What's the Greatest Video Game: Mario Tennis Aces

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries look through other blog entries, or for a quick overview use the link at the bottom.

How did I do?

I can't really explain this feeling, but every now and then I realize that the big box stores that I buy my physical games from are going to be swapping out their inventory for newer games, and I panic and buy games that I don't need. In general that is what collecting games is all about "buying games you don't need," but sometimes I jump the gun and refuse to wait for a deal. I know better, I know that just because Target is going to stop holding onto Mario Tennis Aces, doesn't mean I won't be able to get it from hundreds of other stores, but every now and then I panic buy games.

One of those games is the subject of our talk today, Mario Tennis Aces for the Nintendo Switch. Hopefully the name and box art give the game away, but it is a tennis game starring some of your favorite Mario characters. It isn't a deep sim, but rather arcade-y take on Tennis. There is in fact a story mode which is what I will be basing my "Completed it" mentality on, even if there is still some things to do in the game.

Now I need to get one thing straight outright, I knew going into this game that the story mode would not be the main reason people would buy or play Mario Tennis. I'm no idiot, I know that this is a game people would get to play with their friends or family, the story mode is just there to kill some time while you wait for buddies to come over. However, in the sense of beating a game, we are talking about rolling credits, and you do "beat" the game by finishing Story mode.

In the story mode you play as Mario, who is using his awesome skills at tennis to track down and destroy a cursed racket. You travel to multiple different lands and beat bosses and take part in small challenges to get stronger until you get to take on the racket and be a hero. Now I won't get into specifics or spoilers here, but one of the things I was incredibly bummed about is that for a tennis game, the story mode contains very little playing of actual tennis. Let me clarify, nearly every level is you using your tennis skills, but there are surprisingly few instances where you are playing singles or doubles tennis against a computer to move on. Out of lets say 20-25 levels, you maybe do it 4-5 times. Which is absolute bonkers to me. I presumably bought a tennis game to play tennis. It's nice to have a challenge stage here and there, and I thought a couple bosses were fun, but my favorite part of the story mode was actually playing tennis. My two favorite levels are at the end of the game, where you make it back to the tennis tournament and actually play tennis, who would've thought.

The actual playing of tennis is good. You have multiple shot types, pretty good control of how you want to hit the ball and where, plus you have a handful of special moves that allow you keep the ball in play longer then normal. You can slow down time, do a special recovery move (right stick), and a special shot. One of the few gripes I have about the actual playing of tennis, is that I had a hard time telling exactly how far away a ball could be from my character before they could hit it. I would run near to the spot the ball was going to be coming to, start charging my shot, and then I would either hit it (great) or Mario would refuse to swing, because apparently I was a few pixels farther than I could be. While this is something that can be learned through repetition, I still was making that simple mistake right up to the end of the game. Now, some of that is on me because I would maybe start charging my shot sooner then I should, but I also felt that the game was inconsistent with where Mario's contact should be. Since the story mode only allows you to play as one character, you think I would have dialed in Mario and then maybe suffered if I picked a different character with shorter reach, but nope.. same issues with Mario through out.

Speaking of which, I know the game is called "Mario Tennis Aces," but can we ever get to a point where we can select non-Mario to go through these campaigns. In Mario Kart we can pick someone else to do grand prix, in Mario party we can play the game without Mario in the fold, I just wanted to play as the cool characters in this game and sadly that is not an option. Each character I am told by the game plays differently. There are Balanced characters, Power, Speedy, Technical and Defensive characters. You can infer what you think those translate to in terms of stats, but those aren't surfaced anywhere. Its a bummer, because in the story mode we actually get to see Mario's individual stats (because he levels up), you would think that those stats would also be in play for every character, but we just aren't privy to them. Should I believe that all speedy characters have identical stats in terms of how hard they hit and the amount of spin they use? Maybe that is too deep of a question for the game, but I want there to be some difference between all characters outside of their type. I would love for Luigi to be slightly faster than Mario, but maybe less powerful despite them both being "Balanced." I saw a reddit user timed the characters running, but everything is a tenth of a second difference and I don't know if any of that stuff has been verified. Show me the stats in the game.

I'm also bummed that all the "special abilities" are the same for every character. Everyone has the same power, and the special shots from the characters may all have a different cut-scene that goes with them, but are identical in terms of what they do. This feels like a wasted opportunity. You have all of these wacky fake characters, give their specials some unique ability. They could have made a shot that has an impossible curve, a shot that if you mistime the block automatically breaks your racket (regardless of health), a super fast shot that might have a bigger block window because of its speed. Perhaps a defensive special ability where it drains the special bar of your opponent, or makes their shots 20% slower. These are all ones I came up within the last 45 seconds, you are telling me they couldn't come up with these during development. It comes off as a real sterilized take on the characters which are supposed to be the most lively and charming of the Nintendo world.

Final gripe, but I hate the live model of monthly challenges to unlock content. I understand that this was originally designed to keep people coming back to the game month over month, so that they had something to do, but instead means that I stop playing the game sooner then I would normally, because until the start of next month I don't have anything to do besides play matches against the COM or the 3 people still playing this game online. I'm a sucker for unlocking costumes or color swaps, because I like having those options when I eventually play the game with friends or family, or because I am a weird completionist. I wish that Nintendo followed the old route of unlocking all of that stuff by playing as that character, completing challenges, or finishing the story. Instead I have to wait until June 1st to roll around, to see if I want to collect outfits for whatever character is in the rotation next. I also have to hope that in June there are other people who want to get those outfits, because to unlock them (at least what I had to do for Yoshi) was to complete online challenges that you can't start with only one player. When this game dies, if it isn't considered dead already, it is going to be nearly impossible to unlock costumes for people coming to this game late.

This all sounds negative, because well.. I felt the game could have done better. It also makes me a little scared for what is in store for Mario Golf, a game/franchise I think people are excited for. Will that be the same experience, or did they learn some things after Aces came out? Also as stated earlier, I know this is a game meant to be played with other people, and that is where the bulk of the action should be. I didn't buy Mario Tennis with the belief that it was a single-player only game, but I will say that while the tennis is solid it is lacking some oomph to make it shine. If the characters abilities were different, or if there was really some fun counter-picking that could happen this game could be great, but playing a singles or doubles match, where you both have the same special shot and can move around the court at roughly the same pace means that the game can get quite boring playing 2 player for a long time. When I played with other people, the result was the same, two matches then switch to a different game. There was some fun to be had, and I don't regret buying it, but it does make me very wary of getting too excited about Mario sports titles in the coming years.

Is this game the Greatest game of all time: Nada

Where does it rank: I put Mario Tennis Aces fairly low. Can you have fun with it? Yes of course, but it has virtually no depth. I placed it at #30 out of 49 games. It sits one above "Kickle Cubicle" (NES) and one below "Knowledge is Power" (PS4)

Up Next: It's our 50th Episode!! I will be talking about "Dr. Mario" (NES) and share some pointless Stats!

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion). Here

Thanks for listening.

So you're saying that this Mario Tennis game's campaign had too much Mario and not enough Tennis?

Shoulda bought Tennis Mario instead, then.

@bigsocrates: I looked and Tennis Mario wasn't in stock.. I'm a simple man, I want my tennis games to have tennis in them, is that so much to ask?

Another great write up! Seems like my decision to skip this game at launch and wait for a sale (which means it will likely live on my wish list indefinitely) was the right call. Really hoping the new Mario Golf doesn’t make the same mistakes!

@imunbeatable80: Clearly the answer is yes, right? It was too much to ask for Nintendo. They gave you a lot of Mario but not a lot of tennis and told you to LIKE IT. And you didn't. You didn't like it. You made Star Fox sad.

The tennis video game market is basically dead at this point. I think that's why Mario Tennis doesn't feel the need to put actual effort into the game. The Wii U version was apparently even worse. You see lists of "games still stuck on Wii U" from time to time and nobody even mentions Ultra Smash. But what else is there if you want to play video game tennis? I guess there are two SNES tennis games on Switch Online for some reason. When are you going to review those?

Seeing as the golf market is much more competitive than the tennis market I think that Mario Golf is likely going to be a better game with more of what people want. Clap Hanz is still out there putting out good golf games (the new Apple Arcade one is not Hot Shots but is apparently well liked; but there are lots of Hot Shots games on PS4, which is a console I'm told you own) so I think that Nintendo will feel the need to stand out and will put something interesting together.

At least I hope so.

@cameron_friend: Thank you for the comment. Waiting for a sale is certainly the best choice, but knowing nintendo i doubt it ever drops below $40. That being said, no matter when you buy, you will probably be getting a pretty dead online game. I ran into a few people playing, but there were some longer wait times online (if that is what you are interested in), so another year or 6 months from now means it will likely be even worse. Of course if you get it for local multiplayer or for single player then wait as long as you can

@bigsocrates: i hope you are right.. despite not playing golf or tennis in real life, i do enjoy the video game versions of these sports and like them absurd. I played too much outlaw golf to comment here, but im just hoping mario golf can capture that magic.

Virtua tennis and top spin need to come back so we can remember what good tennis looks like.

Yeah this game was a bummer on multiple fronts for how promising it looked pre-release. Mario Power Tennis on the Gamecube remains the definitive entry from a gameplay perspective, with the variation in special shots that you suggest already present in that older entry; the GBA Mario Tennis: Power Tour still offers the best we have in an actual story mode. Advance promotion made it seem like Aces was shaping up to deliver on improved versions of these things and it all just fell very flat.

@imhungry: Thanks for the read. I don't know that anything bad really went on behind the scenes of Aces, but i do wonder when the superior versions are previous installments, what were they using as reference? Is it the excuse of developing on new hardware (gamecube vs switch) or did they put all their beans in the "Swing" mode and hope that would be enough?

There was definitely something off about this game.

Looks great. Feels like a Mario universe game. Plays a decent game of tennis. I’m not expecting Mario sports titles to be sims but at least resemble the sport and I think this game does a good job of that while also including power ups that make it a Mario sports game.

And yet…

It just didn’t hold my interest very long. The campaign seemed more like a proof of concept of what they could do with the tennis mechanics and they actually did manage to pull off a bunch of clever mini games. I am primarily a single player person so that also really doesn’t help in a game like this. But it would have been interesting to get to use different characters in the campaign, either to play through a whole campaign or have sections of the campaign where you play with different characters.

When the game launched, a lot of the discussion was about how this game is actually more like a fighting game and I think that’s why I ultimately faded on it. So much of the competitive play is about playing the game a certain way because of how the specials are (un)balanced and I’m just not into that. When I play sports games, I like to play with a bunch of different teams that use different strategies but there’s usually flexibility to mix things up. In Mario tennis, there’s one way to play each character and that’s it.

Holding out hope for Mario Golf.

@bchampnd: Thanks for the read and I'm right there with you. I mainly play games single-player and I knew going in that Mario Tennis Aces was not going to give me everything I wanted. However, I wrapped up my time with the game, and I didn't even play as every character, nor do I feel the need to. They all play too similar, the specials while unique in animation all do the same thing.

It's interesting you bring up the fighting game analogy, because I never heard that, but it makes sense. You are expected to play a certain way, use your specials at a certain time etc. etc. It does make the game very one note, in terms of strategy.

Hopefully Mario Golf, at the very least, adds on to this formula and makes the characters truly unique. If Bowser and Peach have the same driving distance, and their specials are both to just hit the ball 20% farther, then I might lose faith in all Mario Sports games.

If you run a quick google search, you'll see some of the discussion on likening Mario Tennis to a fighting game. Kotaku did a pretty extensive writeup on it if you're interested.

The sport of tennis is pretty limiting in terms of what you can do as ultimately tennis is a pretty simple game compared to other sports (not easy, as it takes a lot of coordination and skill to not just hit a ball moving at high speed but land it in a specified area, but simple in terms of rules and strategies). I absolutely think they should have come up with unique special shots for each character that did different things (i.e., not just different animations) so you have to learn how to play as and against them all as a baseline.

As for Mario Golf, I think there's more potential for differentiation there. For instance, maybe Bowser has excellent driving ability but is terrible in the short game while Peach can't drive but is great with irons (she usually has a floating ability when she jumps so maybe she has excellent control of the ball when she lofts it up and can have it change direction or spins). Maybe a character like Waluigi who is usually a more "defensive" type character is middling on most skills but excellent playing from bunkers or the rough. Again, I'm not expecting the game to be a Tiger Woods game in terms of attention to detail and minor variations between characters' abilities and more expecting the typical archetypes like power, balanced, technical/finesse. I just want there to be enough differentiation that the characters feel somewhat unique and make me want to try them all out and maybe pick certain ones depending on the course being played.

@bchampnd: 100% this.. I just want Mario Golf to make me want to try out the other characters. This way I can see which one fits my playstyle. In Tennis, it never made much of a difference, just put me on random everytime and I will be fine.

Update: I waited a fu**ing month so that I could play online for a visor for Boo!?!?! What a joke, give us real alternate costumes!