Mario Superstar Baseball's Chemistry -- Designing For Personality 

One small detail that I love is that Yoshi has a great relationship with Mario and Luigi (as would be obvious from how often they ride him), but an even BETTER relationship with their baby versions as a reference to the Yoshi's Island games!

Mario Super Sluggers became my best friend and I’s go-to game in college after we realized how deep the chemistry mechanic was. We’d do real drafts for each of our teams and it often resulted in some pretty heated (and fun) exchanges. “You can’t take Peach! That leaves me without a good pitcher!” “Take Waluigi!” “LUIGI HATES WALUIGI AND YOU KNOW THAT!”

the sequel is pretty good at this too. i think the funniest thing is that Toadsworth fucking HATES paragoomba, and he's the only of the peach mushroom people to do so, it really makes you wonder WHY. or you have like King K Rool and Bowser do not get along which makes alot of sense really when you think about it.

YES YES YES YES People are always saying Nintendo needs to bring back the Mario Strikers series, but often forget the baseball games. Thanks for discussing the series!

This is the greatest inadverdent advertisement for this game possible, I gotta grab some friends to play this ASAP

D4: Wario has a girlfriend now. (Ad immediately plays starring an attractive latina) Me: Is... Is that Wario's girlfriend?

Dude we literally host the competitive community for this game!!! Our Discord server had almost 500 members. If anyone’s interested in the competitive scene for this game come watch our stuff! Great video.

I had no idea the chemistry system was this in-depth. I thought it was just “good, neutral, bad.”

I remember playing Super Sluggers as a kid and meticulously crafting my Luigi-captained team so that each player had chemistry with the next, allowing me to use items for every single batter. It was a ton of fun trying to get the perfect batting order, and this video might just be the inspiration for me cracking that game out and giving it another go after years of having nearly forgotten about it!

Competitive Mario Superstar Baseball player here. I've been a huge fan of this channel for over a year so seeing this in my recommended was absolutely electrifying. This is quite possibly one of the best and most well-made videos on the game that I've ever seen. Its clear you did a lot of research on the game's mechanics before making the video, even going over things that most people who play the game don't even know (such as chemistry-influenced Team Stars). You even brought up the pitching rivalry between Dixie and Waluigi, that was a source of debate in the community for years. Major props. One thing I feel is worth mentioning about good chemistry is that on the batting-end of things, the chemistry boost only affects charge swings. Weak hitters like Paragoomba and Toadette who prefer to slap hit don't really gain much benefit from it. Regardless, this video was amazing, and I eagerly await whatever comes next.

I was not prepared for the Pokemon style type chart. That makes this game 1000x more interesting than I previously thought.

Superstar Sluggers is such a good game. I have so many memories of my cousin and I banning characters like Toadsworth and Magikoopa from pitching since they were too good, enjoying the announcer's Engrish and hyping up Yellow Toad as the strongest batter in the game (which he is for some reason).

My favorite character to run as pitcher in superstar baseball was green paratroopa. My friends always questioned why I would use him. Paratroopa was such a monsterous pitcher despite not having a signature star special. Being able to really pinpoint corners and curve sporadically should you choose. Not to mention paratroopa seems to play nice with just about any captain. I always set him to green as while red is a little more rounded, I feel green really specializes him for field and pitching and it's not like paratroopa is slow by any metric.

Holy heck the multiple team names per captain is so cool how did I never notice that

The chemistry system is really fun It makes you wonder about history between characters you probably wouldn't have otherwise What is the common goal between K. Rool and King Boo?

One thing I love about this game is that it decided to make one of Dry Bones' skins have a different design and model for absolutely no reason other than to make him edgier. Dark Dry Bones will always have a spot on my mario baseball team. And even though the characters have different stats, they're still tucked away behind an alt-swap thing. Dark Dry Bones is a much more interesting way to handle clone characters, rather than how something like mario kart 8 does it with its Babies and Metal Mario. He goes through more effort by using a new model/design where its not needed (MK8 uses alts to save on resources and ideas), he doesn't exist to pad out the roster despite having gameplay changes, and he is an EDGY, BADASS version of an unnamed goon, whereas MK8 only has poopy baby versions of the main characters. This one alt takes a simple dry bones and gives him the same energy as all those edgy grim reaper memes, and that alone kicks the ass of a lot of the modern mario spinoff rosters. All hail Dark Dry Bones.

Finally a video for me, the friendships and rivalry's of obscure Mario characters.

Man i miss playing sports mix like every day after school. I never actually never played mario baseball but cant deny it and super sluggers look awsome

Shocker, Miyamoto allowing a great video game series to die off, and sterilising any similar series from having too much personality included in a creative way. He is Mr "Protect My Legacy" after all. Can't imagine how creatively limiting it is to make anything for him today.

Every 30 seconds while watching this I verbally said "Woah that's so cool" We need another sequel to this game

It's so friggin' cute to me that Peach and Bowser Jr. Have good chemistry. Obviously BJ knows Peach isn't really his mama, but he still looks up to her for who she is because everyone loves her, and Peach for her part is kind-heated and understands that Junior is only a kid and doesn't hold his father's misdeeds against him. So much lore born out of a game simply saying "yeah, they get along" 😆

Never would I thought in a million years someone would cover this aspect, or Mario Baseball as a whole! Underrated gems of the Mario sports titles, and I'm glad someone eloquently described why this games are awesome! This and Bluster's video were fantastic, sir! Keep it up!

Its really great how simple they couldve gone but gave it the depth and strategy that comes with real life baseball

First of all. Wow, that was an absolutely incredible video, everything you brought up about the series was spot on, and honestly made me a bit sad as there hasn’t been a baseball game in a while, let alone one with a chemistry system, I always thought it was cool how you could imagine how the characters interact and got along.

I loved playing Superstar Baseball at friends' houses, but I had *no* idea that there was this much mechanical intricacy. It's such a brilliant way to mechanically represent how characters would interact if they were real people.

While many people, me included, would love to see the Strikers series back, you perfectly explained why the Baseball series deserves it too, if not even more so! Fingers crossed for the future, but luckily in the meantime we can still discuss about and play the old titles!

The Mario Sports games that aren't tennis and golf are underrated as hell, i really liked that you cover them because youtubers usually look over them. i find that the Mario sports games honestly give characters the perfect space to show personality, with all their super moves, story modes victory animations and in the baseball games, chemistry. Its really disappointing to see the Mario fandom completely look over the games that give the characters personality, and then wonder why the cast is boring. mario kart and party are good games but they never do anything interesting with their characters (double dash's exclusive items don't substitute the personality we see in victory animations, super moves or chemistry, either). Its especially disappointing when Waluigi fans will wonder why the character is so divisive, when they never actually discuss the games where he is any good. If the only Mario games discussed are mainline (which he isn't in), the RPGs (which he isn't in), and Mario kart/party (which are very non-expressive with their characters), then no wonder theres a large amount of people who don't think he has any personality other than crying about a smash invite (which is definitely a super interesting personality trait and something he would definitely care about in canon). If you want to make somebody new to a character why you would like them, then you would want to make the character seem appealing, right? it just so happens that for most of the Mario cast, their most appealing games are the sports games, since they almost always have the right time and place to work personality and interactions into the cast. Even a game series like Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games is really good at making sure that characters have interesting super moves and interactions in the story mode, yet the Mario fans slurping their big-gulps rarely discuss this (and you can tell since Waluigi fans will never bring up Mario and Sonic at the olympic games, despite it having some of the best portrayals of the character) Why do these big-gulp gamers ignore the games, even though the pre-3DS Mario sports games are super good? i think its because it both puts too much unnecessary load on youtubers researching canon shit, and because all the Mario gamers with their big gulps think that the sports games are boring for some reason. Heres the thing, the sports games almost always have some interesting take on their sports that changes the rules and add mechanics. Strikers gives items to players who charge the ball or got hit by an over-aggressive opponent as well as special shots worth more score, Hoops has command inputs to do special moves and coins that give more points per shot (which gives you the option to build up a decent coin balance while you have the ball), and Baseball both has passive benefits on each character and the chemistry system. The only one I think is even close to just "video game version of real sport" is some of the earlier golf/tennis games, and those still gives each character loads of personality. Even then, this has largely slowed down a bit as world tour and super rush have items and stuff for their side modes, and power tennis/aces have super moves and stuff. It also really helps that, unlike smash bros, the sports games pretty much always have really well designed item systems, but thats besides the point. The way the sports games treat their source sports is no different to how Mario Kart treats NASCAR, except the sports games have more interesting source material. Mario fans have no reason to inherently see them as boring due to their source material. (and just to clarify, i only said tennis and golf aren't underrated at the start because they're basically the only ones getting sequels past the wii era, so the previous games still get looked at by youtubers. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games still gets sequels, but the Mario fandom basically ignores any one of them that isn't the newest entry. Oh, and the tennis and golf GB games are underrated as well.) In summary, the sports games are an underrated contribution to society, the Mario fanbase is bad for letting the games be underrated in the first place, Mario superstar baseball and its sequel are awesome, and designing for is based as usual. This was supposed to be a one line comment but I have a bad habit of turning one line comments into essays, oops

I didn't know that there were character relation mechanics in the game. I always placed Wario and Baby Mario on the same team since they were my favorite Mario characters.

12:26 that cutout Wario:NEXT LEVEL- (Clip): Shut Up.

I miss 2000s-era Mario games ngl.

I have watched this video in full about seven times now, and I don’t know what it is but I adore this video so much. Seeing true appreciation given to a little talked about game along with Mario world building finally being brought to light is so cool to me!

Excellent video! This is my favorite game of all time and I would love to see more people joining the community surrounding it.

I think the chemistry aspect was inspired by Tekken Tag's chemistry system. If characters had good chemistry,they get an attack boost. If not,they wouldn't get an attack boost. Benefits of working with Nacmo I guess.

Speaking of Ace’s roster at 2:10, it’s actually probably the best sports roster I’ve ever seen in a Mario spinoff save for the Mario baseball games themselves, which makes it sting all the more when everyone plays almost the exact same

7:23 my brother's favorite thing to point out is that one of the team names is the "dk kongs"

Shoutouts to Dinger City. If anyone wants to see high level Mario Superstar Baseball in a tournament format then that's the place to see it on RU-vid.

Man, what a ride this video was. Me and my brother used to play this all the time. I remember he always picked monty mole at shortstop, if he got the ball there was no one getting to base before his quick feet. Definitely a fun, fondly remembered game for me. Great video on something I'd never hear anyone else talk about.

FINALLY THE MOST UNDERRATED NINTENDO SERIES GETS SOME ATTENTION

OMFG the Monty Mole art at 8:16

Love this game!! There's a channel that plays it all the time, Mario Superstar Baseball Club!!

I’m betting Yoshi is glad the IRS wasn’t invited

i have so much nostalgia with this game, used to play it constantly when i was young with siblings and on car trips, trying to get EVERY character to star! only like 3 left to get to that, and also toadsworth mvp

Thanks for making this video! It was incredibly well done and hopefully will help people remember how fun this game is and get new people to play it.

I loved Mario Super Sluggers.

I think they actually used this concept relatively well in Mario Kart Tour, where different characters will have more item slots depending on whether which course they’re on, and have different special items.

3:43 Chain Chomp: gimme a piece of dat cake

“too hard on the motion controls” super sluggers is using bare minimum motion controls, don’t use that as an excuse.

Thanks for talking about a so forgotten mario sport franchise

IMO that’s the beauty of games like this-plenty simple enough you can pick it up and play, and if you just choose your favorite characters without regards to stats or chemistry, you should do fine, but also with that extra layer that serious players can use to give themselves an advantage, it’s really nice to see, new Nintendo games have lowered the skill ceiling so much compared to these older titles

Wario: has no friends Waluigi: is the best pitcher in the game Imagine getting picked because you know the popular kid.

06:35 is my favorite bit 😆 you have a great balance of jokes and analysis all throughout!

This game is dope!!! Diddy captain is where it’s at

Always good to play some baseball with Mayo

Nothing shocking about a chuckster having a strong throwing arm

HELL YEAH MARIO BASEBALL LOVE LETS GO

This video made me way, way, way, WAY more interested in a Mario baseball game than I ever expected

This is a phenomenal video essay, great work!

On the very day I 100% Mario Sluggers. Nice~...

Scripulous fingore moment at 8:53

Loved the little sound effects and jokes you had, was very charming.

This video was great!

Wow, great video! This is my first time coming across your channel and I’m so happy I did! Time to binge some more videos. :D

The fact that Mario Golf was brought to the Switch gives me hope that maybe we'll finally get a Mario Super Sluggers/Superstar Baseball sequel as well

I’ve been playing this game on Dolphin netplay for years with my friends. Excellent video and will always hold Mario Superstar Baseball deeply close to my heart!

This was an awesome video, I laughed hard at the Chuckster afterimage entering the universe, definitely earned my sub

When I found out about Chemistry, I once did a Yoshi Team with all of the Babies.

Sluggers was my childhood.

So many summer afternoons spent on this game as a kid. That and Double Dash.

this is one of my favorite games of all time thank you ive also always thought the sports games lacked something after superstar and super sulggers released

This video has outright made me subscribe to your channel. It's very clear you did a ton of research before making this video and you succeeded at capturing and holding my attention. I absolutely adored this game as a kid and you made me recapture my old love for this game in a 16 minute video. Please keep up the wonderful content. I can't wait to see your next upload!

I have Super Sluggers, but I am really bad at it, so can't enjoy it that much =( But great video, made me want to try it again =D

excellent video, kept me hooked

No sports mix? No it was mentioned and that's great

13:27 so k rool thinks bowser sucks cause he’s a terrible villain and k rool is like amazing

I came from your catdog video and I'm just loving Your content I can't wait to see your channel really blow up

I LOVED the chart and seeing who surprisingly likes/gets along with who and who has beef with who and then backtracking that through the franchise history. Like, Noki and Pianta having beef with Petey Piranha but having good rapport w/ Mario and them is obviously a nod to Sunshine. Then there’s ones you wouldn’t expect at all, like the Toadette and Bowser beef or the Peach/Birdo/Dixie (the Pinks) circle of chemistry. Characters you wouldn’t expect to see any opinions between, have their own interpersonal relationships. I love lil intricate details like that and I think about this same dynamic in my own friend groups.

Gotta love your channel

So, fun fact. Back around the time of Mario Baseball's release, I managed to stumble across websites for not only it but also Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour that were incredibly interactive. In fact Toadstool Tour even had several videos that are lost to time where they treated the game like an actual PGA Golf scene, complete with both an ESPN-style run down for the characters but also documentary-style short videos on each character

I got mad chills at 3:26

I always enjoyed having an outfielder with laser beam, and a high chemistry, home base character together (examples being Donkey & Diddy Kong, or The Noki & Pianta). The ball zooms back from outfield to infield so fast stopping many a score from occuring (sorry dad. :p )

MSB was one of my favorite games growing up. I loved playing through the story mode, playing 2 player with friends, or playing a side mode. I was about 9 when it came out so I literally didn't know about half the mechanics discussed here. I saw that there was a chemistry mechanic but literally had no idea what it meant. I'm definitely gonna pick this game back up and see what I've been missing out on!

never played this but i played the sequel, super sluggers, all the time as a kid so the nostalgia is enormous

Perfect to watch on Valentine’s.

8:12 oh my god, that's my girlfriend's art! She's going to be so happy when I tell her you used it in your vid!

This is an underrated video. It captures my thoughts so well on why I haven’t loved the recent sports titles!

I think K Rool hates Bowser because he's the only king allowed, great video btw

I find it funny King K. Rool likes the green mii specifically

I do love the cute touch this adds to the game. I always theorized a bigger roster for a third game and the hypothetical chemistry they’d all have. Specifically, Toad and Rosalina would become captains, and we’d have some spinoff guests like Ashley, Starlow, Geno and Paper Mario.

"And why do they like each other more than Bowser?" Love your colleages, hate your boss.

2:46 I am the board of my bike Steel is my body and gas is my blood I have created over a thousand world records Unknown to Death, Nor known to Life. Have withstood pain to create personal bests Yet, those hands will never hold anything So as I pray, Unlimited Funky Works.

I never realized how much they was to this game. It was so fun

I never played superstar baseball, but sluggers was a huge part of my childhood. I don’t even like baseball in real life, but baseball might be my favorite Mario sport

This was always my favorite Mario sports game

I always thought Sluggers was the only one

I love this game. I play it every year, can't get enough of it. If it wasnt for the original Mario Tennis, this would hands down be my favorite Mario sports title.

It's 5 am and I'm watching a video on Mario friendships lesgoooo

They need to bring both this series and strikers back because they gave the characters so much personality in both these series that we just don't see anymore.

I never played this, game, but the sequel was one of my favorites as a kid.

13:22 absolute diva

Your tone is clean, pacing is good, information is pretty solid... I love it! You've earned yourself a subscriber.