After playing Mario Golf on the NSO, I tried to give a shot to the Tennis counterpart, expecting a similar, kinda just okay/ mediocre experience.
And what I played was not amazing, but still incredibly solid.
For what it is supposed to be, a quirky tennis simulator with Mario flavor, it does A LOT of things to make it stand out.
It has an incredibly charming opening cutscenes that gives life to a lot of the mario cast; and it adds such bizzarre pics to the roster for the time, like the princess from that Land game, that miniboss dinosaur from SMB2, a random Boo and Shuguy (that weren't really that big of an enemy at the time), both DK and DK jr, and some weird camelot OCs, including what would become one of the most memorable nintendo characters. Not to mention that compared to othe sports titles, Mario Tennis builds different modes out of the mario universe: we got classic tennis matches and tournaments, but also the ability to play items on Bowser castle, and even have minigames themesd around piranha plants......
Even at the time Camelot was able to take the Mario world, shape them as they wanted and add so much more charm and personality to it. I highly respect that, even though the formula of Tennis here is... just rather simple and repetitive.
While the skeleotn of the game is "just tennis", the flavor of Camelot led to a charming experience, that is able to set the standards that will make the future Mario sports games so memorable.
And what I played was not amazing, but still incredibly solid.
For what it is supposed to be, a quirky tennis simulator with Mario flavor, it does A LOT of things to make it stand out.
It has an incredibly charming opening cutscenes that gives life to a lot of the mario cast; and it adds such bizzarre pics to the roster for the time, like the princess from that Land game, that miniboss dinosaur from SMB2, a random Boo and Shuguy (that weren't really that big of an enemy at the time), both DK and DK jr, and some weird camelot OCs, including what would become one of the most memorable nintendo characters. Not to mention that compared to othe sports titles, Mario Tennis builds different modes out of the mario universe: we got classic tennis matches and tournaments, but also the ability to play items on Bowser castle, and even have minigames themesd around piranha plants......
Even at the time Camelot was able to take the Mario world, shape them as they wanted and add so much more charm and personality to it. I highly respect that, even though the formula of Tennis here is... just rather simple and repetitive.
While the skeleotn of the game is "just tennis", the flavor of Camelot led to a charming experience, that is able to set the standards that will make the future Mario sports games so memorable.