Genre: Sports
Year: 2000
Developed by: Camelot Software Planning
Published by: Nintendo
Platforms: N64, Game Boy Color
#154
Feeling Like: Four hands
I said in the Mario Power Tennis post that I preferred Mario Tennis. I do, but only just. The fundamentals are mostly the same, but there’s less zany gimmicks here. It does what the Nintendo 64 did best – multiplayer. Without it, there’s no chance it’s this high on the 500.
The screenshots are going to look rough – there’s no two ways about it, the system’s graphics simply did not age well. The “crowd” is essentially a flat surface with colored dots on it and the character models look sharp, blocky and rough. But you can’t judge a game too harshly from the year 2000.
Besides, I was more than willing to put that aside since Mario Tennis played so well, and still does today. I know there’s only so many ways you can put a spin (heh) on tennis, but Camelot did a great job here. Everything is so pleasant; Mario and the crew are here to have a good time. Waluigi (his first appearance!), Wario and Bowser may have some nefarious tricks up their sleeve, but this is about as light as you can get. Every song is either preparing you for a rambunctious tennis match, or hyping you up during said rambunctious tennis match. Power up shots are colorful, the points display are appropriately cartoony and the controls are air-tight. There’s very little to complain about.
There are more than enough characters, both starting and unlockable, to satisfy any type of multiplayer session. It didn’t matter if it was a tournament or if a random passer-by caught a glimpse, it was one of the easiest sells to grab a few friends and hand them a controller.
Doubles matches got especially heated. Sometimes rallies would last full minutes, neither side willing to concede. This, naturally, ramps up the volume outside the game only for cheers to be elicited once the crucial point was finally secured.
Mario sports games are commonplace now, but in the late 90s/early 2000s, they were a very big deal. We’d seen some spin-offs featuring the cast of the Mushroom Kingdom like in Super Mario Kart but now we were seeing that all bets were off. Nintendo was sending a clear message – as long as the activity was mildly entertaining, they could probably shoehorn their flagship characters into it. I’m not sure if we ever got bowling, or long distance rowing (thank Miyamoto), but we did get the sublime Mario Golf, among others. You wouldn’t get a fraction of the audience if this was a regular family friendly tennis game featuring a different bunch. It may have been a cheap way to get sales, but it worked on me.
Hoo boy, the quality of these screenshots. Well you know, the crowd still looks abysmal, but the character models aren’t as rough as I’d imagined and the framerate is rock solid. Even during the mini games with rings and piranha plants, the performance is steady and never diminishes the experience.
What a delight. I don’t have any specific memories tied to this one, but it was frequently rented for Friday nights when Eric, Dob and Kaz were coming over. I always liked how each of us had our own N64 controller that we strategically bought different colors for, so as not to confuse them with each other’s. Did we not know about labels and a pencil? Either way, the N64 was often at the forefront of our marathon sessions until early morning and Mario Tennis was one of the best examples of pick-up-and-play perfection.
The 500 