Mario Tennis: Power Tour

"Mario Tennis Power Tour is a game any Mario Tennis fan should and will enjoy."

Mario Tennis Power Tour is different in a few ways from the Gamecube hit Mario Power Tennis, the biggest difference is the Single Player RPG like mode. It has good gameplay, sound and graphics. It is a game any Mario Tennis fan should and will enjoy. I will be using the abbreviation MTPT which stands for Mario Tennis Power Tour. Read on to get the more specific details.

Gameplay: How does the MTPT gameplay stack up to other Mario Tennis games? Cut dry and summed up into one sentence: Just as good, or better than the other Mario Tennis games. It has the same fast paced tennis action, with power shots and other things. The A button does a standard swing, the B button is a top spin swing, once you have unlocked power shots you can perform them by hitting the tennis ball back and forth until you have an orange circle around you. R and A will perform an offensive shot that will make it harder for your opponent to hit the ball, and if they do hit it, they will have an effect happen to them depending on which character performs the power shot. R and B does a defensive shot that will save the ball from going out of bounds, even if it is far away from you. The scoring is like a standard game of tennis. Single player is given an rpg element, when you win a match you get experience to raise certain attributes like power, control and others.(8/10)

Story: On single player you are an aspiring young tennis player, who has joined a tennis academy. You move up through the ranks of players, starting with junior and ending up at varsity, by beating players in a ranking match. Whoever gets to the top varsity gets to the Island Open a tennis tournament against other rival academies.

Graphics: The graphics look good for a GBA game. Not amazing, and not average either. I was quite pleased with them. Some of the Power Shots look really good. Its kinda hard to describe the graphics. Check a screen shot and you'll see that they are pretty good.(8/10)

Sound: The sound of MTPT is quite good. Each player has a grunt and other noise during a match. The music is pretty good. Of course there is no voice overs. It is a GBA game after all. The tunes can be catchy, and different Power Shots have different sounds.(8/10)

Value: If you have friends to play against then the value is very good, because multiplayer is great! Otherwise it's not too long lived, unless you beat it 100 percent. I beat the doubles mode single player with one of the two characters in a little more than five and a half hours. There is a singles and a doubles play through one characters single player. There are two players two go through single player with. So thats four times through overall if you have the time to do that. Which equals about 20 hours.(8/10)

Final Recommendation: The game is worth buying. If you have friends with it definitely buy it. Even if you don't have friends with it you should buy it, especially if you find it cheap. The single player and exhibition mode are good for a while. So I say go buy it, its fun and a great game.

Overall Score: 8 out of 10, Great!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/16/06