Super Mario Strikers’ Arrival on Nintendo Switch Online is Hopefully Just a Warm-Up

The Nintendo Switch 2 is off to a good start in terms of Super Mario spin-offs. Mario Kart World served as one of the game’s leading launch titles, and soon Super Mario Party Jamboree‘s enhanced Switch 2 version will slot into the console’s library of enhanced games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. These party games are only one version of Mario‘s spin-offs, though. The series has a broad family of sports games, one of the most notable being Super Mario Strikers, a GameCube classic that’ll join Nintendo Switch Online’s library of Classics in July.

Super Mario Strikers has a slightly odd place among Mario spin-offs, mainly due to its release history. It got two games in rapid succession – the first Strikers on GameCube in 2005, followed by Mario Strikers Charged on the Wii in 2007 – and then went on a 15-year hiatus, finally broken by 2022’s Mario Strikers: Battle League for the Switch. Though its reviews were mixed, Battle League nevertheless showed the subseries’ potential in the process of reviving it. Between that game and Super Mario Strikers‘ arrival on NSO, Nintendo is clearly thinking about the series, so one wonders what it might have planned for Strikers on Switch 2.

Bowser drifting ahead of Toad in Mario Kart World

Mario Kart World Subtly Broke Some Franchise Traditions

Mario Kart World challenges the franchise’s status quo in a lot of ways, some of which are significantly less obvious than others.

Super Mario Strikers May Just Be a Checkpoint on the Way to Strikers on Switch 2

Mario Strikers: Battle League Got the Ball Rolling Again

Mario Strikers: Battle League retained a lot of the energy of the past games, emphasizing flashy, stylized art and an explosive, fantastical take on soccer. Shaky as Nintendo Switch Online’s network may be, Battle League made the most of modern gaming’s love of online play, fostering a rich multiplayer ecosystem. It did get dinged by critics on a few counts; it released with only eight playable characters, a number that almost doubled over the course of Battle League‘s post-launch support, and some features like character gear were topics of debate. Nevertheless, it had the strongest launch of any Mario sports game to date, and has surpassed 2.5 million copies sold since then.

All of these elements – both the good and the bad – serve as motivation for Nintendo to make another Mario Strikers game. The sales display a clear taste for the series, and any criticism Battle League faced is simply room for improvement in the next game. Nintendo is no stranger to going the distance on a franchise, even when a game or two gets weak reviews, so it’s unlikely that Mario Strikers: Battle League‘s reviews are the end of the line.

Super Mario Strikers is Back

In the meantime, Super Mario Strikers feels like a clue to Nintendo’s plans. The GameCube is packed with other classics that Strikers had to compete with for an early slot on NSO, so prioritizing Strikers as an addition to NSO’s GameCube library so early in the Switch 2’s life makes it seem that Nintendo has Mario sports games high on its mind. If Nintendo is quietly working on a new Mario Strikers game, it would make sense to prime fans of the series by giving them easy access to the game that started it all on the Switch 2.

Super Mario Strikers released in the GameCube’s twilight years, less than a year before the Wii’s release, so its NSO release within a month of the Switch 2’s launch is a poetic contrast.

There’s no guarantee that there’s another Mario Strikers game on the horizon, of course. Nintendo already has a fair few heavy-hitting spin-offs planned for the Switch 2, like Kirby Air Riders and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, and Mario already has a strong presence on Switch 2, so Strikers might not be around the corner. Still, it seems unlikely that Nintendo would revive the Strikers franchise after 15 years, only to abandon it again. Another Strikers game in the next few years is well within the realm of possibility, and if that comes true, Super Mario Strikers on NSO is the perfect stopgap.