New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis Review for Nintendo Wii

New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis box art

System: Wii	Review Rating Legend
Dev: Camelot Software Planning	1.0 - 1.9 = Avoid	4.0 - 4.4 = Great
Pub: Nintendo	2.0 - 2.4 = Poor	4.5 - 4.9 = Must Buy
Release: Mar. 09, 2009	2.5 - 2.9 = Average	5.0 = The Best
Players: 1-4	3.0 - 3.4 = Fair
ESRB Rating: Everyone	3.5 - 3.9 = Good

The fact that the motion controls are done so poorly is really quite frustrating considering that underneath them lies the same great tennis game from the last generation of consoles. Players can still take any of their favorite Nintendo characters through a series of singles or doubles tournaments, with each win unlocking more events and characters to have fun with. Also, if you are looking to take a break from the more serious and competitive tennis tournaments, Mario Power Tennis also provides an assortment of Gimmick Courts and mini-games. Gimmick Courts can be quite interesting, factoring different mechanics such as expanding and contracting tiles on the court into otherwise normal matches.

New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis screenshot

This title’s mini-games can also be pretty enjoyable but, unfortunately, many of them suffer due to the sloppy motion control implementation. Trying to return a ball through rings that hover above the net is more reliant on luck than skill this time around. However, none of the included mini-games suffer from the shoddy controls more than the one that involves painting with tennis balls. In this mini-game, you’ll need to hit colored balls into specified areas of each provided picture to fill in the appropriate colors of several Nintendo character outlines. While completing these provided a slight amount of challenge in the old GC version of this game, here it greatly challenges your luck, arm strength, and patience as you try to get the game to correctly register your swings.

For a game that was released for an older console in 2004, Mario Power Tennis looks surprisingly good on the Wii. In fact, I would venture to say that this game actually looks better than many of the games being made specifically for the Wii. When playing the game you’ll find many varied and interesting-looking courses, well-animated and brightly colored characters, and some good lighting and ball tracing effects too. If you look closely enough, you may even spot a few small additions to the game such as a slick new picture-in-picture replay system.

Regrettably, in the end, the story of New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis is a very sad one. Presumably the entire reason for this game’s existence is to make a great older title more fun and approachable by adding the ability to use motion controls. However, due to its incredibly sloppy motion control implementation and the fact that you can’t use any form of traditional controls, the gameplay manages to feel inferior to that of the original GC version. If you want

By Adam Brown
CCC Staff Contributor

RATING OUT OF 5

RATING DESCRIPTION

3.9

Graphics
Mario and the gang all look surprisingly good in this minimally updated GameCube game.

2.0

Control
For a game that exists solely because of its new controls, one would think that they’d actually work better instead of much worse than the controls they were replacing.

3.2

Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Pretty standard fare for a Mario Sports title, although there isn’t much variety in the characters’ voice clips.

2.5

Play Value
While there are a good variety of things to do in the game, the imprecise motion controls manage to suck much of the fun out of them.

2.5

Overall Rating - Average
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

With Wii controls, players simply swing the Wii Remote controller to hit forehands and backhands and to apply spin. The motion controls open this classic game to new gamers and offers experienced gamers the option to attach a Nunchuk controller for additional precision.

Players can play as familiar characters from the Mario universe. Every character has a defensive and offensive Power Shot that can send opponents reeling or return out-of-reach balls.

Players can be as crazy as they like. Play traditional tournaments, or hit the Gimmick Courts for wild matches not possible in the real world.

This game was originally released for the Nintendo GameCube system. The ability to use Wii controllers has been added to this version.