As announced by Nintendo on Twitter, as well as with the following trailer on YouTube, Daisy is the newest playable character to be added to the Mario Strikers: Battle League roster via an upcoming free update. She’s dropping on July 21 at 6PM PT (9PM ET), but she’s not alone. Shy Guy will be sporting his cleats as well, and this time, not just as a sidekick.
Daisy is described as a technique type who won’t get knocked down, and indeed, as the trailer shows, technique is her highest stat by far. Shy Guy is much more of an all-rounder whom you can adjust how you please, with gear. Speaking of gear, characters aren’t the only new thing coming. The trailer showed off a new style of gear based around knight armor. These pieces have a more medieval visual style, as opposed to the standard bruiser look, and specifically buff your strength and shooting. Along with that, also comes a new stadium called Desert Ruin.
Nintendo further announced that two more free updates are arriving before the end of 2022, and states that we should “look forward to additional characters, gear, and stadiums!” If there’s a consistent pattern to these updates, it could be that Mario Strikers fans are getting 4 more new characters before the year ends. This would align with previous dataminer info, stating that 10 characters will be added to the game post-launch.
The Mario Strikers series began in 2005 with Super Mario Strikers for the Nintendo GameCube. Its mere existence as the first Mario football title was enough to garner it a lot of attention, but it really stood out against the other Mario sports games for its distinct grungy art style and irreverent attitude. This was represented in its gameplay as well, with its ‘no restraint, no rules’ form of football. It was followed by Mario Strikers Charged for the Wii in 2007, but afterwards, the series stayed dormant up until Battle League in 2022. Thus, its first reveal yielded a lot of hype, but right now, fans are mixed about the game as a whole.
This free update announcement falls in line with what has been Nintendo’s recent strategy with modern Mario sports titles. Be it with Mario Tennis Aces or Mario Golf: Super Rush, Nintendo drops the game in a state that many consider lacking in content, both in characters and modes, to then add this content later over time. Though the content always comes in free updates, fans constantly express annoyance over having to wait and exclaim that by the time the game is content complete, they’ve already moved on.
This newest sports title has seen more backlash than ever regarding this particular problem. Though updates can keep people coming back to the game, there’s an argument to be made over a game not having enough content at the start to keep players hooked at all. It is good to see that two more updates will be coming so fast, and these perhaps will convince those that are unsure if the game is worth sticking to.
