Mario Tennis (Game Boy Color, 2001)

(A copy of this game was provided to me by Nintendo of America) Now, any idiot could make a ton of money with a mascot. Just slap the mascot in everything you do, and watch it roll in. But does this make the product any good? No, and if the product sucks, then your mascot will lose all potence. So they have to be at least decent, or the mascot won't be around much longer. This brings us to Mario, who by now has almost transcended Nintendo to become the official mascot of all of video gaming. That thought is enough to make some lawyers check copyright laws in panic, but he's still safe. And he.

Nintendo has, over the last few years, taken the liberty to license the Mario name to any and all game genres that it can imagine Nintendo characters starring in. From the delightful Mario RPG on SNES to the downright terrible Mario Party series, Nintendo's cutesy mascots have taken over almost every inch of the games industry and aren't showing any signs of slowing down. This of course, is why Mario Tennis ever got release - to slap the Mario (read: Nintendo) characters to a generic tennis gameplay engine, throw in some crappy special modes and push it unwillingly onto retail shelves so...

Those ubiquitous Italians Mario and Luigi seem to be popping their cartoony little heads up everywhere at the moment. Not content with Super Mario 12 on the SNES, or a dodgy little movie and, further, about 6 different games on the Nintendo 64, they ve now gone ahead and done not only a golf game but a tennis one too. Now, it may seem a rather amusing concept, strangely accoutred Italians, monsters and weirdos having it out on the grassy greens, but believe me, once you start you just can t stop. A bit like opening a can of Pringles, really. This is one of the perfect party games. In fact, so.

Wouldn't it be great just to go into a store, look at the video game selection, and without ever doing any research on the game, pick it up and know that it was great? Really, that's what the Mario series has become known for. Every Mario game from Donkey Kong Arcade up to the recent Super Smash Bros. Melee has been excellent, and has been widely enjoyed by all. Mario has even been able to do quite the impossible: he's not associated with Nintendo's child image. Anyway, Mario Tennis follows in this respect. Taking the characters from our plumber's universe, it pits them in nearly every way...