YMMV / Mario Sports Mix

• Game-Breaker:
  • Moogle's Limit Break in basketball. The ball may or may not disappear mid-shot and, if it does, it reappears at another angle of the basket. Usually, it's not that difficult to deal with if you cooperate with your teammates... except if Moogle decides to make the ball disappear twice. Then, when it respawns, it's a tenth of an inch away from the hoop, leaving you with a near 0% chance of blocking the shot. Have fun!
  • In dodgeball, some players have come up with a way to use the ball while on the opponent's field. The key is being in mid-air so you don't automatically lose possession of the ball, which only triggers if you're touching the ground. This significantly improves a player's chance of offense when they're supposed to be vulnerable, and it soon became a key element in the metagame.
  • Bowser Junior's Limit Break in volleyball and dodgeball. In the former, if the opponent manages to receive the ball, Junior just has to approach the net, jump and spike the ball immediately at an uncovered spot after his teammate has received the free ball from the opponent. The other team will not have a chance to receive this time, because they will still be sliding through the field randomly, and the ball will have much more speed. Of course, this involves the player's knowledge of another Game-Breaker in volleyball: spiking at will, anytime, by pressing A in Nunchuck control style. Now, in dodgeball, even if the opponents dodge Junior's attack, whoever's at the "prison" behind the opposing field can catch the ball. The player just has to take control of that character and throw the ball again when a sliding opponent comes nearby.
  • Any luck-based Limit Break can be considered this, especially when used in a critical situation. For example, being two points behind in basketball and performing Ninja's Limit Break as a buzzer beater to win. Good luck stopping him if you're on the opposing team.
  • Using items when spiking the ball in volleyball at Peach's Castle. Normally, your window to pass the ball is limited by the water streams, but you can get the ball through them with any item. It becomes the key to winning in that arena. Of course, you can also do the opposite: spiking at the water curtain so you can easily receive the ball in your own field and charge up your Limit Break. As long as you don't spike it across the net, you will be able to repeatedly fill up the gauge.
  • Cactuar's ridiculous speed. It's the key to winning in basketball. Heck, even using his Limit Break to incapacitate people while you travel across the field easily makes things laughable. No wonder there was always a Cactuar in competitive play online.
  • Black Mage's "dive" move in V-ball. It basically can receive any ball in any part of the field as long as it's not a superspike made by a power character aimed at the opposite corner where the mage is. Games can be dragged on for quite a while if you have a good defense as well and neither team can score. Now imagine a game between two Black Mages...
  • White Mage can create a pretty large deflective wall in volleyball that cleanly blocks any spike, even Yoshi's high as hell superspike! This protects her from being knocked out by any item or powerful superspikes. The timing for setting up the wall is pretty smooth and easy to get as well, as opposed to the hard-to-master Black Mage's narrow lightning. She can even set up the wall on the net's opposite end to the one she's at!
  • Any Limit Break in volleyball can come across as a Game-Breaker when the ball is one tenth of an inch from touching your ground because it flawlessly gives you the ball back wherever it is wherever you are.
  • Luigi's Limit Break consists of sucking the opponents with his vacuum cleaner. There's an excellent chance all opponents will be knocked out if you wait until the very last second to score. The only thing that diminishes that chance is running in the opposite direction where Luigi is, but, even if the opponents do so, they will most likely still be KO'd. Scoring can get ridiculously easy most times.
  • Waluigi's Limit Break in any sport can be this, but it's most devastating in Dodgeball. Waluigi has a contraption which fires four balls at once, which can continuously cause damage to other players until it's over. This can cause the entire team to lose in one shot if the player as Waluigi is capable.
• Good Bad Bugs: In volleyball, you can jump to prepare for a spike before your teammate tosses the ball to you. Doing this when your mate is charging a superspike allows you to hit the ball with the animation used for normal spikes, but with the effects of a superspike, meaning you can hit very hard very fast.
• Memetic Mutation: The North American trailers and commercials for the game are often subject to Youtube Poops but the trailer in which involves Mario being interviewed by one of the Mii announcers is the most popular.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: While Mario Hoops 3-on-3 and Mario Sports Mix has Mario characters crossing over with Final Fantasy characters, none of the Final Fantasy characters in question were specific characters, and instead were Mooks or character archetypes. Several years later, a few of the Mario characters would cross over again with Final Fantasy, but this time with the franchise's most famous protagonist and eventually its most famous antagonist.
  • Made even better with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which added the Dragon Quest Heroes as Downloadable Content, giving all three franchises representation. However, while that was the first time the three franchises were represented together at least, Dragon Quest and Mario previously had crossovers in Itadaki Street DS and Fortune Street.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many have checked out both this game and Mario Hoops 3-on-3 solely for the prospect of Mario characters playing sports with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest characters.
• Retroactive Recognition: This game and Mario Hoops 3-on-3 are Masayoshi Soken's earlier musical works, before he went on to compose the much-beloved music of Final Fantasy XIV. As a tidbit, this is similar to how Yoko Shimomura first composed Super Mario RPG and the Mario & Luigi series before going on to compose Final Fantasy XV.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Having to unlock everything within each sport individually, meaning you have to unlock everything four times (except for Sports Mix mode) for 100% completion...Or you can just use the hidden Unlock all Classic Cheat Code the game has.
  • The game's online, while fairly good and serviceable for its time, is region locked unlike other games such as Mario Kart Wii.
• Tear Jerker: Luigi's reaction to losing a match in this game, where he sobs hysterically and hangs his head, is rather sad. While Luigi often sobs whenever losing in Mario spinoff titles, his sobbing is usually very comedic-sounding. Here, he sobs with a realistic and broken-sounding voice, making it far less comedic than in most other games.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: More then a few people are not sure if Black Mage in this game is either Male or Female, since their breasts/pecs can easily be mistaken for the opposite.

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