Mario Power Tennis
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Game Information
Release Date: November 8, 2004
Developers: Camelot Software Planning
Publishers: Nintendo
Platforms: Gamecube, Nintendo Wii
Genre: Tennis
Players: 1-2

Synopsis
The popular N64 tennis game returns with even more powerful shots, new power-ups, and wild environments. Now you can join all your favorite characters from the Mushroom Kingdom--including Mario, Donkey Kong, Bowser, and Peach--on various courts inspired by Nintendo games. Each character has a special strength that you can use for both offense and defense. Build up your skill points in single-player challenges or practice your skills in four-player matches.

Gameplay
Mario Tennis brings players a new type of game to play against their opponents. Players will get to choose from 14 different Mario Series characters with 4 characters that are unlocked after winning certain championship trophies. Each character has their own specialty in which they possess a certain characteristic that is unique to their style. Some of these styles are speed, tricky, technique, and power. As with each character, each one possesses their own power-up hit when they are fully charged and delivers a difficult hit to their opponent that makes hit difficult for them to reflect back to the player. Players can participate in championships to unlock new courses and characters. As with progressing through the game, the difficulty will get harder and the opponents will be smarter at how to play against the player. Players will be able to play in 10 different tennis courses that have either extras or no extras that will influence and impact the outcome of the game to increase the difficulty more. Aside from tournaments Mario Power Tennis provides, it also includes mini-games to play as well to have a more pleasant experience. Some of the mini-games include: Artist on the Court, Balloon Panic, Terror Tennis, and Tic-Tac Glow.

Graphics
Depending on what system the player is playing the game on, the graphics from the Wii version will differ from the older console versions. Coming from the Wii version, the graphics were really sleek clear. The textures implemented on the courts of the game were really detailed and had a source of a variety of colors spread throughout the entire tennis court. The characters in the game are well detailed to see the facial features each character has and show the movements of the legs and arms flow very well. The faces on the characters are really nice and have that high definition look to them which is impressive. A cool feature players will notice is that when the tennis ball hits the net, players will be able to see the movement flow in the new as it slowly ebbs away from the impact zone, which i find to be realistic in a way. On certain courts, the plants and grass would sort of swift in either direction as if there is a gust of wind hitting them, but its probably because of the location of the court is on. Overall, the graphics on the Wii are more enhanced and better than on the previous consoles.

Control
For a game like this, I myself found myself having some difficulties with the controls. But if you happen to be playing on the Gamecube console, you probably would find the controls a bit easier since the Nintendo Wii is more difficult to handle and is sensitive to the slightest movement. Since the Wii had less buttons on it, some actions were very difficult to perform since the controls were made specifically for the Gamecube only. But if players wanted a more realistic gameplay, then the Wii would be the perfect match since the player can swing the Wii remote like a tennis racket, but had to remain in front of the wii detector in order for the game to pick it up. Depending on what the player's preference on playing whatever console they have more experience with, they probably will find the controls to be simpler than trying to play it on a new console so really the difficulty in the controls pretty much varies on the players themselves.

Rating
Gameplay: 9.3/10
Graphics: 9.4/10
Controls: 8.4/10
Overall: 9.0/10