Making Mario more striking: a retrospective on Next Level Games
Next Level Games is a Canadian game development studio that, as of 2021, was bought by Nintendo. They’ve worked on popular series such as Mario Strikers, Luigi’s Mansion, and even Metroid. While their games are known for being fun and of high quality, they’re also known for bringing a lot of style to the Mario universe, especially amongst the spin-offs.
Nobody would ever doubt the quality of the Mario franchise, but it’s hard to deny that they don’t often innovate with exciting art styles. 2D Mario games have looked the same for more than a few different console generations. Even the tennis, golf, and kart franchises look identical. That’s why in 2005 when Next Level exploded onto the Nintendo scene with Mario Strikers on the Gamecube, people were starstruck.
The Gamecube is so often described as the era of experimentation. Zelda was taking a new art direction with Wind Waker, Metroid was going first-person, and Mario was getting new sports games, one being Strikers. The art style looks like a rough drawing with dark shades of black outlining covering each character to give the game a more gritty and stylized look.
The box art features Mario and Donkey Kong angrily facing each other down with fire, and lightning explodes from the soccer ball. Whereas Mario tennis and Golf had a much more “let’s all play together” vibe, Mario Strikers had an “I’m going to destroy you” energy about it. Characters could full-blown tackle each other into the mud or shove each other into electric fences, causing severe damage. With characters being tackled, run over by shells, blown up by bombs, or full-on drop kicked by goalies, the name of the game was mayhem. There was a lot of charm to get behind with Mario Strikers.
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