Mario Power Tennis is a great tennis game, especially for those who will have the opportunity to play multiplayer.
Bad: Aggravating unskippable power shot animations; single-player tournaments are way too easy, especially for veterans of the first game; not many differences from the first game.
Mario Power Tennis is the sequel to a terrific tennis game that was made for the Nintendo 64, Mario Tennis. For the most part, Power Tennis follows closely in the steps of Mario Tennis, and doesn't change all that many of the game mechanics. Overall, Power Tennis isn't quite as good as it's predecessor, but it's still a worthy purchase for any discerning Gamecube owner, especially one who can organize multiplayer matches regularly.
Mario Power Tennis, just like the original Mario Tennis, manages to infuse a surprising amount of depth and variety into a very simple control scheme. You can do slices, power shots, slams, drop shots (which are not all that useful, on a side-note), and lobs with a simple two-button control scheme that is essentially a tweaked version of the original control scheme. Despite the wacky visuals, and the power shots, Mario Power Tennis's core fundamentals are surprisingly realistic, and extremely solid.
Perhaps the biggest change to Mario Power Tennis comes from the name: Power shots. Power shots come in two types, offensive and defensive, and each character has different ones. You'll know that you can perform a power shot when your character's racket lights up, which will happen after a short rally in the point. The best way to do power shots in the control scheme, in my opinion, is to use the default when you simply press the X, and your character performs one of the types of power shots: offensive if he's within range (basically if you can hit it without the power shot, then you can do an offensive one), and defensive if your character's out of range.
As you might have guessed, the defensive power shots all serve one purpose: get your character to the ball. They're a fun way to save a shot that you thought was gone, or to add some nailbiting saves to the rally. The offensive power shots serve the purpose of getting the ball past the opponent, so they are allowed a little more variety, like ones that have super curves or go really fast, or even a super drop shot. Most of them are fairly balanced, though you might get frustrated with Koopa Troopa's weak super drop shot power shot as it's not as good as the other ones.
This is all well and good, but the power shots also come with some other stuff attached. Namely, each time ANY power shot is performed, it comes coupled with a unique animation. These are funny. The first couple times. However, they aggravate quickly, as you'll be seeing them a LOT in every match, and worst of all, they're unskippable. Furthermore, they also zoom in to the character doing the power shot, interrupting the flow of the game and the view of the court as well. It'd have been much better if we could keep the power shots but more seamlessly integrate the animations so that they don't stop or interfere with the gameplay at all, or interrupt the view of the court.
Wisely, perhaps, Camelot included the option to turn off the power shots in Exhibition mode, but it's not optional in tournaments, and you can't turn off just the animations either.
Unfortunately, without Power Shots, Mario Power Tennis is an extremely similar game to the original Mario Tennis, which is one of it's fault - it doesn't fix what wasn't broken, but neither does it add anything much on.
Power Tennis sure looks nice, though. The characters all animate extremely well, and they look extremely nice and have a lot of detail, as you can tell in the zoomed in views. The variety of courts look good as well. Power Tennis comes with a variety of slightly predictable but good nonetheless sounds, and some music as well.
One of the biggest problems with Power Tennis are the single-player tournaments. Simply put, they're far too easy. I understand that you want an easy curve on this game, but as there's no difficulty setting on the tournaments, it's pretty disappointing. Even the hardest matches will be able to be beaten very easily by Mario Tennis veterans soon after they pick the game up. Even more aggravating in this case is that you know the Power Tennis tournaments COULD have been much harder, there are two full difficulty levels in exhibition mode for CPU players that are far more challenging that anybody in the tournaments, as even the most hardened Power Tennis player might have a challenge on his hands with the unlockable 'Ace' Difficulty mode.
Where Tennis unequivocally shines, though, is multiplayer. Playing with a friend, or if you can gather up four players, is an absolute blast, and it's extremely addictive. You can try different strategies, play doubles matches (though for some stupid reason you can't play doubles tournaments with a friend), try different power shots, play an epic, 5-set, 6-game match, everything, really, and it's all tremendously fun. Mario Power Tennis deserves to be in the very upper echelon of Gamecube multiplayer games, hovering slightly below Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros Melee, and above near anything else I can think of. It's a terrific game multiplayer, and an extremely appealing game for anybody who can gather even just one opponent on a regular basis.
Power Tennis has a few other tricks up it's sleeve, and the most important one are the various gimmick courts you can play on in Mario Power Tennis. Yes, there are the standard courts - grass, clay, hard court - but there's also an assortment of gimmick courts that add more things to the mix, and most of them are pretty good, and they add a fair amount of replay value to Power Tennis. It's tough not to have fun on a court where panels of it will slide around when hit with the ball, or another one where ghosts will attack you in the eerie circumstances of Luigi's Mansion.
What more is there to say about Mario Power Tennis? It's simply a great tennis game, and despite it's faults, the vast majority of people - young, old, or anywhere in between - would have a lot of fun with it.