Mario Tennis (2000)

A solid core tennis experience but left me wishing it did just a little bit more with Mario IP, at least in the story mode.

Pros:

+Leveling up stats and advancing the ranks is fun if a bit tedious.

+Core tennis mechanics, strategies, and shots felt fun to engage with, especially against the more challenging opponents.

+A major highlight for me however was the personality given to the winning and losing animations for all the characters. A big stand out here being that they gave Peach a haughty anime girl laugh.

Cons:

-Mario characters felt like a last minute addition to the story, more interesting world building would have really carried the core experience further when coupled with the solid gameplay.

-Lack of customization options outside of choosing what stat to level up and some very limited equipment choices feels like another missed opportunity

-Lack of much side objectives in the story mode such as content outside of training drills, and ranking matches. It would have interesting to have ways to play the other tennis schools beyond the tournament, or collectibles to unlock content, or ways to challenge other Mario characters and explore more places.

Don't get me wrong, this is great for what you'd expect for a GBC Tennis RPG, but it is easy to just with it had a little bit more going on like:

-more character sprites for NPCs in general

-more character customization options, like sprite, color palette, and ways to tweak/re-tweak your own stats

-more worldbuilding, lore and mini games or side objectives. There's vague hints at the late game, but most of the time players just babble similar things about working hard and not giving up their rankings when they could have been giving more interesting info about the academy or outside tournaments and players for example.

So... the designer of Waluigi just revealed his original design for Wapeach or Walupeach, the "Wario version of Princess Peach" for Mario Tennis back in 2000. Shigeru Miyamoto opposed to the idea and she was canceled.

Here she is. Fumihide 'Yuzumpo' Aoki just posted her on his Instagram.

She's cute. Maybe too cute. I imagined her "uglier".

But some people find Wauligi hot so what I know.

I wrote about this reveal on GamerFocus (in spanish).

History:

I had a lot of fun with the N64 and Gamecube versions of Mario Tennis, but never played the handheld ones.

Expectations:

Camelot's RPG elements were actually what really put me off with Mario Golf, so I hope they don't detract too much from this game for me. I've always liked tennis games, so as long as the actual gameplay holds up, I think I should be able to enjoy it just fine.

Day 1:

I said I wasn't going to let the RPG elements get me down, but this introductory tour of the "Tennis Academy" is approaching Harvest Moon levels of tedium... I mean, really, I just want to play some tennis.

I choose to practice playing tennis... and, okay, that's actually what I get to go do. I head off to the Junior Courts for some training and it's not great.

But...

But... My stats! See in RPG Tennis you have to build up your stats, which start pretty low...

So now I'm off to grind tennis matches to increase my tennis stats...

...

Yeah no, screw that, I want to play some damned tennis! I chose to play as Luigi Mario, who is the super Mario brother, and squared off against Donkey Kong. The match was intense, and in review of the video I realized it went on for a solid ten minutes!

DK took the first round, but I started dominating after the position swap. The gameplay was fast and fun for a 2D entry, but I never felt like I had that much control over the ball. Volleys usually had me guarding the center of the net until I could finally get a shot off to the side.

Still, the crazy amount of back and forth made for a really exciting match. So much so that the final point came down to a very close tiebreaker.

But me know the plumber always beats the monkey.

Conclusion:

Well... It's better than Mario Golf, but really only because the underlying sport is more fun to play (for me) than golf. The single player "campaign" mode is still awful when all I want to do is play a fun game of tennis, and not one where I'm horribly outclassed because of stats!

Even on its own merits I didn't love the game. It was fun enough, but it's not something I'd really ever want to take with me on the go. As for Mario Tennis options at home, I'd take the console versions over this one all day.

Liked:

- Free play and exhibition modes offered some fun, straightforward tennis.
- Good music?

Disliked:

- Maybe it's just me, but just like in Mario Golf the single player story mode was completely boring and off-putting.
- Controls weren't "bad" but there wasn't much in the way of nuance with ball control.

Personal Score: