None of these games sound like they were intended for the next Nintendo console. If so, we can hope that the Mario team has new ideas to shakeup this slice of Mario games. It sounds more like this upcoming 2D Mario will be in the New Super Mario Bros series. Of course, we already have a Super Mario Maker 2 on the Nintendo Switch. The most enjoyable new idea in this space has been Super Mario Maker. A case can certainly be made that the New Super Mario games haven’t really made dense, enjoyably replayable game worlds in the same way that Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros 3 were. Perhaps the bigger problem is that the team working on the New Super Mario series hadn’t pushed 2D Mario games as hard as they should have. While you will hear quite loudly that hardcore fans don’t want to play 2D Mario platformers anymore, it is the core genre that made Mario famous. Lastly, Nintendo has a strange dilemma when it comes to Mario’s 2D platformers. We don’t know if Nintendo has evidence that there is renewed interest for a new Mario baseball game, but perhaps they are simply hoping the Switch’s success as a platform and high attach rate will buoy this game’s chances Between this and Nintendo’s woes with the Wii U, this long gap between releases is well accounted for. Notably, Mario’s baseball games did not make their way to Nintendo’s portable systems, the same way that Mario Golf or even Mario Tennis did. Mario has only had two baseball games thus far: Mario Superstar Baseball on the Gamecube in 2005, and Mario Super Sluggers on the Wii in 2008.

If true, it will also be an odd return for Nintendo to a long dormant series.

The upcoming Mario sports game is rumored to be a baseball game. While non canon, the prospect of Mario and Sonic characters competing in Olympic sports has been popular enough to make this a recurring series. The Summer Olympics are scheduled in Paris on July 26 to August 11, 2024, so it’s likely that this game is coming this holiday for that Olympics. The Mario and Sonic at the Olympics titles are obviously planned around the real life Olympics themselves.

Amari and the great game