I was really looking forward to playing Mario Sports Mix again. Like all the other Wii Mario sports games I had this one as a kid but for some reason or another either lost it or gave it to a friend in exchange for one of their games soon after getting it, and therefore don't really remember a lot about the game. After finally having replayed it though I can say in all confidence that this is it, this is the game where Mario sports games lost all their soul.

Instead of focusing in on one sport specifically like all the games in the Mario Sports subseries have before, Mario Sports Mix has four separate sports to play and master being Basketball, Volleyball, Dodgeball, and Hockey. I get that the point of the game was to make it a mix of sports as the title implies but in doing so each sport loses its depth and uniqueness, something that was very present in Mario Sports games past. Each sport has extremely simplistic controls that I learned within the first match and no real in-depth mechanics that you have to master to succeed. Of course there are the Mario sports game staples present here like items, character abilities, and different stadium gimmicks but they feel so toned down here and like they effect the gameplay very little. The simplicity of the gameplay just leads to an experience that is incredibly easy, once you know how to score nothing is stopping you from doing so, especially not the extremely easy to beat CPUs. Another problem that this leads to is each individual match feeling too long. In the sports that rely on clocks to end (Hockey and Basketball) it felt like said clock was going in slow motion and it only gets worse once you realize that every second you're scoring is another second that the clock isn't running, and because the game is super easy and the CPU's not at all challenging you'll be scoring a lot. In Volleyball there's no clock but you are required to get a whopping 15 points to win a set and you have to win 2 sets to win the match, combine that with the slow gameplay of the sport and it's not very fun either. This led to Dodgeball being my favorite sport of the bunch here as it's the only one where you're in control of the game's pace, instead of a clock the game relies on life bars and every time you successfully hit an opponent with the ball their life bar depletes and it goes until you've fully defeated both your opponent's life bars, you still have to do two sets of this but it's much quicker than the other sports.

In terms of content and unlockables the game certainly delivers, but I'd argue not in a good way. Each sport has three championship cups to go through, complete one and you unlock the next one, complete the final match of the final cup and you get the grand trophy for it. Upon getting all four grand trophies for all the sports you'll be treated to a special final boss fight against the Behemoth, a creature that looks ripped straight out of a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest game and due in large part to Square Enix's co-development on this game. The boss fight incorporates moves from all of the specific sports and is actually a bit difficult, by that I mean I still beat it first try like everything else in this game, but it had me low on health a few times. Once you complete that you unlock another sport of sorts being the "Sports Mix" mode. Sports mix takes the tournament structure and just has you play a random sport for each match, where the CPUs are a little noticeably harder but that's about the only difference. I'd like to say this mode was an interesting and valid inclusion but really, it's just more padding to pad out an already heavily padded game. That's not all though because after you beat all the cups in each sport you unlock a hard mode for each of them, which surprise surprise, is once again only slightly harder and just more padding. Apart from the tournament mode there's one minigame for each sport but I didn't find these to be all that fun either if I'm being honest. And then there's the unlock system, which is quite frankly, just a mess all around. In order to unlock things you have to reenter a tournament you've already completed and look for secret paths on the map screen between matches, it's almost completely random if a secret path will appear after you win a match and it's also random whether a hidden character will appear along that path once you do get on it or of you'll even be on the right path to get that character at all because there are several different paths. Because all of this is random, I found myself constantly restarting tournaments to see if I got lucky that time and it was just exhausting and unsatisfying to complete. On top of this when you finally do unlock something it's only for the specific sport you're playing, meaning you have to repeat this arduous process 3 more times which is exactly where I said screw this and gave up on the game. The game has content in spades but none of it is meaningful or fun to complete, just tedious and frustrating.

Finally, I come to the game's presentation, and it's probably the most unlikable aspect of the whole thing to me. In sharp contrast to literally every other Mario Sports game up to this point, Mario Sports Mix is just so bland and generic. Where other games had fun and hype intro cutscenes Mario Sports Mix has a cutscene of Mario and friends playing the game's sports in a plain white void, where other games had various fun victory or loss animations with personality Mario Sports Mix has one very basic animation for each character when they score a point, where other games had stylish UI and music that matched the tone of the game perfectly Mario Sports Mix has sterile UI and so-so music, and the list goes on. Mario Sports Mix took the genuine fun out of these game's personality and replaced it with artificial fun, Mario isn't here playing these four sports because he wants to be he's here because he's contractually obligated to be.

Maybe I was wrong to look forward to replaying this game, it's gameplay was much worse than I remembered it being, the loads of content it offers isn't as meaningful to and adult with limited time as it was to a kid with unlimited time, getting all the unlockable is much more of a tedious process than a fun one, and overall, the style just feels like the heart is gone. The game can still be kind of fun on a base level, but for the miserable process of completing it and the bad precedent it set for future Mario Sports games, I can't in good conscious call this a good game anymore.