The 2007 Sleepers - Mario Strikers Charged Football

21 Apr 2008 at 18:34:50 by Paul Younger

Welcome to the first in a series of pieces taking a look back at the games of 2007 that the rest of the media forgot to mention. We plan to direct your eye to those slow burning sleeper hits of 2007 that may have started slowly, but went on to gather pace as the year progressed. Although these titles won't be remembered as the poster children of 2007, they have won a place in the heart of many a gamer and created strong, ongoing communities that still promote their joys today.

Mario making a go for it...

We’ll kick things off by looking at Mario Strikers Charged (or Mario Strikers Charged Football for those of a European persuasion). This was the first Wii release to provide online play proper. In fact, those on Commonwealth shores could more or less lay claim to getting the game a good month before the US or even Japan. They cut their teeth sharing friend codes or picking up random matches whilst the rest of the world looked on as Nintendo took its new console into those notoriously sharkey online waters.

Once the game finally got its worldwide release it achieved pretty good scores on the likes of MetaCritic and GamesRankings. But dig into a lot of these reviews and you discover that some of the more nuanced aspects of play go unmentioned. All this made many gamers pass over Mario Charged Soccer, a*uming it to be a quick knock off of the equivalent Mario Charged GameCube game. It was not until the majority of reviews had hit the inter-tubes or been pressed into print that many of its buried features started to be discovered. As new and imaginative play techniques and strategies hit the likes of GameFaqs, various fan sites gathered around to fill in some of the holes in the community features not found in the game itself setting up tournaments, leagues and tactical advice centres.

But before we delve into to these communities and forums in detail, let us remind ourselves of how the game plays. We'll leave the basic running around and shooting controls in the hands of existing reviews and guides, but one area that demands mention relates to the 'Charged' part of this game's name. How charged-up the ball is has an effect on every aspect of the game and has become key for success. Charging the ball is described in the tutorials by pressing A to pass from one player to the next in quick succession. However, it recently emerged that you could charge the ball much quicker via the B shoot button; hold down B then milliseconds before the shot would be released tab the A button to pass. This results in an instantly charged white-hot ball, ready for super shots or powered offensive moves.
Once you have a charged ball, you are much more likely to score a shot, provided you are in the opposing team's half. However, again unmentioned by the tutorial, a charged ball also powers up your player's offensive abilities. When a character has a white-hot ball at their feet and presses the D-Pad, their attacks or evasions suddenly have more power and range. The quick witted among you may have already spotted this. Characters with a special move such as teleport or jump can now zap forward much further and even teleport or jump their way right past the keeper!

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