Mario Tennis

"What I could unlock was excellent"

In the adventuring off-season Mario and pals have done everything from racing karts to golfing and painting. Luckily for girls in little white skirts everywhere (and guys too), those tireless innovators at Nintendo have combined tennis and RPG elements to make a great little sports game for the gameboy.

Story
Mario et al. aren’t the stars this time, although they do put in appearances. Instead to keep with the RPG theme, the star of Mario Tennis is you: an up-and-coming tennis prodigy who has just enrolled in the prestigious Royal Tennis Academy. Winning matches is what it’s all about at the academy, because that’s how you make it onto the Varsity Team. And it’s the Varsity Team that gets to travel all over the world playing in tournaments.

Gameplay and Challenge
In Mario Tennis you’ll spend a fair amount of time off the court exploring the academy grounds and talking to your classmates. The Training Centre offers several fun “mini-games” which are also excellent ways to hone your skills. But the real fun is of course when you step onto the court.

The game of tennis could not be much sweeter unless you were physically out there on the court yourself. Wow does Nintendo give you a lot with just those two little A and B buttons. Using them in various combinations you can do the basic flat return shot, topspin shot, slice, lob, drop shot, volley and smash. The control pad moves your player around the court and also controls the direction of the shot. If all these shots seem like they would create a high learning curve, don’t worry because there are trainers in the game that teach you how to do a particular shot and give you practice drills for each one.

The controls are realistic but not anally so. Double-fault serves and shots that go out of bounds are almost non-existent because your shot will be adjusted to land in a playable area as long as you direct the ball towards the general you want it to be in. So in other words you don’t have precise control over where the ball lands (you can consistently get the ball to land in a certain quarter of the court, but nothing more specific than that) but as a result the game goes by much more smoothly because you aren’t making unforced errors all the time. The matches themselves are fast-paced without a lot of distracting extra fluff graphics or animations in between. Just some serious tennis-playing.

I didn’t find the game to be that challenging, but it was definitely fun. Your character had stats like in an RPG, which you even improve with “experience points” gained by winning matches. Spin, Power, Agility and Control all impact different aspects of the game and some can only be increased at the expense of another. For example a person can’t be both fast and bulky, so if you want your character to be fast, her strength will automatically go down to compensate.

Besides the RPG mode in Mario Tennis there is the option of challenging Luigi, Mario, Donkey Kong or Baby Mario in an exhibition match where you can specify the number of sets and games in the match as well as the court surface. The ball will bounce differently with each different surface type (hardcourt, grass, clay or artificial turf) so what you select can make a serious difference to the kind of technique you’ll need to use.

One of the things I loved most about Mario Tennis was its save feature. For someone who uses the gameboy mostly on buses and things, it’s really annoying to only be able to save at certain specific spots in a game, which never seem to be when you reach the bus stop. In Mario Tennis you can save anywhere at anytime—even right in the middle of hitting a ball!

Audio
The music is typical Mario “feel good” stuff, and several catchy themes manage to fight their way through the indifferent sound quality of the gameboy. There is even music playing during the matches if you want it, but be warned that it can get annoying after a while especially when concentration is needed. But Nintendo understands, and they provide an option where you can turn off the music and just have the sound effects. Unfortunately the sound effects are all rather bleepy and crunchy, but again this is only the gameboy and no one expects miracles.

Video
Mario Tennis has light colors. Light colors on a gameboy game are VERY important! The graphics will be visible under almost any conditions, so no need to waste your money on that screen lamp that doesn’t work anyway. A lot of effort was taken to make the game look good, and it paid off . The character sprites are very detailed for a gameboy game and they even manage to squeeze some personality into those tiny pixels. Also, there is a lot of shading in the game instead of having big ugly blocks of solid color. A tennis court will be lighter at the top then gradually fade into a darker shade at the bottom. And in what must be a first for a tennis game, the court is actually divided evenly in half so that top and bottom are the same size! Also the slant of the court is very subtle so that for once playing in the top half of the court doesn’t feel like a claustrophobic nightmare.

Soapbox Time
As many people know there is also a Mario Tennis game for the N64 and you can link to it with the gameboy version to exchange information and unlock secret characters. That’s really wonderful, but the problem is that not all of us own N64s. It’s not a big deal because if I’m not mistaken the only things to unlock are a few more playable Mario characters. But it’s annoying to be stuck with a game that I can never truly unlock unless I want to invest in a whole other console. Please Nintendo, just give me a self-contained game. I’ve already paid for a gameboy…

Conclusion
Mario Tennis has that special kind of appeal that can reach practically any type of gamer because it’s so well-designed and fun. It captures most of the intricacies of tennis while not being too intimidating. (Trainers and the in-game Tennis Dictionary explain the rules in detail.) Definitely a game to buy if you see it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/02/02, Updated 05/06/03