Mario Strikers: Battle League — Everything you need to know

Ever want to play a game of soccer where tackling is encouraged and there aren’t any rules? If so, you’ll love Mario Strikers: Battle League. Players take control of a member of the Mushroom Kingdom while competing in 5-v-5 games where you’re out to score the most points before the time runs out. But you can take advantage of special skills and items to trip up your opponents and come out ahead.

Much like Mario Tennis and Mario Golf, Mario Strikers is one of Nintendo’s Mario sports games. Strikers is basically super-charged soccer where players compete in 5-v-5 teams, use their characters’ special abilities to get the ball, and score the most points in an allotted amount of time. The biggest difference from traditional soccer is that characters can sometimes use their hands, tackling is encouraged, and special items can be used to trip others up.

Super Mario Strikers, the first game in the series, was released in 2005 on GameCube. Then the second game, Mario Strikers Charged, was released in 2007 on the Wii. This means it has been 15 years since the last Strikers game was released, so it’s not surprising if you haven’t heard of these games before.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Trailer

This is the launch trailer that was first revealed during the February 2022 Nintendo Direct.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Character roster

These are all of the characters we saw by scouring official images and videos. Any unplayable characters are marked with (*).

Much like in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, players can run into Question Blocks and acquire helpful items. These are all of the items we saw by scouring official images and trailers. We’ll add more as we learn more.

As you complete matches, you’ll earn Coins, which can be used to purchase gear for your characters in between games. Gear determines your strength, speed, shooting, passing, and technique stats. The better your gear, the better your stats will be. Gear also changes what your character looks like.

At certain points while playing, a golden orb might appear on the field. The player who successfully reaches it and then charges it up will be able to do a special move known as a Hyper Strike. Each characters’ Hyper Strike move is different. If a player scores while in this state, it can count for two points instead of just one, which could mean the difference between winning and losing.

Mario Strikers: Battle League How many players can play at once?

Up to eight players can play at a time from one Nintendo Switch console. You just have to make sure you have enough Joy-Cons to go around. If you don’t have that many people to play with, the computer will control the extras. Teams are made up of five characters, but both sides have a non-playable goalie named Boom Boom.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Online multiplayer

If you don’t have anyone around to play with you but you have a Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) membership, then you can play with people from around the world in online matches.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Online Club

Those with an NSO subscription can also participate in Online Clubs. Here you create or join an Online Club that can host up to 20 players. Members compete for placement amongst themselves and can see each other’s stats. If you work hard, your club might just be the best one in the whole world.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Developer

As with the first two Mario Strikers games, Battle League is being developed by Next Level Games. This is also the developer that brought us the Luigi’s Mansion series.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Game file size

Mario Strikers: Battle League is a rather small game taking up only 3GB of space. Still, you’ll want to make sure you have plenty of room on your microSD card before playing it.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Release date

Mario Strikers: Battle League releases on June 10, 2022, and sells for $60. It’s currently available for pre-order.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Will there be DLC?

There hasn’t been any word on DLC yet, but it’s very likely that we’ll get some since this is a common practice by Nintendo. DLC would more than likely bring additional courses and additional characters. For example, some notable playable characters from previous games are missing like Daisy, Birdo, Bowser Jr., and Diddy Kong.

Mario Strikes again

It’s crazy that after 15 years we’re finally getting another entry in the Mario Strikers series. It looks like this one will be a doozy and we can’t wait to get our hands on it.