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Slush's Mario Tennis Review
Mario Tennis, made by the same Japananians as Mario Golf, features fair graphics. It's pretty much standard fare for a cameo game. You won't expect Rareware graphics, but then again graphics aren't everything. While there is considerably less scenery to look at in a tennis game than a golf game, the graphics have been tweaked from Mario Golf in many different areas. The one that sticks out the most to me is how Donkey looks somewhat improved from his Mario Golf model. The tennis courts look crisper than Camelot's golf courses did, but again, there was less to design for them.
7.6
Sound is very similar to Mario Golf. The sound of contact between a golf ball and golf club has been replaced with tennis balls and tennis raquets. That's about it. I thought that the character voices also got annoying for the first time in the history of me playing these types of games, just because they're constantly chattering away at each other and yet they have such a limited collection of vocal samples. DK retains his trademark "carburator voice," and that may be a good thing or a back thing, depending on how you look at it. The music is very Mario Golf-ish, which I liked the first time around. Overall, it wasn't a bad effort with sound, but I felt it could and should have been slightly better. Not that I could have done it.
8.3
Play control is very simple, as it is in the usual cameo game. However, sometimes the controls do get slightly frustrating. Perhaps the reason for this is that the controls are so simple, that you get used to pressing them in a very repetitive manner. Then when something out of the ordinary occurs, your fingers refuse to react by going in the same direction you had them going for the last several hours. You can't really blame the game for this, but it does get frustrating. Maybe I'm the only one who ran into this problem. Maybe I'm an idiot. Well, that's already pretty well established, so I believe I'm just going to move on...
9.6
While Mario Tennis did present some new features to the genre (Ring Shot, Bowser Court, etc.), I felt that more could have been done to spice things up. I hate to keep comparing this to Mario Golf, but since this is a semi-sequel of sorts, I'm going to anyway. Mario Golf really didn't need as many innovations, just because it was more expansive than a tennis game. I personally felt that there should have been more modes thrown in to spice things up. That doesn't mean having to beat the Star Cup with every character either (something, while fun, will get tedious for some out there). If you take out all the extra characters, designs for the tennis courts, and the few added options, Mario Tennis is very similar to Mario's Tennis for Virtual Boy and other tennis games throughout the years (some that have featured Mario, some that have not). However, this is a damn fine game, and sometimes originiality just shouldn't matter much.
7.7
I love this game more than a man should love a piece of plastic with circuitry inside, or a canary that matter. I felt Mario Golf was slightly superior than this, but then again I never was (and still aren't) that big of a tennis fan. Maybe if I could pull myself away from the sport of golf and fall in love with knocking a dog chew toy around on a giant piece of clay, then I'd be saying how Mario Golf comes up short to this game. It doesn't matter though. It's a damn good game. It also introduces Waluigi, who we'll be forced to cover on from now to eternity. One bit of warning though before you decide to purchase this (great) game: Luigi does a victory dance in this game that will make you want to rip his limbs off everytime, even if you're playing as him. It's that damn annoying. Hell, I'm knocking the overall score down .1 because of it.
9.3
Note to Protective Parents: I said damn twice in this review, and used "Hell" once. If you don't allow such filthy language into your fine homes, then your children shouldn't have been reading this review. Come to think of it, I'm a very vulgar person. If I happen to say the word clitoris, for instance, you'd probably be shocked and offended. I don't blame you, personally. At least I use proper terminology though. I could have called it the "love suckle." So please use extreme caution the next time your offspring decide they want to bring some of Slush's wisdom into your living rooms. It won't only serve you better, it'll serve me better.
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