Original Mario Strikers Developer Is Creating Battle League [IGN]

Nintendo didn’t mention who was behind the new Mario football game when it was revealed during a packed Nintendo Direct in early February, causing fans to speculate if the original developer was returning after more than a decade.

But the Australian Classification Board revealed that Next Level Games would be developing Battle League, as spotted by Nintendo Everything.

Next Level Games is the only developer to work on the Mario Strikers series, launching the original game in 2005 and its sequel, Mario Strikers Charged, for Wii in 2007. It’s worked on several other Nintendo games since then, however, including Punch-Out!! on Wii, Metroid Prime: Federation Force on 3DS, and Luigi’s Mansion 3 on Switch.

Nintendo acquired Next Level Games in January 2021 to make the development process more efficient and, of course, to ensure it worked solely on Nintendo games going forward.

The purchase is already bearing fruit, as Mario Strikers: Battle League is coming to Nintendo Switch on June 10 this year.

IGN said Mario Strikers Charged was “great” and “a deeply satisfying, hugely entertaining title”. For a more recent insight into Next Level Games, however, we said 2019’s “Luigi’s Mansion 3 is so much fun, so charming, and so smartly designed that, moving forward, I really hope we get more than three of these games every 20 years.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.