Mario Power Tennis is another brilliant cooperative development release from Camelot Software Planning and Nintendo, and it was released exclusively for the GameCube in 2004.

From the main menu, you can play an exhibition match; play in a series of increasingly more difficult tournaments; or play a series of special tennis-based minigames, called “Special Games“. Each play mode usually has a multiplayer option for up to four players, and sometimes even special game types that are unique to a particular play mode. Choose to play Singles or Doubles matches, and choose between 18 playable characters.

Prolonged play and completing certain tournaments or game modes gifts you with a variety of unlockables, like new minigames, or new courts to play on. It also allows you to experience the nice touches, like the lighting conditions changing as your tournament matches progress.

Exhibition games can be played in a number of different ways: they can be “Item Battle” games (where, if a player hits an item box with their ball, they are awarded a power-up that might give them an advantage during a passage of play); they can be “Ring Games” (where players must hit balls through a series of rings to score points); and they can be “Standard” games, with the basic, accepted rules of tennis. There are also unique two-player minigames too, like “Gimmick Court“, set on Delphino Plaza from Super Mario Sunshine. And others that are unlockable.

Special Games is a veritable feast of minigame goodness, with tennis-based tasks to be completed in over ten different categories. That section alone will keep you going for days, and there are extras to unlock, too. And they’re just the side-games…

At its core, Mario Power Tennis has four difficulty levels: Novice; Intermediate; Expert, and Pro. These can be applied to opponent AI, or to the game in general. You can play Mario Power Tennis as easy or as hard as you like, but the underlying tennis mechanics and forgiving controls make the game feel super slick and fun to play. You can set the opponent difficulty level and ball speed to whatever suits you, but if you master the controls you can have tennis matches that are reminiscent of the epic battles in the great SNES classic, Super Tennis. Especially when you start winning points on Power Shot returns…

Mario Power Tennis is beautifully-presented and intuitive to play. It makes a great party game, and is also suitable for kids to play, although adults might get the most out of it (I dunno though; some kids can be quite obsessive about beating video games). Nintendo and Camelot made a nice-feeling and fun game-to-play game, with lots of variety. The minigames and unlockables are a nice surprise and add real value to it. And to be described as “being around the same level as Super Tennis on the SNES” is an honour in itself…

Mario Power Tennis is a top quality tennis game, and is still well worth playing now. If Nintendo had any sense, it would make this game available legally for the PC, Linux and Mac communities, as well as for the major console networks. Rather than just have it gathering dust in the mists of time somewhere…

More: Mario Power Tennis on Wikipedia