Mario Power Tennis

"Take Mario Tennis 64 and Mariotize it even more!"

Intro: Mario Power Tennis is the long awaited sequal to Mario Tennis 64. We have known about a Mario Tennis game coming to gamecube for a long time and now here it is finally. Mario Power Tennis is quite different from mario tennis 64 in that it has a lot more crazy stuff. It has new minigames, crazy tennis courts, and very cool special moves for each character.

Graphics: The graphics in Mario Power Tennis are a large improvement from Mario Tennis 64. If you have played Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour expect the character models in this to be very similar. The animation runs very smoothly and the courts are very colorful and detailed. Overall the graphics quality reminds me or Mario Golf Toadstool Tour and Super Mario Sunshine. It looks really nice.

GRAPHICS SCORE: 9

Gameplay: There is a lot to do in Mario Power Tennis. First there is exhibition mode. This is the most basic mode of the game in which you will probably do most of your multiplayer gaming. You can do both singles and doubles matches with up to 4 players when doing doubles. There are 14 characters to choose from the start, Ill leave all the secret ones a surprise for you. There are unfortunately around 10 courts that you can play in, perhaps there are more to unlock by linking with a future mario tennis game? In exhibtion mode you can play standard mode for some basic tennis, ring shot mode, and a item battle mode. If you have played mario tennis 64 these should all be familiar. The new special power shots are a lot of fun, each character has one offensive power shot and one defensive power shot. Each of these shots will show a quick little scene when he or she uses it. With the inclusion of the Gimmick Courts there is some extra fun added. Some courts have crazy obstacles like ghosts that wander around the court in Luigi's Mansion court. These courts can also be played in standard mode if you not a fan of the obstacles. The next mode is tournament mode. It stars off with the World Cup consisting of the mushroom, flower, and star trophies and also the Gimmick Masters Cup which has the fire and thunder trophies. Ill just let you know that there is more passed that, but you will have to play the game to find out. Tournament mode can be played in singles and doubles, but unfortunately there is no co-op in tournament mode. The next mode is the Special Games, there are a decent variety of minigames that are also in the game. This is something that was not in mario tennis 64. One of these minigames involves returning paintballs with your tennis racket to paint a picture of certain mario characters. Another involves trying to kill Mecha Bowser in an instense boss battle. Many of them can also be played in multiplayer, but some are single player only like the mecha bowser battle one. Overall gameplay variety is very nice in this game, there are some faults but not many.
GAMEPLAY SCORE: 9

Sound: Sound in this game isn't anything over the top or anything, but it is still good. I would just consider it average, nothing really wrong with it, but also it isn't anything special. There are a few familiar tunes in the game. All the characters have decent voices too.
SOUND SCORE: 8

Control: Controlling your character isn't very difficult. It's very similar to mario tennis 64. They inluded 3 control styles to fit whatever you would like.
CONTROL SCORE: 9

Lasting Appeal: Unlocking stuff will start to happen very quickly, but there is so much fun to be had in this game, and lots of challenging goals to go for like beating all the minigame stages and get all the trophies with every character. I see alot of replay in this game especially with the multiplayer.
LASTING APPEAL SCORE: 9

OVERALL SCORE: 9
I reccoment this game to any mario tennis or mario golf fan. Im pretty sure you will like it. If your a nintendo or mario fan in general I would reccomend to at least check it out.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/15/04