Mario Power Tennis

Developer: Camelot
Format: GameCube
Genre: Sport

15-Love to Mario! Centre court is about to get very silly.



Tennis games have been too serious for too long, but that's all set to change with the imminent release of Mario Power Tennis on GameCube from Nintendo. Forget photo-realistic player graphics and accurate ball physics, Mario Power Tennis is an arcade style tennis game giving players a chance to hit the courts as one of their favourite Nintendo characters. So instead of Henman and Hewitt you get to play around with Ninty's all time greats like Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and Donkey Kong.

There's a starting line-up of 14 characters to choose from and over 8 different courts to play on. And forget the serious environment of centre court, players battle it out on a selection of wacky themed courts. These range from a huge stadium in Princess Peach's castle, to Wario's Factory Court featuring all sorts of mechanical mayhem created by Wario himself, to a suspended DK Jungle Court in the heart of the jungle. Each court also has its very own hazards to avoid. On DK Jungle Court, Kremlins will grab onto players to slow them down, while on Luigi's Haunted Mansion court ghosts drop banana skins and steal the ball. So there's going to be plenty more to worry about than just trying to return a blistering serve.

Character choice is an essential part of victory in this game. Not only do the different characters each have varying strength, reach and speed, but they also have a selection of special moves to get them out of sticky situations. Each character has two special moves, one for offence and one for defence - which can be charged up during games. At certain points in a match a character will flash and pressing the X button will activate a special move. These range from moves which propel them across the court in time to stop a shot, to special serves which help ace the opponent. Sampras eat your heart out.

In a nutshell, Mario Power Tennis promises to bring all the gameplay madness of Nintendo's previous karting titles to the traditional sensibilities of centre court. In our books this is no bad thing at all - sport has been way too serious for way too long. We'll know more when the game gets released at the end of February.