Mario Sports Mix

Players can also opt to play as one of their Mii characters. The game received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its presentation, variety, and gameplay, but criticized its lack of depth and replayability. The game was a commercial success, selling 1.98 million copies, thus making it one of the Wii's best-selling games.

• Title — Mario Sports Mix • Developer — Square Enix • Publisher — Nintendo • Director — Shin Azuma • Producer — Toyokazu Nonaka Hiroyuki Miura • Artist — Gen Kobayashi • Composer — Masayoshi Soken Kumi Tanioka • Series — Mario Sports • Platforms — Wii • Genre — Sports • Modes — Single-player, multiplayer

• Illustration — Gameplay of basketball, one of the game's four sports The game is played much in the vein of past Mario sports games, with features such as powerful special moves and over-the-top, arcade-like gameplay, including the use of a "coin redemption system" that allows players to collect coins that are immediately spent on adding extra points to the next goal they score. Both cooperative and competitive local multiplayer modes are featured: depending on the sport, two players (two-on-two) or three players (three-on-three) can play cooperative multiplayer and four players (two-on-two) can play competitive multiplayer in two teams of two. Region locked online multiplayer is also featured, with two players per Wii console joining up to play two-on-two matches either against friends or against random players. The game features most of the characters and locations from the Mario franchise with a few guest appearances by characters from Square Enix's Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series of games. The Ninja, White Mage, Black Mage, Cactuar and Moogle characters all appear from the Final Fantasy series, while the Slime monster from the Dragon Quest series also appears. Players can also opt to play as one of their Mii characters.

The story mode takes place in the Mushroom Kingdom where Toad is gardening flowers, when all of a sudden, an object crashes behind Princess Peach's castle. Toad then runs to the object (along with a few other Toads), and finds a red crystal containing a basketball, a green crystal containing a volleyball, a yellow crystal containing a dodgeball, and a blue crystal containing a coin (which serves as a hockey puck). While observing the mysterious crystals, the Toads come up with an idea of introducing new sports—basketball, volleyball, dodgeball, and hockey—to the Mushroom Kingdom. Toad then organizes tournaments for the four sports. After the player beats the game in all four sports individually, the player is taken to a boss fight against Behemoth from Final Fantasy. After beating Behemoth, a Sports Mix mode is unlocked. It is largely identical to the previous tournaments, with the exception that all four sports are played in the tournament, and that the final boss is different, being Behemoth King instead of Behemoth.

Mario Sports Mix is the third Mario game developed by Square Enix after Super Mario RPG and Mario Hoops 3-on-3 and was first shown at E3 2010. During the Nintendo E3 presentation, Reggie Fils-Aimé stated that none of the included sports had featured in any previous Mario sports title. However, three of them have been featured in some fashion: basketball was the main focus of Mario Hoops 3-on-3 (and there are basketball-based minigames in Mario Party, Mario Party 4, Mario Party 6 and Mario Party 8); volleyball minigames were featured in Mario Party 4 and Mario Party 5; and hockey was a featured sport in Mario Party 5 and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. Mario Sports Mix marks the first time dodgeball has been featured in a Mario sports title and the first time the other three have been featured in prominent roles in a home console title.