A couple of hours into my time with Mario Strikers: Battle League the possibilities of the game’s gear system clicked—by gear system, I mean clothing items you unlock to upgrade the characters. Each new bit of gear tweaks the strength, speed, shooting, passing, technique of whichever character you choose. It’s a balanced system—if you increase one stat, another stat declines an equal amount. Before my revelation I’d wondered why anyone would bother with that kind of micro-management. There are ten players to choose from—Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Donkey Kong and so on—and rather than tweak the stats, surely it’s just as easy to choose a different player. If Donkey Kong is too slow, I could go ahead and pick Yoshi instead. Toad is the quickest player in the game. Now I saw some pote...