Mario Tennis

Unlike more recent iterations, this Mario sports game is just tennis...and that's a good thing.

A strange thing has happened with Mario sports games lately. Instead of simply offering a basic, arcade-style version of whatever sport they’re portraying, these games have started adding annoying videogame-ey elements to their title sport in an effort to morph an ancient physical game into a modern virtual one. These changes are too much for me. I couldn’t wrap my head around the tutorial of Mario Tennis Aces when I played its demo a few years ago because so many new meters and special shots had been added, and, from what I’ve seen of it, Mario Golf Super Rush appears to be the same way.

I couldn’t remember if it had always been like this, so I fired up the N64 edition of Mario Tennis that’s now part of the Switch Online Expansion Pack (yes, I am one of those people who shelled out $50 to play a poorly emulated version of Ocarina of Time on my Switch) and was relieved to find that this earlier iteration is, indeed, just tennis — a distinction I mean as the highest compliment.

Mario Tennis is simple. Pick a character, pick a court style, pick a game length, and you’re instantly in a match. Tap A twice for a topspin shot, B twice for a backspin slice, B + A for a drop shot and A + B for a lob. That’s all there is to it. Use that tool kit to hit the ball over the net and between the lines more than your opponent and you’re on your way to victory.

Any complaints you have about Mario Tennis are complaints you have about tennis. It’s too simple? There’s not enough room for creativity? Points can stretch on for minutes as both players struggle to get an infinitesimally sharper angle on their next shot?  That’s tennis.

If anything, Mario Tennis offers a decently nuanced recreation of the physical sport with its two-tap control scheme. One tap to start a shot and a second to complete it reflects the process of winding up a swing and following through really well. It places the game’s emphasis on footwork, which anyone with even my novice level of real-world tennis experience will tell you is what the game is really about.

The lack of power meters and “zone shots” in this version of Mario Tennis might make it seem antiquated or boring by modern standards. But as I engaged in multiple exhausting rallies with an AI Shy Guy while playing through the game’s tournament mode, I found that simplicity beautiful. The tension of needing to execute each shot perfectly and risking your position to get a small advantage that may (or may not!) tip the point over to you is sublime.

You can try to highlight those moments by including some sort of power meter or game breaking shot, but why bother? The game already has everything it needs baked in after hundreds of years of refinement. If you can create a solid digitization of that, you’ll have a title worth returning to twenty years later.