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Mario Power Tennis

There's something to be said when an arcade gamer, a fighter fanatic, an anime freak and a PC-shooter nut all get together in one basement to play a video game about tennis. Throw in the fact that everyone is having fun and you've just said a mouthful. Enter Mario Power Tennis, Camelot's latest offering in the ever-expanding world of sports games featuring Nintendo's key franchises. Having dealt with previous games of similar faith, gamers expected Camelot to deliver the fun that was had in their previous works. Once again, they fail to disappoint.

For those of us not familiar with Mario Tennis for the Nintendo 64, Mario Power Tennis boasts a concept that's simple as to not confuse us, the general consumer. It has characters from the Mario universe and it has tennis. That's all you need to know, really. Although many gamers may be too inept to get outside and pick up a real racket, many have been known to enjoy a nice round of Virtua Tennis for the Dreamcast and (gasp!) Top Spin for the XBox, among other games that share said concept. Tennis isn't something new in gaming, dating way back to the origins of gaming just as Pong preceded us all. This of course is all as arguable as it is relevant.

If we can drop the whole Pong sentiment, I'd like to delve into something much more intricate and entertaining than a white ball that bounces back and forth on a black screen. Entertaining by my standards, of course, as I'm currently part of a jilted generation simply known as "X" and surely don't appreciate my heritage as a gamer, or as much of a gamer as I'd like to consider myself. Tennis. In real-world journalistic terms I just typed out a sentence fragment, but in gaming terms I said more than could have been said in this entire article. In Nintendo's 1983 epic Tennis, good ol' Mario refs a game between some guy with a green shirt and some other guy with a blue shirt. These two characters hit a yellow dot back and forth over a green court until, eventually, one of them misses the mass of pixels and a point is scored. This game taught us not only the fundamentals of tennis as a sport, but it also taught us the fundamentals of tennis representing a lifestyle. Generally speaking, you have to be in the game to win the game. This notion can become frustrating when applied to real-life terms. Whenever you are trying to succeed, there may be someone with a a bunch of pixels in their hand trying to volley your goals right back to you. So what do you do? You need to slice the ball into their court so hard that they miss it and you succeed. That's what life is, one big tennis match.

Getting back to the subject at hand though, Mario Power Tennis is a very finely-crafted tennis game. When you look at it, the exact fundamentals we have been discussing are all there, but Camelot wouldn't have it just so it ends at this point like Nintendo's famous early 1980s endeavor. They take their tennis game to the proverbial extreme, adding personality to their characters, special moves to their matches and a psuedo-plot overtone to their entire game. Of course, when I say "overtone" I really mean it has a cute opening movie. When you turn on the game you're greeted with some "It's Good to be Bad" marketing as Wario and Waluigi welcome you (this isn't, of course, before the warning that you should check the safety precautions listed in your booklet, which Lord knows we don't see enough of in our Nintendo game intros today). In the amazingly well-done opening video, Wario and Waluigi immediately lose a match to the famous plumbing duo of Mario and Luigi. In a fit of rage and jealously, the two menacing maniacs go to the leaderboard and proceed to draw hilarious eyelashes on Luigi's face, calling him "Mr. Eyeballs". Apparently this is a major offense in the Mushroom Kingdom because soon after about a dozen robot-cops are chasing them up and down the stadium. They somehow manage to wind up in Bowser's lair, where he is hard at work plotting his revenge on the Mario brothers. Apparently Bowser missed the memo that lets everyone know that beating someone in a tennis match doesn't automatically destroy their pride and mean world domination, but we'll let him get away with it. Anyone who can convey messages just by pointing and grunting at something is OK in my book.

Alright, so the game isn't very plot-driven, but it's pretty safe to assume that being a tennis game of such a stature the story isn't all that important. As long as I can run around a court and smash a tennis ball into the other court, the game's a success in my eyes. Camelot once again manages to take the sport and turn it into a balmy video game featuring princesses and dinosaurs that wear bright red shoes, creating a colorful experience and another great game to add to the Gamecube's ever-expanding line-up of party games.

The first thing players will notice upon entering their first match will be Camelot's amazingly Nintendo-ish presentation. "First match, Bowser Jr. to serve" is heard (granted your character is Bowser Jr., like my personal preference) from the appropriate announcer, words are flashed on the screen and it's time to get into the game. There's nothing flashy beyond the point that you'll want to keep smashing the A button thinking "Get on with it! I want to play some tennis!" all the while clenching your teeth. When the tennis ball is hit, depending on how long you've prepared your every attack and what type of shot you used, colors trail behind the tennis ball as it bounces into your opponent's court. All the tricks in the book are here – you can hit a ball forward and you can lob the ball over your opponent's head in case they get cocky and start hugging the net. Your character, at seemingly random times, are also enabled to use their "Power Shot". Each character has their own Power Shot and can either use their up-close move or their long-range move, depending on their distance from the ball. Every Power Shot is unique to your character and helps to illustrate the bizarre aspects of tennis the world of Mario practices. A personal favorite of mine would have to be Wario's long-distance Power Shot where he whips out an apparatus that can catapult his racket towards the ball so that he may hit it from all the way across the court. In real life, Wario would have swiftly been disqualified, but thanks to the magic of interactive entertainment it's perfectly alright for Wario to commit such a heinous crime of tennis.

Alone, a single player has the option to enter in tournaments either by themselves or with a computer-controlled ally. From there, they have the choice to either play on regular courts or gimmick courts. Gimmick courts also put a nice spin on the niche of tennis by introducing arenas with traps that can either put you at an advantage or disadvantage. In Wario's court, the floor moves. In Donkey Kong's court, Klap Traps latch on to the character, slowing down their movements. Within these tournament sections lie Cups that you can progress through. You can start on Mushroom Cup and work your way through the proceeding Cups until you've become the tennis master. The AI in the game is surprisingly swift and many players may find themselves struggling when presented with more difficult characters. After a few hours of playing, however, I found myself almost unstoppable and eventually I thought up some techniques that mean instant-win on my part. It's because of this that I failed to see all the fun in playing single-player aside from unlocking some of the game's many secrets.

This is where the aforementioned "party" aspect of the game comes into play. It's very difficult to find a game that all of my friends enjoy playing at any given moment. Up until Mario Power Tennis was introduced to my home, we've been keeping ourselves busy with matches of Kirby Air Ride, Wario Ware Inc. Mega Party Games, Mario Party 5, and the occasional cooperative match of Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. Now that this whimsical tennis game has been introduced to our lives, it's been keeping us busy on those boring hours between school. When playing with more than a single player, you have the option to play exhibition games. Unfortunately, Camelot has yet to implement a system where you can do a four-player singles match simultaneously, but teaming up with friends on one of Mario Power Tennis's many courts introduces loads of replay value. You also have the option of playing special mini-games that usually feature hitting tennis balls towards walls or objects in an attempt to gain the highest score, but we don't really pay much attention to that aspect because, although the games do seem varied at first, it quickly becomes apparent that the goal is the same in almost all of them.

One thing this venture lacks is a definitive sense of style in the character's movement. I'm going to relate this to the graphical style Camelot has chosen because these aspects of the game are the only ones that feel conventional to any extent. Yes, it does feel like a Mario game at almost all times, and there's nothing wrong with that, but sometimes it's nice to have a little variety. I'm not condoning that Mario pull a Jak & Daxter and change up styles through every game, but it would have been nice to see a side-game like this switch up their styles of polish. I admire when companies like Hudson take Mario and create their own little world for the characters like in the Mario Party series as it takes a nice turn from the ordinary grind. There are tennis courts inspired by Mario levels, especially the Super Mario Sunshine stages, although I don't really see the necessity of this because, having been released over 2 years ago, Mario Sunshine is barely fresh in our minds. It would have sufficed if these stages were easily unlockable, like the classic Mario court and Camelot had created their own world. Otherwise, my gripes with the game are minimal.

The graphics, as I mentioned earlier, are overly-colorful which perfectly match Mario's most recent ventures. There are lots of lights, pastels and effects that brighten up the courts and Power Shot moves that cheer up the entire tone of the game, even in the darker courts like Bowser's area and Luigi's Mansion. The characters are well-detailed and have their own little flare to them that distinguish their abilities from the other's. My only complaint about the graphics reside in the Delfino Plaza court. When you're trying to locate a bright yellow ball on a court with bright shades of red and green it becomes a little ridiculous. Otherwise, everything is in proportion and easy on the eyes.

All of the music in the game is done by Star Ocean series composer Motoi Sakuraba. Sakuraba arranged a few tunes for the game from the Mario universe, including themes from Luigi's Mansion and Super Mario Sunshine for their respective courts. Something that plagues nearly all of Sakuraba's works is his consistency towards role-playing game battle music, which is apparent (and inappropriate) in Mario Power Tennis. For example, in the final sets in tournament matches the music kicks up far too much for a tennis game and I keep expecting Donkey Kong to whip out his Breaker and cast a firestorm spell on my character. The sound effects are all very nice and well-done, and the voice acting is sometimes a bit different compared to previous Mario games. For example, this time Daisy is obnoxiously sassy, proclaiming "Uh, whatever!" when she misses the ball. This is of course opposed to her voice in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! where she would frequently remind the player of who she is. Other characters like Yoshi, Luigi and Koopa Troopa are all still very true to the characters and voices we've come to accept over the years.

Character control is very responsive, as we've come to expect from Camelot when they're making games that require quick reflexes. Everything moves just as you'd expect in a tennis game featuring the nimble Mario characters, which of course excludes the unlockable Petey Piranha who is far too large to get any entertainment out of. On the occasion, I did find my character to dive for the ball rather than just smack it, causing me to lose a match here and there, but that's nothing at all serious.

This game gets an N-Philes score of B+.

The dynamics of tennis are nothing tricky and it's very difficult to take something that has proven itself fun in gaming in the past and turn it to dirt. Mario Power Tennis continues this fashion set by so many games before it, including its predecessor on the Nintendo 64. If you're looking for a quick, fun game that demands reflexes, has replay value by the bucket loads, and is a blast to play with friends, check it out. I can't give you much reason not to.

Posted in: Reviews