Month of Mario: Mario Power Tennis (GameCube)

If you ever wonder what makes Mario sports games special, play Mario Power Tennis. It takes the fundamentals of the sport and presents them in an approachable way, gives you a range of fun characters with unique abilities, and provides places where the sport is twisted into new and interesting forms. Mario Power Tennis almost feels like a possible benchmark that other sports games under the Mario banner are judged by because it embraces these elements whole-heartedly, a content-rich template that can make other games seem weaker by comparison. Camelot were clearly brimming with ideas when it came to making this entry, it hard to find a point where you could even accuse them of skimping out or being too conservative with what they attempt.

Right as you turn the game on, Mario Power Tennis immediately goes a fun extra mile, this sports game starting with what could almost be called an animated short. The rascally ne’er-do-wells Wario and Waluigi entered the doubles tennis tournament and lost, and looking to express their anger over it, they nearly get into trouble before the villainous Bowser decides to turn that bitter energy towards sabotaging the tournament. Elements in this opening reappear within the game itself, Wario referencing the training he undergoes, one of the minigames is based on a brief scene involving outrunning a Chain Chomp on a treadmill, and the credits even construct hypothetical “bloopers” because even the development team seemed to recognize that opening felt like far more than a tiny opener before the game starts that a player could normally just as easily skip.

Of course, a fun opening scene won’t be what makes your tennis video game good, but Mario Power Tennis does have the basics down pat. Maneuvering around the court and hitting the ball are easy enough, but your choice of button can give you more influence over how the ball flies. A power shot for more speed, a drop ball or lob to punish players who hang back too far or hug the net respectively, and most important of all, you have a good degree of control over where you want that ball to go after you hit it. The control stick allows you to easily guide the ball to the area on the other side of the net you wish to target, there being some physics in play so it doesn’t get outright illogical, and more importantly the degree of control is often tied to how well you lined up your hit. If you just barely dived to hit that shot it’s not going to be as easily influenced as one where you were standing in place and even charged your hit before smacking the ball. The limitations in place keep it from being too easy to score but you can also change up your approach and tactics if you can’t seem to seal the end of a volley, these fundamentals already a good baseline for a tennis game that aims to be easy to learn but deep enough that the pace of the match can change as you feel out your opponent’s strategies.

From this strong base Mario Power Tennis then layers over its first big addition to how the game is played: Power Shots. During a volley, the athletes will gradually build up energy until a Power Shot becomes available. Defensive Power Shots are a way to help cover your bases, these useful when the ball is out of your reach as they will feature your character somehow hitting the ball so they can stay in the game. Offensive Power Shots though are less about survival and more about disruption. An Offensive Power Shot will have your character charge up the ball in some capacity and hit it with some twist or extra level of force, the player who tries to hit the empowered ball suffering some adverse effect for doing so. Of the 14 default and 4 unlockable characters you can play as, you’ll rarely find the differences in power shots are so huge they necessitate playing as the character. On one hand, Mario’s defensive power shot feels like one of the few that can fail, his spinning leap to hit the ball sometimes too late while other characters like his brother Luigi whips out a vacuum to suck the ball towards him to guarantee that saved ball. In the Offensive Power Shot department though, you can have something like the monkey Diddy Kong’s banana-curving shot while Bowser sends his fire-covered blast down the middle with extreme force. Wario’s will shock the opponent, the lingering electricity leading to their movement hitching repeatedly for the next few seconds, while Bowser Jr.’s painting of the ball leads to whoever tries to return it being slowed as they are weighed down by gobs of goo. They feel diverse but their effects don’t linger long, and with athletes having other aspects like their speed, strength, and control over the ball to consider, the Power Shots don’t lead to clear bests in the cast. Another important touch is Power Shots often will only come up once per athlete in a volley, and if they don’t use them before the volley ends, it’s gone until they’ve built up the energy next time. There’s no banking specials, and while they are common enough, they also aren’t so present that they’re constantly the deciding factor in a game.

Power Shots are the only special element of the game that Mario Power Tennis encourages you to use in every mode although they still can be disabled. However, if you’re looking for more exciting complications, Mario Power Tennis also features many special courts to play on with their own gimmicks. The DK Jungle Court for example has little crocodiles crawling on the net, these Klaptraps possible to knock off so they go latch onto the opponent to slow their movement down. Wario Factory has arrows on the net that change the movement of the conveyor belts beneath your feet, Luigi’s Mansion has ghost appear where the ball lands that will interfere if you don’t hit the light panel to dispel them, and the unlockable Mario Classic Court takes the game Mario Bros. and twists it into a tennis match, little enemies scurrying around like barriers or tripping hazards that you can try to clear out if you can make the time between playing proper tennis. Mario Power Tennis lets you decide how much you’ll engage with these more chaotic and creative courts, the main game’s tournaments split between standard play with possible Power Shots and these gimmick courts. The World Open is a set of three cups where you play a few opponents back to back, clearing the Star Cup turning your character of choice into a Star Athlete who hits the ball harder and can thus compete in the more difficult set of three cups in the new Star Tournament. Gimmick Masters though has two cups and takes you on a tour of all the special courts across its short tournaments, and with all these cups also available in 2 vs. 2 doubles formats, there are a lot of trophies you can earn. Once you get the hang of the game, those early cups can whizz on by, something like the Mushroom Cup not even taking five minutes once you’re skilled enough but the later cups still pack a punch and as a result, the games require more sets to win so comebacks are possible and matches can be more intense.

With unlockables as well as there being small rewards for taking on each cup with each character, Mario Power Tennis packs in a lot to do, but it has more unique offerings as well over in its Special Games section. Taking tennis play and making it into minigames, Mario Power Tennis packs 8 new games into this side mode that focus on more than trying to outscore an opponent. Artist on the Court has you trying to hit paint balls into a mural to color it properly, Terror Tennis has you trying to keep ghosts from escaping paintings by hitting them in time, and Mecha-Bowser Mayhem is pretty much a boss fight by way of firing energy blasts while hitting enemies back at the giant robot with your racket. Not every game is well-conceived, Gooper Blooper Volley is about not hitting the ball into the same quadrant of the court consecutively so it drags on quite a bit, and since all of these minigames are available in different difficulties, some like the more puzzle-heavy design of Balloon Panic start to feel a little rough since carefully adjusting paths Klaptraps take is a bit tedious when it is done by way of tennis. On the other hand, some of these minigames are more about multiplayer, the Chain Chomp treadmills appearing here as you try to agitate your rivals’ Chomps while managing the anger of yours as you feed it tennis balls.

Funnily enough, with all these rich features to explore, some special multiplayer options feel a touch small by comparison. In multiplayer matches, you can choose to enable Item Battle, hitting item boxes with the ball giving you weapons, power-ups, or other ways to interfere or protect yourself during the tennis match. The item pool isn’t wide or too adventurous, Power Shots adding a more interesting and cleanly implemented layer, but the Item Battle is more appealing than Ring Shot. A poor attempt to reimagine a similar concept from Mario Tennis on Nintendo 64, Ring Shot changes from its initial design of being a test of your aim and cooperation into a competitive format with weird rules for scoring. Hit your ball through floating rings to get points proportional to their size, but you need to get the ball past the opponent to bank them. Except they also get some points, and half of their points go towards you, and it’s not really worth explaining the odd complications to a mode that felt like it struggled to come up with a concept to make hitting the ball through rings more competitive. Thankfully, the odd failed sideshow doesn’t drag down a game teeming with more effective and creative twists elsewhere.

THE VERDICT: Beyond just the expected repetition tackling tons of similar tennis tournaments with various characters inevitably leads to, it’s hard to find much fault with Mario Power Tennis. The Power Shots can start to wear on you a bit with their associated short cutscenes stopping the action for a bit, but the game of chicken in trying to hold onto your power so you can have a free save can be countered by an Offensive Power Shot that will outright drain your racket’s power should you hit it. The good usually balances out the weak here, the question almost becoming how far a tennis game can go before it needs to introduce deeper complications and elements that push it out of the wheelhouse of easy play that makes this a great game for multiplayer across all ages.

And so, I give Mario Power Tennis for Nintendo GameCube…

A GREAT rating. I have a soft spot for tennis video games, so seeing Mario embrace the sport with a game with so many fun twists and ideas almost feels like a recipe for me giving out my top rating. I must admit the sport itself needs a stronger extra layer over it to go that additional required mile, but Mario Power Tennis certainly gives it a shot with a range of ideas. The gimmick courts are great at introducing strange complications and are properly contained in the two Gimmick cups, the game not demanding too much difficult play on them so that they won’t wear thin with their tricks. The Power Shots are perhaps more at risk of losing their charm, the many creative animations tied to them fun to see a few times but inevitably repetitive in the tournaments. They are a very smart addition overall though, a useful resource that gives you another tool for outsmarting the opponent while being one you must manage well lest you waste it foolishly. The games can be quick at times but can become quite thrilling when they matches last a while as both sides get a feel for each other’s playstyles, and when you want something more relaxed and ridiculous the minigames change things up to an incredible degree. Refinement feels like the name of the game for improvement, little tweaks here and there like the key to making this a completely tidy package. Gooper Blooper’s minigame should probably make more use of that giant squid rather than being a dragged out affair, Power Shots could maybe not interrupt the action after the first few times you’ve seen them in a match and instead just activate their effect quickly, and poor Ring Shot should just go back to being an accuracy and consistency challenge instead of a weird competition.

With mostly successful ideas under its belt or ones that justify their small quirks with their interesting new ways to play, Mario Power Tennis still gets very far as a tennis game that doesn’t overcomplicate itself. Maybe the next step would be something like a campaign mode, or maybe bring in some role-playing mechanics like you see in the handheld Mario Tennis games. However, Mario Power Tennis offers plenty of great content that embraces the world of Mario, its light-hearted fun, and the ease of play the Nintendo series is broadly known for. Unless you just don’t like tennis as a sport, it’s hard to complain about what Mario Power Tennis put together to try and reimagine the sport in many fun and unique ways while keeping the core fun and strategy of tennis intact.