Mario Power Tennis (GC) Review

Mario has always been an icon because of the many genres that it has gone through such as sports titles, party games, etc. On the N64, Mario Tennis was released and was a great hit. Now, Nintendo finally gives us another tennis game for the Gamecube!

Mario Power Tennis brings a new gameplay element to the franchise, and is called the Power Shot. The Power Shot is a power that each character has, in different kind of ways, to either hit the ball stronger or to hit balls that are difficult to reach. Yet, the rest of the gameplay is as good as ever with a tournament mode that is to easily defeat all the characters in the tournament so you can unlock new minigames, new courses and new characters. Yet, Some tournaments can get a little too hard. The game controls are pretty easy so everyone can have some fun and play.

Another difference to the first game is that we have some minigames that are quite fun then expected. One of them is to hit the ghosts with the balls, others have you fighting against mecha bowser, were you have to fire balls at him until he dies but be careful of the bullets, bombs and his flamethrower.

Mario Power Tennis is not the best looking game out there, but the character design, course design and the short cinematic they do when they are going to do a power shot, are well done. Also, the cinematic at the beginning is very long but quite fun to watch.

The music tunes are nice but some are not that much good or impressive. The voice acting of the characters however remains great. However, the best thing of the game is the multiplayer were you can play with up to 4 people. Making it one of the best multiplayer games of this year 2004, were you will have a blast more than Mario party 6.

With the killer multiplayer, minigames and a little challenging tournaments it really deserves a buy. Anyone looking for some great multiplayer should buy it, but if if you also liked the first game you will also like this one.

Score: 9/10