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Mario Tennis: Power Tour

by Aaron R. Brown - July 19, 2014, 7:21 am EDT
Total comments: 7

6.5

It's good, but certainly not as good as some other Mario Tennis titles.

Mario Tennis is Mario Tennis, and who doesn’t love some Mario Tennis? Over the years, I have loved playing my fair share of the N64 and GameCube installments. Not having played GBA’s Mario Tennis: Power Tour before, I went in with high expectations thinking it’d have the same fun-paced gameplay of its siblings that I love so dearly. Needless to say, it more or less disappointed, and in the end, was only mildly good.

Now, the main schtick of this Mario Tennis game is its RPG-like campaign: the Power Tour. You play as a newcomer to a tennis academy, where you’ll have to move up the ranks to go and win the annual Island Open. While the concept is solid, it never really kept me interested. As I wandered the campus trying to find where to go, conversations that were ultimately pointless kept popping up. Comparable to newer titles, it’s very similar to Mario Golf: World Tour, where the game could have been more up front and faster paced if it had more of a menu-style facade rather than a physical location, like Mario Party. As a whole, there are not a lot of actual things you can do within the academy aside from ranking up in tennis matches and training in a couple areas.

At the same time, the RPG-style has it’s merits in that it gives you experience points from matches and training to level up your character so you can craft them into the type of player you want. The doubles partner that you spend the majority of the Power Tour with gets their own level and attributes, so the strengths and weaknesses can be focused on individually -- which might actually be the best thing that Power Tour does.

The matches themselves are good, but still present a couple things that are disappointing, the first being switching sides. While I understand side switching is necessary in real tennis matches, I don’t know why Camelot felt like they needed to put players on the far side of the court. Why there was no option to always keep the camera on your team’s side is something I’ll never know. The second issue I had is the doubles partner not performing smartly when the Power Shot was usable. More often than not on offensive Power Shots, they were shot toward an opponent, rather than away to score, which let the opponent easily volley it back. Defensive Power Shots make it capable of saving an out-of-reach shot, but it seemed about 90% of the time the partner’s Power Shot did not even trigger when the opportunity arose, letting the opponents score more easily.

I don’t want to knock too hard on the game as it is indeed still a solid game, but this seems to be one of the weaker titles in the Mario Tennis series. While being a bit more bland than I’d like, the matches were still fun, and the music kept me good company as I meandered the academy and island. The unlockable mini games offered a nice change of pace, and Exhibition mode made up for some of what the Power Tour lacked since it let you pick actual Nintendo characters as well as your own rules and court. In my mind, Mario Tennis: Power Tour is a nice tennis fix for the Wii U, but is only just good, and inferior to the series’ other console titles.

Summary

Pros
  • Catchy music
  • Fun mini games
  • It's Mario Tennis
  • Leveling up system works well
  • Teaches real tennis rules in the manual
Cons
  • Doubles partner could have helped more
  • Forced to play on the far side of the court
  • Power Tour mode is bland between matches

Talkback

I believe a fellow by the name of Sweet Pete will be takin' offense to the words ye be spinnin', lad!

TrueNerdJuly 19, 2014

Sorry. There's only one review from NWR for this game that I'll ever recognize.

DarkCoolEdgeJuly 19, 2014

It's certainly better than Mario Tennis 64, GC/Wii and 3DS so... only one game left in the series to be better...

MythtendoJuly 19, 2014

DCE, this game is definitely not as good as the N64 version.

This score is at least three and a half points too low.

UncleBobRichard Cook, Guest ContributorJuly 20, 2014

Quote from: NWR_insanolord

This score is at least three and a half points too low.

Yeah, it's going to bring down the metacritic score.  Why does NWR have to be such jerks?

Quote from: NWR_insanolord

This score is at least three and a half points too low.

Aye! This Scallywag be knowin' what makes fer a good time on the open NWR seas, Y'har!


*AHEM!*

In all seriousness, I do really like this game. maybe not as much as Stan Furguson did when this game was brand spankin' new, but I can at least cede the point that if you aren't grabbed by the trappings of the academy immediately that you're going to see it as bloat and then make the 3DS game and watch how abysmally it sells.

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Genre Sports
Developer Camelot Software Planning
Players1

Worldwide Releases

na: Mario Tennis: Power Tour
Release Jul 03, 2014
PublisherNintendo
RatingEveryone
jpn: Mario Tennis Advance
Release Apr 30, 2014
PublisherNintendo
RatingAll Ages
eu: Mario Power Tennis
Release Jun 26, 2014
PublisherNintendo
Rating3+
aus: Mario Power Tennis
Release Jun 26, 2014
PublisherNintendo
RatingGeneral
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