There hasn't been a truly good Mario sports game since the days of the GameCube, when top developer Camelot released the likes of Mario Power Tennis and Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour.
While more recent efforts, such as Square Enix's Mario Sports Mix and Next Level Games'
Mario Strikers Charged Football were decent, they lacked the charm of Camelot's older offerings. It seems that someone somewhere at Nintendo has realised this, which is why the developer is back for another round of tennis, this time on the 3DS.
Camelot famously crammed as many Mario characters as it could into the GameCube sports games, with Mario Tennis boasting 18 famous and not-so-famous faces and Mario Golf featuring 16. Ever wanted to play tennis as a Fly Guy or Petey Piranha? Probably not, but you could in the GameCube days and it was surprisingly fun.
With this in mind, we'd expect a similarly huge character roster this time around, especially given the space provided by the 3DS cartridge (2GB compared to the GameCube discs' 1.5GB). So far we've only seen Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and Bowser on court but the sight of Toad as the umpire made us smile as he turned his little mushroom head with each shot played.
Gameplay, Set, Match
Characters aside, gameplay will be the order of the day here, and the previous Mario Tennis nailed the balance between realism and madness.
We didn't spot any special moves in the first Mario Tennis trailer (although Bowser was holding a neat spiky racquet) but over the years there have been a bunch of licensed 'zany' sports games in which Disney characters, The Simpsons and even Mega Man got involved in some sporting shenanigans, but many of those prioritised spectacle over gameplay, leading to ridiculous screen-filling special moves.
They relied on the novelty of the situation to make up for the general lack of tactical gameplay and the fact that, when you peeled back the characters and special moves, the core sports game wasn't very good.
The result - whether it was the N64 version, the Game Boy Color one, on GBA or the aforementioned GameCube title - was a fantastic game that fans of Mario and tennis alike could get a lot out of.
That's why we're excited about Mario Tennis on the 3DS. A lot of people will shrug it off just another sports game, but it's more than that: it's a Mario sports game by Camelot, and we haven't had one of those for seven years.
Can't wait for this, hopefully it isn't just a port, but Nintendo wouldn't do that.... would they???
The N64 and GB versions were brilliant but the gamecube one was only fun when you turned off the special moves (stupid addition).
Here's hoping for a RPG-styled single-player game, like in the GBC and GBA games. They were incredibly fun. Also, some cross-platform link-up, like putting your 3DS character onto a WiiU version of mario tennis, would be great.
The special shots did detract from the GC game, and to a lesser extent the GBA game, so here is hoping they tone down the effects (or even have separate modes entirely)
I hope that they take inspiration from the N64 version's music. The music in the original was brilliant, some of it sounded like it had come out of an RPG
so games that get 90% (mario strikers) are only classed as decent now?
Looking forward to this, but what I'm really hoping for is where the Wii failed-- Mario Golf.
ohh I have this game for GameCube and I love it. It is so fun. I beat it quite a long time ago. Camelot is good at making these kind of games. When Mario Sports Mix came out I played it and I did't get the same feeling.
I hope this is more like the N64 Version than the GC version. With the obvious exception of the graphics, the N64 version was better in every way.
It would be a very stupid move if they did. It's already been ported once (Wii). They don't need to do it again.
well said, totally agree with you there
Hmm... well, not only have we not heard from Camelot with regards to a sports game in a while, we haven't heard from them with regards to any game for a good while either. However, I do hope this game will sate my need to play more Camelot stuff =D I do like the feel of the music in that trailer, as it's very reminiscent of Camelot's RPG series, Golden Sun, which is another Camelot series I'd love to see more of again (especially as I didn't finish its latest outing until recently. It's a nice game, but it's left me wanting more >.<).
Does'nt look very exciting. There's no new power-ups and it looks very classic.