Mario Tennis Open (3DS)
When a new entry in a video game series comes out, fans are eager to see what new changes and ideas have been implemented. Sure they will still want to see some DNA from previous entries since that is what made them fans in the first place, but it isn’t presumptuous to think the next installment in a franchise will try to introduce fresh ideas. The Mario Tennis series did start with simple tennis play but with characters from the Super Mario series of games, but each new one introduced special ideas on top of being solid sports games. Mario Tennis Open on 3DS though is an odd case, because while it has a few little new touches, it almost feels like a rehash of Mario Power Tennis from the GameCube but with less content. In fact, the game even reuses voice files from that game, making Mario Tennis Open feeling even more like a retread than it might otherwise seem.
Mario Tennis Open’s matches follow the typical rules of the sport, players able to play one on one or two on two matches with whatever mix of human and AI opponents can be arranged. Players are able to pick to play as different characters who have different strengths, so a character like the large gorilla Donkey Kong will favor more powerful hits, the tomboyish princess Daisy has greater control over how her hits fly, the gangly villain Waluigi has a wider reach for good defense, the friendly dinosaur Yoshi can move across the court more quickly, and the tricky ghost Boo can curve his shots in deceptive ways. The small cast is sorted under different headers to make it easy to pick which style you’ll want to play with and the differences in play don’t require much adjustment while still having some appreciable influence on how the game unfolds. However, there are no unique special abilities to the characters, even Boo’s teleport just a flashy visual for the diving lunge all characters can perform. There is one special character in the form of the player’s Mii, the already customizable avatar having no set stats until you start buying clothing for them. Clothing must first be unlocked through playing tournaments and extra modes and then bought with the coins collected in those same modes, but based on what you’re wearing, the Mii will adjust to fit into one of the types of play. The small influence of such classifications mean this isn’t that deep of an area to get invested in though, which is a shame since the majority of the game’s unlockable content is tied to this Mii clothes system.
Outside of playing exhibition matches just for fun, the game doesn’t offer too many modes. The tournament modes are the main focus of the structured content, the player competing in three back to back matches they need to win to earn the tournament’s associated cup. The cups earned are unique to each character so you can try to fill out the trophy shelves of each of them, but beating the Special Cup will unlock four additional cups for that character where they play as a Star player, everyone’s stats bumped up when they have their star player status activated. The cups are mostly difficulty levels and the star player cups are the point where the AI starts to really put up a good fight, the later tournaments also featuring longer matches where you need to earn more games to earn sets and more sets to win the match. Technically all the cups do also feature different courts, but while these will impact how well a ball bounces and how fast it flies, the influence is small enough that it won’t likely change how you play too much. You do get to play tennis in a jungle, desert, in a castle, and even atop a giant mushroom, but only the outer space court has any sort of gimmick to how things unfold. The only special court in the game doesn’t even have a true consistent gimmick, the idea instead being that when you hit the ball a certain way it will change the opposite side of the net into the ground from a different court type. However, the ground types here are a lot more influential in how the ball moves, the desert sands now having severely reduced bounce and a unique black hole design making the ball bounce off in wild directions. This special changing court does make its associated cup the hardest and most unique, but it is a little sad it is one of a kind when special mechanics could have spiced up play more often elsewhere.
Still, the core tennis plays quite well, movement quick enough to reach the ball fairly often but players able to aim their shots well enough to find openings. The game also allows you to hit the ball by pressing different buttons, the ball flying in different ways based on your pick. Pressing A will give you a fast shot that trends towards hitting the back of the court, pressing B will be a slower shot that bounces nearer to the net, and Y will give you a flat shot that is fast but simple in its flight. Pressing two buttons in short succession will give you the option to hit the ball high in the air for a lob or low to the ground for a drop shot, while X serves as a simple shot without many frills. However, despite all these differences, they aren’t as pronounced as you might like, mostly because their more dramatic differences only emerge when engaging with the Chance Shot system. Large colored circles will appear on the court at times, these featuring a symbol that helps further differentiate them. Each color and symbol is tied to one of your shot types, and if you press the right button and stand in that space, you’ll get a much stronger version of that swing’s intended effect. For example, the drop shot that was already meant to travel very little from the first bounce will now barely move anywhere, requiring the player to dive forward if they want to have a hope of returning it. A lob shot or the B button slice will now receive a much wider curve to it that can catch unaware players off guard, but the biggest chance is the flat shot now basically being a spike the AI will almost always struggle to return.
Unless you specifically target their position, the computer players will almost always fail to hit a a Chance flat shot save if you’re playing one in exhibition where they’re set to their highest difficulty. The Chance Shot system ends up an important part of play because of how critical it can be to scoring, opening up options for shots with more unusual trajectories that can better trick your opponent. Since both players can perform these you’ll need to consider the markers on the other side of the court as well, especially since there is a counter system in place where pressing the right button to hit the ball back will offset effects like returning a powered up A shot usually knocking you rather far back or the special B shot making you spin a little in place. However, even those effects are easy enough to recover from as a human player even if you don’t counter them properly and it is mostly the AI who will struggle with returning Chance Shots. Chance Shots do sort of simplify playing against AI opponents because the game is giving you hints on how to beat them essentially, this likely the main reason it takes a few cups for your opponents to really start putting up a fight. In player vs. player action though you can start getting craftier such as sometimes not taking the Chance Shot opportunity to throw the opponent off. While this is a new element to the Mario Tennis series, it does feel like it’s carved out the utility of basic shots to make these shots greater pace breakers, something that can speed up play but also lead to less strategy.
Mario Tennis Open does allow you to play with motion controls and the touch screen which does simplify things a bit further to accommodate for new demands made of the player. Your movement becomes automatic in this mode but you can tip the 3DS to influence the trajectory of your shot, this mode mostly a novelty though and not as enjoyable to engage with since it is an odd mix of complication and simplification. The touch screen is a more interesting inclusion, the bottom screen surprisingly easy to tap even while moving your character with the control stick. As you’re learning the colors for the Chance Shot markers it can help to look at the touch screen that has each shot type color coded, the button you can press for it even shown so you can pick between touch or button for the return. The game also highlights the counter shot type when returning a Chance Shot to make engaging with that element more fluid. The funny thing about all these systems in play though is they basically all combine to assist with normal tennis play, everything still about trying to find a way to slip the ball by the opponent but you’re given more information on how to reply to their volleys.
A few special minigame modes do exist in Mario Tennis Open and the easily gained knowledge of ball control and shot type are put to the test in the small selection of Special Games. Each one has 3 levels of increasing difficulty and then a 4th level that is usually a variant like trying to survive as long as possible or face a much longer version of the game’s concept. Ring Challenge has you working with an AI player on the other side of the court to try and hit the ball through rings, the rings growing in size but decreasing in point value the easier they get to pass through. Galaxy Rally again involves the player cooperating with their opponent, but the opponent’s side of the court contains four sections and when a ball bounces in one it will disappear, the frequency in which those sections reappear changing the deeper into the minigame you get. Ink Showdown does feature you competing with the AI player again, a trio of plants spitting balls at the player they need to return without their less than intelligent opponent hitting them back. Ink will sometimes be blasted your way and muck up your screen a bit if you don’t hit it before it lands. Lastly and most unique of the bunch is Super Mario Tennis, the player now on their own and instead hitting the ball against a wall that has the original Super Mario Bros. platforming game projected on it. The player needs to survive to the end of a level in Super Mario Bros. by extending their timer, this achieved by hitting your ball into the enemies and coins on screen. Levels are changed to have many invisible blocks containing coins to find and the level scrolls automatically so you can focus on where you’re targeting your hits, this minigame perhaps the most demanding since the conditions for continued success change with the layout of the projected video game level.
Once you beat the third level of each Special Game you’ll unlock a new player, the game only having four character to unlock through play with the barrier for doing so not even that high. You can scan QR codes for a few extra characters as well, although they are mostly recolors of Yoshi that don’t really bolster the cast’s variety despite those recolors technically having different stats. Unless you really care about Mii clothes though there isn’t much to shoot for besides beating each cup with each character and clearing the Special Games. The tennis mechanics are entertaining enough that it can provide a good multiplayer way of playing the sport both online or with others who own the game but Mario Tennis Open ends up feeling leaner than Mario Tennis back on the N64 due to having fewer true characters and unlockables. This doesn’t diminish the quality of Mario Tennis Open, but it does feel like less thought was put into the game than previous entries as it mostly aims to provide fun and accessible tennis play on 3DS rather than doing too much new or game-changing.
THE VERDICT: Mario Tennis Open nails the important elements of its central sport and can easily be called a good tennis game for it, but the unambitious air surrounding the experience prevents it from excelling. The Chance Shot system adds a little too much predictability to how you counter players but also opens things up to wilder shots at times, but it does take a bit for AI players to reach the difficulty level required to counter them well. However in multiplayer Chance Shots become a more interesting wild card as they become less straightforward to implement against more intelligent opponents. The Mii customization is interesting if a bit overdone at the expense of more truly unique characters and the forms of special play are relegated to some small minigames and one gimmick court, but if all you want is a quality tennis game, it still delivers while the extra bells and whistles mostly stay in their lane.
And so, I give Mario Tennis Open for Nintendo 3DS…
A GOOD rating. Motivation is at the heart of most of Mario Tennis’s shortcomings. The development team wasn’t motivated enough to put in enough compelling unlockable content to keep the player playing for reasons beyond simple enjoyment. The Chance Shot system gives little motivation to deviate from the suggested hits when the markers do appear unless you’re playing against canny human players. Most of all though, the motivation to buy this over other Mario Tennis titles is likely only going to come down to the game systems you own, as games before it and after in the series offer more diverse ways to play or greater amounts of content to engage with. Mario Tennis Open does manage to avoid anything too divisive in its design by mostly playing it safe and ensuring potentially disruptive elements like the motion controls are fully optional, the game instead offering enjoyable tennis matches with the cartoon cast of Super Mario just happening to be the players involved. You do have a good degree of control over your shots and even when Chance Shots aren’t involved you can still find those strategic openings to slip the ball past your opponent, and most of the basic variations expected of a tennis game like courts that impact the ball’s behavior in small ways and the ability to shorten or lengthen the amounts of games and sets needed to win are all present. The limited cast does have some important deviation in how they can be played without restricting them so much they have debilitating shortcomings, and the Special Games are entertaining and slightly challenging ways of really testing your growing skill with hitting the ball where you want it to go.
Mario Tennis Open lives in the shadow of the broader franchise while committing few sins, it mostly coming up short by comparison. Simpler tennis games in less well-regarded franchises wouldn’t have such weight placed upon them, and since Mario Tennis Open does control well and offers a small but enjoyable spread of ways to play, it still offers entertaining play for the time you do decide to devote to it. Greater variation or long term goals would definitely give the title more life, but for a tennis game specific to the 3DS, Mario Tennis Open still provides the appeals of the sport with a few extra ideas like the Chance Shot adding a small dash of flavor so it doesn’t feel too basic.