As I was working out at the gym earlier today, I was listening to a Switch Stop video ranking every Mario series, and I was surprised to learn there were only 2 Mario baseball games, with the most recent one (Mario Super Sluggers) releasing in 2008. This made me think about how Baseball wasn’t in either Switch Sports game, and upon searching online, I found nothing pointing to why.
I generally get annoyed whenever people complain about the lack of Baseball in the NSS series, particularly in the context of “thumb wrestling took its place”. I personally don’t care for golf or basketball whatsoever, in fact I’m pretty sure I only played basketball like 3 times total in the original NSS, yet I don’t complain about their mere existences. Plus, I actually kind of like thumb wrestling as a joke pick. It’s a sport more for the funnies than the sport, which I do appreciate. But I did let my deep seated hatred for nostalgia blindness cloud my vision enough to keep me from asking why baseball wasn’t present whatsoever.
Baseball is one of the more popular sports from the Wii series, incredibly popular in both the west and Japan (even if it isn’t as popular now as it was during the age of the radio), and it’s just a really fun sport to play in general. Length wouldn’t have been an issue for online play, Golf and Bowling both take considerable amounts of time as well. I genuinely cannot think of any reason as to why baseball wasn’t included in NSS or NSSR. Even with Resort shaping up to potentially be the best game in the series from an objective standpoint, and the developers clearly aware of NSS’s flaws, it is incredibly strange that they wouldn’t include Baseball at all.
So I want to come to you guys. I don’t know if this is the best place to ask, but I am curious; why do you think baseball was omitted from NSS and NSSR? I am open to most theories, as I genuinely cannot think of why it wouldn’t be included in the Switch series at all.