Quick Look: Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash

Yeah! Ryan and Patrick did a quick look of the 3DS Mario Tennis. They thought it was relatively competent, and a lot of folks liked it. This looks like a stripped down version of that game.

Nintendo slowly giving up on the Wii U, sort of bummed to see that.

Such a shame since the usage of the gamepad adds the one thing missing from every other tennis game..

Camelot has always been trash, I have no idea where this idea that they've done fantastic games in the past has come from.

It's depressing that the N64 Mario Tennis game, which is $10 on the Wii U Virtual Console, seems more fully featured than this game.

I disagree. The GC and specifically GBA installments in Tennis and Golf were great, and a lot of that had to do with their rpg-story mode. The thought that Nintendo and Camelot have abandoned that is staggering to me.

I will say it looks like they did some cool things with the courts in this game.

@arbitrarywater: plus it has yoshi's taunt noise (which is essentially a needle to the brain in audio form lol)

Love me some Mario Tennis. First time I've kinda wanted a Wii U since the Wind Walker HD bundle.

Why is the site suddenly saying that chrome doesn't play HTML 5 I wonder?

"What does 'tricky' mean?" -- J. Gerstmann

No Waluigi crotch chops?

No RPG mode?

No buy.

Windjammers it ain't.

im drunk.....:)

The older I get, the more Nintendo first-party typesetting gets under my skin. I get that they work mostly in Japanese but surely NoA can hire someone who knows how to fix the kerning and funky arches or they can at least afford to buy a typeface that isn't terrible. It makes the games look so cheap and nasty, especially as graphics get higher res.

Then again, their consoles look like first-run internal prototypes, their system internals aren't in-step with the rest of the industry, and they're releasing empty shells of games like this. Who am I kidding: Nintendo is budget at all hell these days.

Those first two Golden Sun games were brilliant. They had a level of polish and detail that's pretty rare for JRPGs. The third game, between its bad DS polygonal graphics, messy touch screen UI, and all-round odd story choices, isn't in the same league however.

I really miss the RPG elements of the portable versions of Mario Tennis and Mario Golf. Wish they would put that kind of stuff into the console versions.

So star characters are like foil magic cards?

I wonder if Nintendo is going to try to milk people with DLC for more modes.

@paulunga: Yes!!! The Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance Golf & Tennis games were incredible with their RPG Story Modes!

I don't understand how successive entries of a game become so much worse. The good parts that people enjoyed are already laid out for the developers, just make that better.

Shining Force II and Hot Shots Golf are great Camelot games.

@atwa said:

How mad do you have to be to literally type this comment within the 10 seconds it takes for Jeff to say exactly that right afterwards? lol.