Despite my love of Mario Golf, I've actually spent precious little time with the tennis side of the Mario sports universe. I love Mario Tennis: Power Tour for the Game Boy Advance, but my experience with Mario Tennis on home console basically consists of getting slaughtered by my cousin at his house, turning it off, and going back to playing Goldeneye 007 and Mario Kart 64. But, I was feeling some Mario sports action, and figured that if I was going to play one, I should go back to the beginning, rather than jumping into Power Tennis or Ultra Smash.
Mario Tennis is a Tennis game that mostly shies away from some of the more arcade-like additions in the Game Boy Advance game, preferring a more simulation style to the gameplay. No flaming or tornadic tennis balls here! You can hit several different kinds of shots with two buttons, depending on the order you press them. You can hit lobs, drop shots, top spin, back spin, and smashes, and even a beginner will be able to be playing competently in minutes. As with real tennis, the big advantage that you get is if you can set your feet a bit, drive through the ball, and strike with power and control. So the game is basically trying to keep your opponent on the move by sending the ball as far away as possible, making them hit weaker returns, while you gradually grab the advantage. It feels like real tennis, which is the main hallmark of why these Mario sports games are so very successful.
Unfortunately, this is a really thin game, single player wise. They put time and effort in making sure that the tennis engine was right, but there isn't a ton else to do in this game besides play standard games of tennis. You have a set of three tournaments which increase in difficulty, but you can easily clear all of these within an hour. There are very few unlockable characters, and they are really easy to get. You also have your standard ring attack mode (like in Golf), and can play in singles or double. Weirdly, the doubles tournament mode cannot be played coop with a friend. In comparison to Golf, which had several modes and (most importantly) multiple distinct courses, this is a pretty basic game. While the comparison to Golf is a little unfair (there's only so much you can do with a tennis court), the comparisons to the handheld Mario Tennis from the same era are more damning. In Power Tour and Mario Tennis (Game Boy Color) have long and rewarding RPG modes in which you train up your character through the ranks to become the best in the world. They basically have the same physics, too, so there's really no reason that they couldn't have included some more depth on the single player side in the 64 version.
Playing, with friends, however, is far more fun. You can play in doubles matches against the computer, there are plenty of different characters with different play styles available, and head to head tennis is just more fun against a real human than it is against a CPU. The game uses the 64's native 4 controller ports well, offering a lot of party fun for a console that is well known for it. This is where the deep and well-tuned game play pay off, but I can't help but feel that there was more that could have been done with this game.
Graphically, the game looks nice. It's an N64 game, so don't expect too much. But the courts and characters are brightly colored and charming, and the game runs very smoothly.
The music is your typical late '90s early 2000s Camelot game, composed by Saturaba. It's not as good as the music in any of the Mario Golf games, but it's solid.
All in all, I was left a bit dissatisfied by my experience here, but if the game did not have the word "Mario" in the title, I think I would have been more appreciative of what they've accomplished, so I have to try to be fair. They made a game that was explicitly intended to be accessible to a wide group of people, playable with multiple friends, and that feels like tennis. They accomplished all of these goals. I just wish that they had gone just a bit farther with those goals, as this could have been a really tremendous game, much like Power Tour. But they what they delivered is good, so I'll give this game a 8.3/10.
Up next on What I'm Playing is a game I picked up in a lot a while back and had been meaning to give a try for a while. Check back in soon for my next review! Teaser below:
-TRO
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