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REVIEW: MARIO TENNIS ACES (sWITCH)

25/6/2018

20 Comments

 
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One of my favourite games of all time is Super Tennis on the Super Nintendo.

I played it again not so long ago, and got a bit hooked on it for a second time. I was pleased to discover that it remains every bit as good and addictive and challenging as I remembered it. There are no bells and whistles. It's just a decent little tennis game, with a deceptive level of depth.

Super Mario Tennis Aces is not a game lacking in bells and whistles. Indeed, there are bells, whistles, klaxons, rattles, people smashing cymbals together, eleven screaming goats, a lost child crying for its mummy, and being stuck in a sweat box for 36 hours with a hen party, that wacky bloke from your office, and a box of comedy photo props.

It is - in a number of important, fundamental ways - the single most irritating tennis game I have ever played. Heck, forget tennis; I think hit might be single most irritating game I've ever played, regardless of genre. 
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BACKBONE
So, here's the thing. The backbone of Mario Tennis Aces is an adventure mode. Like an actual backbone made of chewed-up chard instead of bone... it is both stupid and unwanted.

Structured like a traditional Super Mario Game, you go on a quest where every stage is either a wacky tennis match or some other sort of tennis challenge - hitting the balls at targets and that.

Nobody will buy this game for an Adventure mode. Frankly, they might as well have not bothered, and spent some time focus group-testing the rest of the game. And then they could've sold Mario Tennis Aces to the military as a new form of psychological warfare, rather than inflict upon us. Or they could've just skipped all those development costs, foregone the game altogether, and just put a load of anthrax in every cartridge case.

You see, two types of people will buy this game; those who want a decent tennis game to play on the Switch... and masochists. Unfortunately, the former group of people are shit out of luck. 

The other main aspect of Aces is the tournament mode. This is what you might be expecting, but this being a Mario game... it's can't just settle on offering you a decent, basic, game of tennis. There are special moves - which can perform when your energy meter is charged - and you can slow down time to reach particularly tricky shots (though I never once achieved this). And you can, on occasion, leap into the air and launch a shot via a first-person perspective cross-hairs. 

All of this is sort of fine, in theory. However... a number of things get in the way.

Which is an understatement akin to saying "That bear attack which resulted in the deaths of our five children really got in the way of us having a nice holiday..."
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PULLING OFF
Firstly... your success or failure almost entirely hinges on pulling off shots using the special moves - or countering your opponent's special moves. Regular shots... well, so long as you hit a button, your character mostly always returns a shot, automatically moving to intercept the ball. Successful shots only really happen when you or your opponent is either distracted, or one of you is deploying a special move.

Secondly, the physics are - admittedly, as you'd expect - nowhere near realistic. Alright, it's a Mario game, but it feels so far removed from what I've always enjoyed about tennis sims, that it almost ceases to be tennis at all.

Lastly... and this, for me, was the most significant thing which detracted from any enjoyment I could've carved out of this garish travesty... it's annoying. So annoying. The default setting has utterly overbearing music and a ceaseless commentary by a pair of Toads, which is like suffering death by a thousand clucking, gibbering, maniacs. I was able to turn off both these elements... but what remained were the characters - who cycle through the same two phrases on EVERY SINGLE PLAY.

Take Waluigi for example; every shot is made with a provocative, machiavellian cackle, and a shout of what sounds like "Cheaters!". Every single time. FOR THE DURATION OF THE ENTIRE GAME. Even Mario's own whoops and "wahoos" sunk their claws beneath my nerve-endings.

While they're fine in a platform game, here they're distracting and grating. Yeah, I could've played it with the sound off, but tennis games need that audible "thwack!" of the ball to make them feel real.
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MURDER MOST DESERVED
Fortunately, there is an option to play tennis here without all the bells and whistles; just a game of tennis where you rely upon nothing but your "skills". Unfortunately, this is only available in the single match mode, it still has the characters uttering their inane catchphrases and bizarre noises, and it is hobbled by one of the most bafflingly wrong-headed choices ever made in the history of game design.

To wit: it is impossible to play a single game of tennis - against the Switch, or another player - with the standard rules. Oh, there's a thing they call tennis, but instead of being broken down into games and sets LIKE TENNIS IS MEANT TO BE PLAYED it's some weirdly streamlined, simplified, best-of-three serves nonsense. Why have they done this? Why have they done this, when tennis - with its full rules and all - is available in the tournament?! It's insanity. 

I could've put up with all the cackling, and shrieking, and inane, repetitive comments, the special moves, the weird physics, if they'd just given me the option to play a game of tennis the way tennis is meant to be played. Instead, what I'm left with is a pervasive, sociopathic urge to murder every single character in the game.

And here's how I'd do it:

Mario - Drown him in a lavatory bowl.
Luigi - Strangulation.
Peach - Defenestration.
Daisy - Make her eat her own limbs.
Toad - Punch him repeatedly in his stupid smiling face so that it caves in on itself, then stomp him to death.
Toadette - All of the above.
Yoshi - Break his spine with repeated hammer blows.
Wario - Tie him up, and set fire to him in a car park.
Bowser - Amputate his legs, and drop him from a helicopter into a desert.
Donkey Kong - Deforestation of his natural habitat.
Spike - Nerve agent.
Chain Chomp - Nerve agent.
Waluigi - Torture, then nerve agent.
Bowser Jr - Hire a dirty urban fox to eat him.
Rosaline - Something to do with scissors.
Boo - Exorcisim.


SCORE: 0-40

20 Comments
RichardM
25/6/2018 08:49:59 am

*thwack*... bounce...*thwack*... bounce...

Woooo: da daba da-da da, da daba da-da duh! etc.

The intro to Super Tennis was brill.

I’m never going to play this, ever. Mario Strikers was the end of Nintendo sports games for me. I don’t even like football, so goodness knows what I was expecting.

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Guru Larry link
25/6/2018 04:14:55 pm

You need to play "Super Family Tennis/Smash Court Tennis" on the SNES if you enjoy Super Tennis. It's essentially a 4 player Super Tennis.

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RichardM
26/6/2018 06:13:24 am

Cheers, Larry. I’ll take a look. Shame the SNES mini can’t do 4 players.

Neptunium
25/6/2018 09:08:58 am

I'm glad they had a demo before the release. The training mode, which was far too long, consisted entirely of how to pull off the special moves. By the time I worked through it I was too exhausted/bored to actually play a real round.

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DEAN
25/6/2018 09:12:40 am

Like you, I love Super Tennis and lament it's absence from the SNES Mini (wankers).

Also like you, I think Nintendo need a stern talking to over this horrible game - as I played it with my kids yesterday I had that - I've just pissed £45 down the drain - feeling. I managed to avert a McEnroe meltdown but, long story short, what an unwashed anus of a tennis game.

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Bobby DEANzler
25/6/2018 01:12:28 pm

UPDATE

So I checked on CEX what it's worth for a trade in - £33 (£29 cash; it's up to you really) - not too shabby.

Then I - on the off chance - checked to see if they had any Switch docks in stock - and they did! For £62 quid and it came with leads and everything (both leads and a generic brown box) but that's not the best bit...

I bought the dock and thought how it *probably* was the last remains of a lost, stolen or broken (possibly water damage but we have no way of determining for sure) Switch.

I count myself lucky to be able to benefit from it - like some kind of recipient of a hardware donor (but paid for upfront like a deathrow liver from a prison/supermarket for the wealthy in China).

So yeah, every grey cloud and all that.

Oh yeah, I almost forget the best bit - CEX were out of carrier bags and so gave me a flashy JD Sports one that a customer had left behind. Probably cost about 15p and there's still plenty of life left in it yet!

I feel luckier than Lucky Luke the cowboy that shot a man only to find that his boots were a perfect fit and probably only bought THAT DAY.

Thanks for your interest,

DEAN

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Robobob
25/6/2018 09:14:39 am

But OTHER than all that,it's really good, right?

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Mrtankthreat
25/6/2018 09:37:04 am

I don't why so many sports games do things like this. One of the annoying things about Wii Sports Resort was that the table tennis was first to six instead of the standard first to eleven. Would it have been so hard to give us the option there? Even games that are supposed to be proper simulations do it. Like in FIFA you can't set up a full 90 minute match. The most you can do is 20 (I've not played a new FIFA since 14, maybe you can now). Granted I doubt the clamour is there to play a full match and it would probably end up with a ridiculous scoreline but why can't we just pick how many minutes we want a game to last? Why does it have to be in the increments they allow? Remember the first few ISS games, it was 3, 5 or 7 minutes only. Why? Does the timing of matches take up too much memory or processing power? They go in to such intricate detail in so many other parts of the game it baffles me that something this simple isn't included.

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Jim
25/6/2018 10:46:22 pm

It's because the game experience is designed around those short play lengths, the score in a 90 minute fifa game would be something silly like 50 - 49, but I do agree it should still be an option, and my point isn't relevant to games like virtual tennis

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David W
25/6/2018 09:57:55 am

Sounds like you need Virtua Tennis on the Dreamcast:

- Normal tennis rules.
- Refined controls.
- Clear graphics.
- Thwacks, shoe squeaks, sparse grunts and cheers.
- Addictively simple mini-games confined to bonus mode.

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Wapojif
25/6/2018 10:21:26 am

Yeah, I love that I think it was my most played Tennis game ever.

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Wapojif
25/6/2018 10:23:48 am

As with the Mario Party series, this is one Nintendo needs to shoot in the head. Create some new games, as with Splatoon, or revisit series they rarely touch like Star Fox, Metroid, or Pikmin.

Pikmin 3 was incredible, I know Miyamoto is working on a new one but speed it up, man! Metroid Prime 4 hasn't got Retro Studios on it, which worries me a bit.

Anyway, for all its genius Nintendo does produce filler like this. More Breath of the Wild stuffs, please.

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Wif
25/6/2018 11:54:05 am

Sounds power wank

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Mark
25/6/2018 11:56:08 am

Virtua tennis on DC is great but it has one massive flaw like Mario tennis it won’t let you play more than one set yes you can set it up to play 6 games but that’s it why would they do this why can’t it be customised to your liking

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Paddy Hill
25/6/2018 12:27:35 pm

I'm sorry for your loss...

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Soapdish
25/6/2018 12:46:35 pm

So, how does this compare to Mario Tennis on the N64?

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Taucher
25/6/2018 02:51:18 pm

Coincidentally I bought Super Tennis on the SNES just yesterday - I have not played it before.

Anyway, my favourite golf game of all time is Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour on the Gamecube. This is because it is actually a very good and nuanced golf game which happens to have Mario charecters instead of, you know, Lion Forest and Joey Dunlop and all those famous golfists. My friends and I still play it whenever we can.

The worst tennis game I have ever played is Mario Power Tennis on the Gamecube. It is so annoying and you might as well sit there tapping buttons like a monkey while the game does stuff on the screen in front of you, like all of the Super Smash Bros. games.

My point is that, if I had a Switch, I wouldn't buy this game.

Thank you.

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Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
25/6/2018 03:19:45 pm

The best arcade tennis game remains Anna Kournikova Smash Court on the PS1.

The best “realistic” tennis game is Top Spin 2 on the Eggsbox 360. It has stupid power moves, but using them is not essential outside of the training sequences in career mode: I beat career mode with just the four “standard” shots.

Virtual Tennis is and was shit. Only two shots limited your options and the game attempted to “help” by encouraging your character to dive crunchingly onto their shoulder at every opportunity. In that way I suppose it was Advanced Henman Simulator.

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Mr Santa
25/6/2018 08:15:20 pm

I tried a bit of Mario Golf on a GBA emulator recently on the off chance that I might be able to play a round of golf. After about an hour’s faff going through the RPG nonsense in the clubhouse I gave up on it.

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Gary42
28/6/2018 07:49:30 pm

I don't mean to be rude, but you appear to have spelled 'focks' wrong.

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