There have been numerous sports games featuring Mario characters, based, among others, on tennis, golf, baseball, soccer, and various sports featured in the Olympic Games.
The Mario Kart and F1 series are not included in this list.
Known in Japan as Super Mario Stadium Family Baseball.[b]
Tennis games
While Mario appeared in Tennis as a referee, he first starred as a player in the Virtual Boy game Mario's Tennis, developed by Nintendo R&D1. Like the Mario Golf series, the games have been developed by Camelot Software Planning since the Nintendo 64 instalment.
This marks the first appearance of Waluigi. Characters from the Game Boy Color version of Mario Tennis can be uploaded to the Nintendo 64 version via Transfer Pak connectivity.
The Game Boy Color version is the first game in the series to feature a story mode with original characters. Characters from the Game Boy Color version of Mario Tennis can be uploaded to the Nintendo 64 version via Transfer Pak connectivity.
This is the third game in the series to feature a story mode.
Golf games
As with tennis, Mario appeared in multiple golf games before appearing in a Mario-branded entry on the Nintendo 64. Golf was the first sports game to feature Mario as a player. The series is currently developed by Camelot Software Planning.
Mario Strikers (Mario Football in PAL regions and Mario Soccer in South Korea) is a series of association football video games that take place in the Mushroom Kingdom. All entries are developed by Next Level Games.
The Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series is a collection of games that take place during the Summer and WinterOlympic Games, crossing over characters from the Mario series with those from Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. It debuted in 2007 for the Wii with the Beijing 2008 edition, titled Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Nintendo published the East Asian versions of the first three games and fully published the fourth and fifth games, while Sega published the Western versions of the first three games and fully published the sixth game, with Nintendo licensing characters. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) allowed the licensing deal to lapse in 2020, effectively ending the series.[3][4]
The last known game overall with work by AlphaDream before the company declared bankruptcy in 2019.[10] The final game in the series before the Olympics license expired.
The GameCube version features cameo appearances by Mario, Luigi, and Peach as playable characters. The Mario characters were exclusive to Nintendo's platform.
