team, but there is some brilliantly deep gameplay with simple, easy to learn controls, especially for players of EA Sports games.

The only reasons this gets 4 Stars rather than 5 is due to the lack of depth of the single player and lack of options (making Super Strikes worth more or less goals, lack of choice of characters)

Overall this is a brilliant game, ESPECIALLY in multiplayer. Hearing Peaches scream, which actually sounds like she's in a lot of pain, makes it even better.