At the recent Nintendo Direct, the Japanese company announced Mario Golf: Super Rush, coming to Switch on June 21. With the little information available, here’s our preview.
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More than a year after the last Nintendo Direct, we all expected the presentation of new titles developed internally, and perhaps updates on those already announced previously; all this happened only in part. Indeed, in the first half of the year two games created by EPD will be released: the first is the collection / remake of Famicom Detective Club, and the second is proper Mario Golf: Super Rush.
There are no official communications about it, but given the previous ones and considering the graphic aspect of the game (stylistically similar, we will see why, in Mario Tennis Aces), there is no doubt that it is a collaborative production between Camelot e Nintendo EPD 2, the division that, in fact, oversees the multiplayer and sports spin-offs of Super Mario. Mario Tennis Aces was not received triumphantly, perhaps because, despite the playful aspect, understanding the mechanics is not easy at all; it is still a title, we reiterate it today as at the time of its release, from the controls and the extraordinary level design. Not enough, thanks also to the massive advertising campaign, it has established a sales record for the series, forcefully snatching it from the hands of the Nintendo 64 episode; Mario Tennis Aces has sold almost three and a half million copies in less than three years of life.
Nintendo will therefore expect to emulate its success; Mario Golf has always sold less than its tennis cousin, so let’s think more in proportion than in absolute numbers. As we said, there are similarities between the two projects: the setting of the menus, the vertical columns during the selection of the characters, the monochromatic spot colors assigned to each one. There quality of polygonal models and animations, far superior to the appearance of the landscape.
The conceptual similarities with Aces do not end here: let’s see in detail what the others are, reminding you that Mario Golf: Super Rush will arrive on June 25, 2021.
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Speed Golf
Just like in Mario Tennis Aces, Camelot also perpetuated his stylistic choice in this golfing title: that is, he dressed in professional clothes the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom. A great idea, which makes everything more contextualized and believable: Mario impeccably elegant, Wario slightly (a little more than slightly) awkward, Yoshi … well, Yoshi is naked, but then he is a sexless dinosaur.
The main mode seems to rely on historical mechanisms golf video games, which spread unchanging from generation to generation, regardless of technological variations: distances are calculated, an attempt is made to guess the direction of the wind, the club is chosen and, through a bar more or less sensitive, the power and precision of the blow are determined (and, of course, any horizontal and vertical effects). We will have time, during the review phase, to analyze how much the mechanics have held up over the years.
In Mario Tennis Aces, Camelot has performed an extremely intelligent operation: what is the videogame genre closest to tennis? Undoubtedly, fighting games. So he put similar mechanics into that chapter, with an energy bar to load and special moves that take advantage of it. Mario Golf: Super Rush cannot count on such a quick and functional association, yet it has introduced a potentially brilliant way, whose effectiveness and centrality will be understood. We are talking about Speed Golf. The goal, in this sport (forgive us for the barbaric definition), is to hit the hole using fewer strokes than others; why not play it further, translating the concept into those who take, as well as fewer hits, even less time? And so, between one blow and another, this time the Mario characters can run on the meadows, so as to reach the ball before the opponents. We have no other clues about the mode, and according to the trailer it will not be the only one in addition to the traditional one, but we reiterate it: the concept, potentially, is very interesting.
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Multiplayer, motion and history
Mario Golf: Super Rush will naturally give its best in multiplayer. Offline and, above all, online: the multiplayer mode has already been shown in the trailer, but no details have been given. It is unthinkable that online gaming is not supported, so we await news about it, perhaps with a themed demo close to publication.
If you remember correctly, Mario Tennis Aces’ ad with Rafael Nadal was very careful to show motion control, which in the end represented the less successful, and less substantial, part of the work. They will also return in Mario Golf: Super Rush, and we hope that this time they will be more integrated into the main mode, without being confined to a corner used for “casual gamers”. In short, the hope is that they are refined as well as i traditional controls and, at the same time, that competition is allowed between those who use them and those who don’t.
The other good news is the return of the mode History, great protagonist of the portable episodes released for Game Boy at the turn of the century. We mention for the last time Mario Tennis Aces, remembering that, even in that case, many expected – after the announcement – a single player section that, as in the past, would allow you to create and develop your own RPG style. character. In Mario Tennis Aces this mode has disappointed many fans, because it turned out to be a long tutorial of the game mechanics, although well done: in this case, despite a certain pessimism circulating on the net, we expect Camelot to propose something more substantial. First of all, the protagonist of the story is a THOUSAND, not a character from the Mushroom Kingdom; secondly, there is a golf village to explore, a cornerstone of the Game Boy titles, totally absent in Aces. It may not be as structured a sporting adventure as it was twenty years ago, but we certainly expect it to be deeper than in Mario Tennis.
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The announcement of Mario Golf: Super Rush, while not exploding, made us very happy. First of all Camelot has shown, with the recent Mario Tennis Aces, that it still knows how to make games of the highest quality. Secondly, a Mario Golf home console – therefore technologically at its maximum potential – had not been seen for eighteen years, since the GameCube era. Visually the characters are well made, the settings are a little less refined, but the success of the title will depend on the quality of the mechanics, on which we have few doubts, and on the game modes, on which we have a few more: Speed Golf , online multiplayer, History. If nothing else, Marge Simpson will know what to give Bart this year.
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CERTAINTIES
- Camelot is experienced and capable
- Nice character design
- Historically, the controls are great
- Super proven game mechanics
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DOUBTS
- Will the motion controls be integrated well?
- How deep will the story mode be?
- Will Speed Golf be structured or just an addition?
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