Mario Tennis GC

I enjoyed this game due to its hilarious trophy cut-scenes and Katsumi Suzuki's first time voicing as Diddy Kong. But stay away from the intro & bloopers. Wario, Waluigi and Bowser are portrayed as arrogant greedy criminals who suddenly commit terrorism to get what they want.

This game is easily the best tennis game for Gamecube owners, and is certainly just as worthy as more po-faced simulators like Top Spin. Whether it matches up to the industry standard of Sega's Virtua Tennis depends on how much Mario you can stomach, but beyond the charming/insipid (delete as preferred) presentation what you have is an excellent, fast and fun tennis game with some frantic net play bolstered by the rather loose grip on realistic physics. So what prevents this from being thumb-candy perfection? Three things. First of all, the single player mode is incredibly limp, featuring just a few competitions and not as many unlockables as you'd expect from a Nintendo title. How about a proper story mode, with Virtua-style character development? Second of all are the gimmick courts. The name reflects these courts - they are nothing more than gimmicks that if anything detract from the action and make playing a chore. You can turn them off in multiplayer but sadly you have to win the 'gimmick cups' to do this on most courts. Other game modes like the item battle with Mario-Kart style power ups and the ring tennis where you have to aim at targets as you rally feel tacked on and not worthwhile. But the real game-ruining proposition over time are the power shots! You can use one every few goes and they either form a ridiculous uber-shot or a 'reach any ball' defence shot. This is fine, especially as you can turn them off, but in single player they are always there, unremovable! The AI seems to have far more than you and can use them better, making matches feel unfair. And worse, each one has a flow-breaking animation complete with a zoomed camera shot of Yoshi popping into an egg to roll towards a shot or Donkey Kong leaping into a cannon - cool at first, but they take so long, it gets boring - doubles matches can degrade into an endless series of animations followed by two hits and another lot of pyrotechnics. The tennis is good give us more tennis!

When I heard Nintendo was releasing a version of Mario Tennis into the Gamecube I was excited. I bought the game a month after it's release and I was not disappointed. The graphics are clear and colorful, the characters are all cool especially Koopa Troopa. But what's even better is that each character has a special offensive and special recovery shot. This game is also fun to play with friends. But the game doesn't just limit itself to normal tennis it also has tennis themed games such as painting, destroying a mechanical bowser and cleaning a court using water balls. There is a collection of characters that can't be beat. I strongly recommend this game.

I enjoyed this game as my childhood, because of Wiggler, Diddy's new voice actor. Just wow! But I hate the intro and bloopers. Because Wario & Waluigi commit vandalism over being eliminated, resisted arrest, hijacked a tournament for a re-match, and then committed terrorism when we didn't liked it! Just avoid these two. But the trophy cutscenes are so hilarious!

Say what you want about the success/failure of the Nintendo Gamecube system, but one thing that cannot be denied was its ability to produce some incredibly fun multiplayer games. Mario Power Tennis is one of those games!

Besides the great controls, the real strength of Mario Power Tennis is the diversity in the characters, each possessing their own strengths/weaknesses that can be mixed and matched to find the perfect combination for each individual player. Some people will like the power players (DK, Bowser), other will prefer the defensive characters (Wailuigi, Wario), while still others will enjoy the trick-shot artists (Boo, Ghost) or the generalists (Mario, Luigi).

About the only downfall in this game is that I could see the single-player mode getting a bit stale over time. Thankfully, though, this is a game that is built almost completely for multiplayer action. Invite a few friends over and start smashing the ball around!