Mario Strikers Charged Football

The thing is, Nintendo firmly believed that the Mario Universe could indeed be wedged into the confines of five-a-side football, with a modicum of help from an outside partner. This turned out to be none other than Next Level Games, the team that created arguable one of the craziest GameCube arcade experiences in the form of Sega Soccer Slam. Super Mario Strikers (or Mario Smash Football as it was called here in Europe) took the world by storm, playing basically like the Sega game, but having all the familiar Mario crew included. Despite the GameCube in its last throes of life, the game managed to be one of the biggest Nintendo hits of 2005.

 

But what was a fun and frantic game for the current generation is not always guaranteed to translate perfectly well over to a new format. With games like this, the old adage that involves lightning, striking and two smooth, pert bottoms...erm...*stops thinking of DoAX2 Volleyball trailer*...Anyway, my point is, I had doubts about whether Mario Strikers Charged could easily recapture the thrills and spills of its d

 

Basically this does indeed play just like the first one did, and probably is a perfect example of a case where Shigeru Miyamoto stated old GameCube games can be revamped easily for the Wii. Next Level has given the graphics and nice lick of polish to make them look amazingly vibrant, with crazy, face-blistering speedy action that never seems to let up. The control system barely uses the new technology, with the only action shown to us by the demonstrator being the way to tackle

 

And here comes another piece of Wii-exclusivity