Mario Power Tennis rocks

December 20, 2004

Aarrggh, I have a new obsession that’s going to eat way way too much of my time–Mario Power Tennis. Just bought it yesterday while I was at Best Buy, it’s way way better than I had expected.

Now I’ve been a fan of the Nintendo 64 Mario Tennis, but I donated my old N64 to a good cause last year so I haven’t been able to play Mario Tennis in quite a while. Nintendo finally released the Gamecube version, re-christened “Mario Power Tennis” because there’s a new power move available to each character. You can still play the regular tennis, but with the power move what happens is that you build up strength in your raquet until eventually you can execute these cool power moves, either a defensive move that lets you retrieve a ball that’s way out of each or an offensive move that pounds the ball into the opponent’s court.

When I first saw the power moves I thought they would ruin the game, which is why I waited a couple months before deciding to plunk down the money. But every review, from Gamespot to X-Play, had good things to say about the game so I broke down and bought it.

I’m currently stuck, I can’t get past Luigi in this one tournament. I’m playing as the little green dragon, Yoshi, so I may try with a different character to see if I can find a way past Luigi. Definitely going to be a major time-sink in my future.