With the launch of Mario Tennis Fever upon us, I had a thought. How much would it cost to play every single one of Mario's sports game spin-offs? I'm talking right from the days of the NES through until now, across every generation of Nintendo console. I've put in the work to find out, and as this article's headline suggests, it's no small number. Still, the real story is in how we get there and whether it's even remotely worth it.
First, though, a little housekeeping. I've created three rules for this experiment. For a start, I'm not counting any Mario Kart games as sports games. You can argue that Formula 1 is a sport if you like and that Mario Kart should be seen in the same light, but for the sake of this list, and because I find real-world motorsport about as engaging as watching the grass grow, I'm not including it. The second, likely less controversial, rule is that I'm only including games that launched globally, so a few Japanese exclusives don't make the cut.
Finally, there's the third rule. I'm looking at this list from the point of view of a collector, not just a player, which means I won't be counting anything from the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pass library. While I'm a big fan of Nintendo's retro-oriented service, it has its limitations. As you can likely guess, that's going to drive the final price up pretty significantly, but if we're going to do this, we're going to do it properly. Just a note, though. For this article, we've used the average price of eBay listings as of February 2026. Now, let's get into it.
The early era of Mario sports games is a bit peculiar, as they don't feature the mustachioed plumber's name in the title. While I'm not counting Tennis for NES, as Mario is merely an umpire and not a playable character, 1984's Golf features Mario in the roster, and you can pick that up on eBay for around $10. Up next is the Game Boy version of Baseball, this time with both Mario and Luigi, for another $10, and NES Open Tournament Golf, known as Mario Open Golf in Japan, which goes for about $50 in its case, or more like $20 for just the cartridge. I just want the game, so we'll call it $20.
For our first annoying complication, it's Mario's Tennis for the Virtual Boy. I say annoying, as we're going to have to cover all the consoles required to play every Mario sports game later, and the Virtual Boy is notoriously difficult to get your hands on. Still, funnily enough, Mario's Tennis itself isn't all that expensive, averaging out to about $25.
The Nintendo 64 saw the dawn of what many call the golden era of Mario sports games, with the release of Mario Golf and Mario Tennis. Surprisingly, neither of these games is all that expensive, with eBay listings for each averaging out to the $30 mark, or $60 for both. The year 2000 also heralded the launch of Mario Golf and Mario Tennis for Game Boy Color, and annoyingly, these aren't ports but their own games. That's another $70 to add to our total, with Mario Golf being one of the pricier picks so far at $40 and Mario Tennis matching its N64 counterpart at $30.
Here comes the GameCube era, and I'm not going to sugarcoat it; this is where things start to get pretty expensive. Again, we're turning to eBay, where Mario Superstar Baseball goes for an average of about $75, while Super Mario Strikers and Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour are around $55 and $35, respectively. There's also Mario Power Tennis, but thanks to a Nintendo Selects version of the tennis sim launching on the Wii in 2012, we can grab that for as little as $15. All said and done, those four games are coming in at a combined total of $180, though you could likely save a few dollars here and there by making some lowball offers.
As for Nintendo's other early 2000s offering, the Game Boy Advance, we've only got two titles to contend with: Mario Tennis: Power Tour and Mario Golf: Advance Tour. However, this time it's the tennis game setting you back more, around $40, while the golfing sim is closer to $30. That's another $70 to sort the GBA games, but things are about to get real. If you know your Nintendo history, you know what's coming next: the Nintendo Wii and the DS.
Let's start with the handheld, and there are only three games to worry about. We've got Mario Hoops 3-on-3 for roughly $25, plus Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, which are the cheapest of the bunch so far, each going for as little as $10. Annoyingly, though, both of those games are also on the Wii, and again, they're not like-for-like ports, so we have to spend about $50 to get them both.
While we're on the subject of the Wii, there are three more games to add to our collection, including Mario Strikers Charged, Mario Sports Mix, and Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games, all of which routinely go for about $20 each or $60 in total. Mario's trip to London is also on the 3DS, but like earlier handheld Olympic titles, it's pretty cheap at around $15. The last Wii game to get is Mario Super Sluggers, and it's slightly more expensive than its console compatriots at roughly $30. Don't worry if, at this point, you're not keeping up with the totals, as we'll come back to that later on.
At this point, we're nearly there, with just consoles to cover until we get to the Switch. We'll stick with the 3DS for now, having just mentioned it. First up is Mario Tennis Open, which fluctuates in price but evens out to roughly $30, while Mario Golf: World Tour is more like $35, and Mario Sports Superstars is a relatively reasonable $20. That just leaves Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, another multi-platform release. The 3DS version is another $20, but the Wii U version is somehow more in the region of $50. Add in Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games at about $40, and that's a $195-shaped hole in our wallet.
Then there's the Nintendo Switch era, and this is when it gets much easier to calculate, since all the Switch games are available on Amazon. It doesn't get any cheaper, though, that's for sure. At the time of writing, you can get Mario Tennis Aces for $53.15, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 for $29.99, Mario Golf: Super Rush for $51.90, and Mario Strikers: Battle League for $52.99. Oh, and now it's out; there's also Mario Tennis Fever for the Nintendo Switch 2, retailing at $69. So, for all those games, you're looking at another $257.03. I'm not playing with cents, though, so let's call it $257.
Now comes the catch. Owning the games is one thing, but you'll need all the applicable consoles to play them. We can do a bit of cheating here, as there are a lot of Nintendo consoles that support games from the generation before them - the Wii running GameCube games, for example - but it still complicates things.
Here's a rundown of what we need and how much each console costs. There's the NES, which varies wildly in price on eBay, but the average comes to about $110. Up next, it's the Nintendo 64 for around $150, plus a Game Boy Advance SP for all those Game Boy, GBC, and GBA games, also working out to around $150. Then there's the Wii, which we're also using for GameCube games, for about $120; a $150 3DS; and, thanks to Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games and Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, a Wii U for somewhere in the region of $140. Add the Nintendo Switch 2, currently retailing for $449.99, and the required hardware is setting us back $1,269.99.
We've forgotten something there, though, haven't we? Yes, the Virtual Boy and Mario's Tennis are finally coming back to bite us, and it's a big bite, in the region of $300, if you're lucky. Thanks to that one game alone, our final hardware total is $1,570, rounded up to the nearest dollar.
If you take that number and add all the games, our final total is - drumroll please - $2,667. That's $1,097 for the games and $1,570 for the consoles. Now, for the real question, do I think that owning all of Mario's sporting exploits and the consoles to play them on is worth that amount of money? Honestly, probably not. While there aren't really any stinkers in there, some of the older games, especially from the NES and Nintendo 64, don't hold up all that well today, especially if you're used to modern control schemes and visuals.
Ironically, the result of this experiment makes perhaps the best argument I've seen for the benefits of the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack service so far. A lot of the earlier games, through until the age of the GameCube, are available to play via the platform, with more potentially coming in the near future. It's not great for collectors, which is the role we've played in this exercise, but if you just want to whack some golf balls as Mario or take on Luigi at a game of tennis, there are ways and means.
So, there you have it: if you happen to have $2,667 sitting around, you can play through every Mario sports game as intended. Whether or not that's a good idea is your call. Just remember, there are some exciting games on the way you might want to save your money for, and you can find out about them in our Pokémon Pokopia preview and Resident Evil Requiem preview.