| Super Mario Ball review |
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It could be argued that no-one, not even the mighty EA, knows how to milk a
franchise more than Nintendo. Alongside the standard platform/adventure titles
that Mario is known for, gamers have seen Dr. Mario, Mario Kart, Mario Party,
Mario Golf, Mario Tennis and even Mario Paint. The reason Nintendo isn’t
criticised for such a strategy is that, without exception, these titles are
great games in their own right and that the Mushroom Land setting is merely a
welcome bonus. Given that Pokemon and even Kirby have been translated into
pinball games, it was only a matter of time before Mario was given the same
treatment. Alas, Super Mario Ball doesn’t quite live up to the pedigree.
Certainly not a pure pinball game, Super Mario Ball is in terms of its mechanics
a fairly traditional Mario adventure, albeit one in which Mario has been trapped
in a large ball and must be moved around the environment with the help of
pinball table flippers that have just randomly appeared all over Mushroom Land.
In practice, this means that instead of anything resembling a pinball table,
players encounter a series of single screen rooms that generally have three or
four traditional Mario enemies wandering around, a few doors somewhere near the
top and flippers with a gap between them at the bottom. Some rooms have further
complications in them, extra little features, but at heart the game involves
pushing Mario through the doors until all the rooms have been cleared, then
moving on to one of the other four levels.
If it sounds limited, that’s generally because it is. One of the largest
problems facing the game is the clash between traditional Mario adventuring
dynamics and the game of pinball itself. Pinball is all about high-score
chasing, and Mario Ball does indeed keep score as you move around the levels.
However, as each room consists of fairly similar, minor challenges, it is left
to boss encounters to offer you the highest scores. Unfortunately, such
encounters are one time only, and once they have been despatched players can’t
go back to them again for another score top up. A good player of actual pinball
games can keep playing for ages, racking up an increasingly astronomical score
by repeating the various challenges of the table over and over again. Not so
here, the scoring element takes a very definite back seat to the progression
through the adventure.
That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, were the adventure itself not so short. With
only five levels, each consisting of at most six rooms and each overall level
following the same pattern (Star in each room, boss encounter, red coin
challenge, Yoshi egg jackpot, one secret Star) differentiated only by the
setting, the experience of Super Mario Ball is not a lengthy one at all.
Arguably, Game Boy Advance games should be short and designed for play in short
bursts, but with only 35 Stars to collect and many stars taking less than a
couple of minutes to obtain, it’s not long before the cartridge will have given
up all of its secrets to even the most casual player. Of course, there’s nothing
stopping players picking it up and starting again, but with the falsity of the
high score element, it would be left to the game’s fun factor to encourage
gamers to start over which, it transpires, is not something the game should be
relying on.
At first, Super Mario Ball seems to be great fun. It’s very straightforward,
only utilising three buttons (left flipper, right flipper and activate
power-up), getting you into the game in record time and letting you have a blast
flipping Mario around the rooms at high speed, taking out Koopa Troopas and
Goombas left, right and centre. Yet when you soon encounter the trickier parts
of the game, most obviously the boss battles, it stops being fun, thanks to
physics that can only really be described as broken. It’s potentially to do with
the widescreen nature of the Game Boy Advance screen, meaning that the walls of
the rooms are far wider in relation to the position of flippers than they would
be on a regular pinball table, or potentially just due to a badly coded physics
engine. Either way, even after hours upon hours of play, Mario’s movement around
the rooms still seems completely random and even simple tasks like getting him
through a door at the top of the screen can take minutes on end. Once mastered,
people can play real pinball tables for hours if they choose. Super Mario Ball
ultimately proves impossible to master, because the player never totally feels
in control of Mario, and for a game of this nature, that is a crippling flaw.
Bearing in mind such fundamental problems with the game mechanics, the level
designers obviously felt in the `kicking a man when he’s down` kind of mood
whilst designing certain challenges. Circular rooms in particular seem to
conspire to make an already frustrating game just unfair, as Mario quickly
becomes almost magnetically stuck to the side, zooming around and around until
you try to stop him with the flippers and then spend another five minutes
wrestling with the controls to try and get him vaguely going in the direction
you’d like him to. To make matters worse, turn off the Game Boy Advance without
saving in a fit of pique and not only do you lose any progress you’ve made in
that play session, your entire game actually gets wiped from the memory, a true
design oversight.
What makes all this so disappointing is that, technically, Super Mario Ball is
one of the best titles on the system. The music may be somewhat repetitive and
dull, but it’s of unquestionably high quality and the Mario speech samples such
as `Combo` and `Super Bonus` are highly amusing, while the sound effects are
satisfyingly crisp: contact with enemies and picking up coins sounds almost as
good as it does in Super Mario Sunshine. Even more impressive are the 3D
graphics, undoubtedly the best yet produced on the Game Boy Advance and
something developer Fuse Games should be extremely proud of. Characters and
objects in the rooms are sometimes quite large and have tangible depth to them,
and in the water stages Mario even convincingly leaves the room floor at times.
Neat little effects such as the fact that the Mario ball gets smaller the
further up the angled room he gets, or incidental background details such as a
rollercoaster zooming around in the first level simply complement an
accomplished technical package.
Unfortunately, such technical prowess has been wasted on a mediocre game. A
traditional Mario platformer with these kind of visuals could have been superb,
or a new Game Boy Advance Mario Kart game. But a pinball game that has flawed
physics and a serious identity crisis? With the Nintendo DS just around the
corner, impressive 3D visuals, whilst a pleasant surprise, are simply not
enough. Super Mario Ball is cute and the Mario theme is well applied, with lots
of familiar elements from games throughout the series, but fun soon gives way to
pure frustration and the whole affair is over far too quickly. Ultimately, Super
Mario Ball is the exception to the rule: a disappointing game dressed up in
impressive, Mario-themed clothing.
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System: Nintendo GameBoy Advance
Genre: Arcade
Developer: Fuse Games
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
Version: Japan
Reviewed: Sep 2004
Writer: Stuart Smith
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Pros:
- Gorgeous 3D graphics
- Lots of familiar Mario elements
- Fun at first
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Cons:
- Frustrating
- Limited
- Too easy to wipe saved game
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