Today in Nintendo History: May 25
Mario Strikers Charged was released! (2007)
This game, though far from the first Mario Sports title with crazy action, is very interesting in it's own right. First of all, we have to remember when this was released: early 2007, about half a year into the life of the Wii in Europe. First, it was only the second Mario title for the system, and actually beat out Super Paper Mario in some parts of the world as the first Mario game for the Wii. For another, this was possibly Nintendo's first console game outside of Japan to make truly extensive use of online play, as it was one of the earliest Wii Wi-Fi Connection games from Nintendo.
Mario Strikers Charged was developed by Next Level Games. The company was still only four and a half years old when this came out, and this was their third game. It was, however, also a sequel to their previous GameCube exclusive, Super Mario Strikers. Nintendo had originally contacted Next Level Games to work on Mario football/soccer titles since many of Next Level's employees were veterans from the team behind Soccer Slam, a 2002 soccer game published by Sega. Anyhow, Next Level Games has since become one of Nintendo's most trusted Western partners, and have been responsible for resurrecting the Punch-Out series on the Wii and Luigi's Mansion on the 3DS.
Mario Strikers Charged, known in Europe as Strikers Charged Football, arrived at a key moment for the Wii. By May 2007, the initial launch games like Wii Sports and Twilight Princess were starting to lose a bit of their luster, and the Wii needed some new exclusive hit games. This was particularly true in Europe, where Super Paper Mario was not yet localized. Along with games like Wii Play and WarioWare, Strikers Charged gave the Wii the boost it needed in Europe.
Ultimately, Strikers Charged was a hit game. Reviewers generally gave it scores of around 7.5 or 8 out of 10 (79 on Metacritic), but the game ended up selling over 2.5 million copies according to VGChartz, including over a million copies in the seemingly Nintendo-unfriendly waters of Europe. This was an increase of about a million sales over the GameCube predecessor.Not to mention that it was reviewed better too. So I would say this game was a success for everyone involved. It may be overshadowed by the bevy os Mario games on the Wii, but Mario Strikers Charged found a place in countless hearts.
Well, that's my first day doing this as a daily thing. Any comments?
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