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Nintendo GameCube Cheats, GameCube Games, GameCube Cheat Codes, Game Cube Codes
GameSpot Score
8.9
great
This is hands down the single best GameCube tennis offering, and it's also one of the most enjoyable tennis video games around.
Gameplay
9
Graphics
8
Sound
8
Value
8
Tilt
10
  • Difficulty: Variable
  • Learning Curve: From 0 to 15 Minutes
  • Game Details
About Our Rating System

The Video Review

With all its crazy levels and power-ups, is Mario Power Tennis fun, or is it all just eye candy? Take a look at our video review from Ryan Davis to find out.

Watch It  |  Download It

The Good

  • Strikes an incredible balance of depth and accessibility  
  • Great variety of gameplay options  
  • Tons of personality.

The Bad

  • Unskippable super move animations  
  • Uneven difficulty in tournament mode.

Mario Power Tennis is a fantastic example of Nintendo in top form. Here's an offering with brightly colored visuals and cheery music. It is, in a word, adorable. But under this gingerbread exterior lies a deep and challenging game of tennis. It certainly takes some liberties with the sport--because the last time we checked, you weren't allowed to bring giant hammers or jetpacks onto the court--but these twists definitely keep things interesting and are intrinsic to the goofy, character-driven style of the Mario name. No matter how you look at it, though, this is hands down the single best GameCube tennis offering, and it's also one of the most enjoyable tennis video games around.

The game is incredibly easy to pick up and play, especially if you've already been playing Top Spin, Virtua Tennis, or the original Mario Tennis for the N64. It's pretty much self-explanatory. You move your character around with the stick, and then you hit the big green button when you want to take a swing at the ball. There is, of course, a lot more to the action, and just a few minutes with the game begins to reveal how nuanced and deep the gameplay can get. You can influence the direction of your shot by leaning the stick in that direction just before you swing, and you can increase the power of your shot by double-tapping the button. Hitting the A button gives you a standard topspin shot, while the B button produces a lower-flying slice shot. You can also execute high-flying lobs and short-stopping drop shots by hitting A and then B, or B and then A, respectively, in quick succession. In the event that your opponent knocks a weak, high shot on to your side of the court, a star outline will appear. If you can position yourself inside the star and hit A and B at the same time quickly enough, you'll perform a smash shot that is very, very difficult to return.

Because of the wild visuals and some of the insane mechanics the game adds to the mix, the great lengths Mario Power Tennis goes to in making its fundamental tennis mechanics incredibly realistic are not immediately obvious. The power of your shots is affected by your position relative to the ball, the ball's height, and the direction in which you're going when you strike the ball. Each character also has a unique set of strengths and weaknesses, which makes who you choose to play with almost as important as how you play.

And on top of this core gameplay, developer Camelot has added some really wild mechanics that let the game earn its Mario name. Each character is outfitted with a pair of unique supermoves, one offensive and one defensive. Though the actual animation routine each character goes through is different, the defensive move always serves the purpose of saving a shot that you're too far removed from to hit. The offensive supermoves, however, offer a bit more variety. Some characters just put a lot of power behind their swings, making their shots very difficult to return. However, even if you do happen to be at the right place at the right time and can effectively make contact with the ball, its momentum will knock you back, hard, and leave you slightly stunned for a bit. Other characters can impart wicked spins on their shots, making their struck balls' trajectories arc dramatically, in addition to making it incredibly difficult to predict where these struck balls will land and how they will subsequently bounce.

These supermoves add an extra level of strategy to the gameplay, and they add a ton of personality to it as well. However, each time you activate one, you're forced to watch a little canned animation sequence. They're all bizarre and funny the first few times through, but eventually you become aware of how dramatically these minicutscenes affect the pacing of the game. If you're looking for more cut-and-dried tennis, you can choose to turn off these moves altogether, but it would have been nice if you could just skip past the animations and keep the wild moves.

As if these supermoves weren't enough, the game also contains a collection of "gimmick courts," each of which adds its own unique spin to the gameplay. Take the Luigi's Mansion court, for instance. As you play, ghosts will begin to haunt the court, tripping up players by placing banana peels under their feet. To keep the ghosts at bay, you'll have to hit the ball to a specific area of your opponent's side of the court, which will turn on the lights on your side and scare away the ghosts. There's also the Wario Factory court, where a set of directional arrows sit atop the net. Any time you knock the ball through one of the arrows, it causes the mesh of conveyor belts that make up the court surface to start moving. The gimmick court we found to be the most technically challenging was the Gooper Blooper court. Built right over a body of water, the Gooper Blooper court surface is constructed of panels with arrows on them, and when the ball lands on a panel, it causes that panel to move in the direction of the arrow, which either expands the size of your opponent's court or shrinks it, thus exposing the water beneath it. This doesn't limit your opponent's ability to move about, but rather, it limits the area that you can legally hit the ball to.

Tennis video game players may already be used to having to account for playing surfaces, such as those made of clay, grass, hard court material, and indoor turf, but the gimmick courts in Mario Power Tennis raise the stakes substantially with regard to the impact of playing surfaces on overall gameplay. Occasionally, the gimmick courts can get a little too busy, like on Luigi's Mansion court, but in general, they're fantastic at keeping the action fresh and fun. So are the game's various modes of play.

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Mario Power Tennis

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8.2
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Mario Power Tennis for GameCube Review - GameCube Mario Power Tennis Review
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Critic Scores

Ace Gamez 8 / 10
Pelit (Finland) 89 / 100
gamesTM 5 / 10
Netjak 5.5 / 10
Nintendo Insider 8.6 / 10
Cheat Code Central 4.5 / 5
Fragland 84.5 / 100
Digital Entertainment News 7.9 / 10
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