Whether you like tennis or not, you will love this game. In fact, after playing this, you may urge to go buy a racket.
There are 14 characters to start out with and 4 unlockable ones (that makes 18 total for the math challenged out there) and each one has two special "power shots" one is a powerful offensive shot, which ranges from Mario using a giant hammer to Bowser Jr. copying a ball into triplicate to confuse the other player. The other power shot is a useful defensive that allows your character to return the ball from wherever it is on the court-whether it's two or twenty feet away from him or her. If you don't like the idea of power shots, don't worry, you can turn them off before a match.
There are three modes of play: Tournament Mode is for unlocking characters and star characters, Exhibition Mode includes standard tennis, gimmick tennis where strange things go one on the court depending on the court you’re playing on, ring shot where you must hit your ball through rings to score, and item battle, which involves shells, lightning bolts and banana peels to mess up your opponent and mushrooms and stars to help you. The third and final game mode, special mode, is probably the most unique part of the game. It includes mini games you’ll never find on a real tennis court like Artist on the Court where you hit paint balls to color in a picture, Chomp Chomp Attack where you feed balls to a Chomp Chomp before he gets angry, Tic Tac Glow where you play Tic Tac Toe on a tennis court, and more.
The controls for this game may seem simple at first, but after playing for a while you will see there are several advanced techniques to use. For example, A may hit the ball with topspin, but hit B instead and you’ll hit the ball and put a slice on it. You can also hit A+B when the ball is high up to perform a powerful smash shot, or A>B for a high shot and B>A for a low shot. Tilting the control stick during your shot will direct the ball left or right.
Difficulty wise, this game can give everybody a challenge. There are 5 AI settings and star characters that can sort of set up a handicap.
The standard for graphics is usually pretty high for Mario Sports games, but the graphics in this game are even better than that. There are lots of cool courts, like Luigi’s Mansion, Rico Harbor from Mario Sunshine, Wario Factory, Mario Classic court, and more, each of them beautifully detailed in their own way. The characters, once you get close enough on replays, are also quite nice to look at.
The background music is excellent in this game, some of the tunes featured are the Theme from Luigi’s Mansion, Theme form the Ricco Harbor level in Mario Sunshine, Theme from the original Mario Brothers Arcade Game, and more. The only setback in sound is that the grunting can get annoying sometimes.
One great thing about this game and the Mario sports series is the awesome cinemas, but once again, this game has set the standard even higher. The opening movie is amazing, the Character celebration movies after winning a tournament are neat, and the ending/credits features outtakes from the opening movie.
There is plenty of replay value in this, as well as multi player, every mode except for tournament mode can be played with up to 4 players.
In conclusion, Mario Power Tennis is an awesome game that will excite both non-sports fans and tennis fans alike. The only thing I can think of to improve this game would be to add more mini games but still, it’s absolutely worth the $30 it’s going for and no Gamecube owner should pass this one up.