Mario Tennis Power Tour (GBA)
While Metroid Fusion was less than stellar, Mario Tennis was more than amazing. Nintendo and Camelot teamed up to create a tennis game with RPG qualities that I simply can’t get enough of.
The premise is this: you (girl or boy) entered the ‘Academy’, a school for elite tennis players. You need to work your way through the ranks (singles and doubles) to become number one (or two) at varsity. Once that happens, you go to the Island Open where you take on the best of the best of other schools. Once you beat them… you get invited to play in the Peach Open, at the Mario Kingdom.
Forget the Mario aspect of this game – this game is a winner without Mario, and really most of the game has nothing to do with Mario and the Nintendo cast. You can’t simply play and win – there are training minigames that increase various aspects of your game – speed, control, power, and you can fine tune your shots. There are minigames that give you a super shot – offense and defense, which add a nice touch to the game.
As a rule I love tennis games. I really appreciated the ability to build up your character – and you can’t just build up your character in all aspects evenly, or your abilities will remain somewhere around average. Further, your abilities degrade over time so you can’t have a super hulked up tennis player.
My only nit is how painfully easy the game was. I basically started as doubles, got to the varsity level unranked, then switched to singles and quickly completed singles with very little training. The only training you need to do is powershot training, and once you’re equipped with an offensive and defensive power shot, you’re set for the rest of the game. The only character in all the matches that showed any level of difficulty was Princess Peach. That match was pretty intense – the first set went tied 3-3 and went into a tiebreaker which was then tied at 7-7 before I won 9-7. The next two sets went 2-0, 2-0.
Even how easy it was, the game was still insanely, ridiculously fun.
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Advance Guardian Heroes (GBA)
Hang on now, this is where it gets weird. AGH is a game made by Treasure, which is a sequel to a game that appeared on the Sega Saturn. I have to think that this was a risky move by Treasure because this game makes absolutely no sense whatsoever had you not played the original GH. In fact, most of the ‘geek out’ moments are pretty boring if you don’t know the characters from the original game.
The original game was unique in that it was a choose your own adventure game – after you beat a scenario, you can choose which direction to go. This meant there were tons of interwoven storylines and multiple endings with different bosses. AGH doesn’t actually have continuity in the sense that it doesn’t pick one ending from the previous game – it takes place years later.
Treasure makes a particular type of game whose style you’ll either love or hate. Treasure did a marvelous job with AGH – the game is vivid and colorful; there are tons of enemies on screen, though nowhere near the 100+ enemies on screen which was typical of the original Guardian Heroes. This game also has the RPG leveling up element – which is directly related to how many enemies you can defeat (not all enemies need to be defeated on a screen to advance).
This game also suffers from lack of difficulty, because of the leveling up aspect. By the end of the game, you’re so super hulked up that nothing can stand in your way.
But, the point of Treasure games isn’t getting to the ending but actually enjoying the game (though the ending is pretty good). This game stands as a fantastic title and is a perfect addition to anyone’s GBA collection.
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The server is DONE! Pictures and a writeup in the project blog tomorrow. But thank god, it is finished (sort of), for now.
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More on Google Chrome – flash is kind of buggy, which is really sad since Google owns Youtube. Of course, flash is owned by another company (Adobe), but it’s strange that flash functions so poorly. Interestingly, Chrome sets up an instance just for shockwave and flash.
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The Sixers are going to tear -ish up this year. I’m amazed what Ed Stefanski has done. Kareem Rush, Donyell Marshall, Theo Ratliff – the Sixers finally have a bench! Not a deep bench, not a great bench, but serviceable minutes.
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Can you believe it? The Eagles are being picked to go to the Super Bowl. To face the Pats. Again. I don’t know how to view this – the Eagles are solid, but not spectacular – and the Cowboys have flamed out the last two years in spectacular fashion. Who knows?
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I don’t know how often you visit the links on the left, but make sure to check out these two pictures of Philadelphia, circa 1900 and circa 1910, from Shorpy.
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3 Comments
Is there a Mario tennis for a non-handheld system? It sounds like a neat game, but I don’t like handheld games.
For the Gamecube and hopefully soon for the Wii. We only have one gamecube controller. :-/
I’ve played Mario Tennis on the gamecube and I think it was good. Can’t you use your regular wii controller? If not you can borrow a gamecube controller from us.