Mario's Tennis:

Mario, Princess and a whole cast of your favorite characters move freely around a completely three dimensional tennis court. If you move to the net, and your opponent lobs, the ball seems to actually fly over your head.

There has never been a game that was able to so realistically create the feeling of depth on the court. You'll find yourself trying to turn around and check the line when your opponent slams a passing shot down the line. It's time to prove that you can serve, volley and rally with the best of them!

Like said above, the game and mainly courts do prove to be realistic and look very much 3-D, it's just a pity that the players in the back look blurry, compared to the detailed movements and facial expressions of the players in the front. The backgrounds look fairly good with creatures moving about during the matches.

Easy controls have you move the player with the left directional pad and toss/fast serve, volley and overhead smash the tennis ball with the A button, while the B button makes the ball toss/slow serve, lob.

Choose between a game of Singles or Doubles, while Singles offer an extra Tournament mode (the game selects your opponents and decides it's own outcomes of matches you're not in) next to the "you VS. computer" mode. On the other hand Doubles tries to make up for the lack of a two-player linkup by giving you a computer partner. Select the difficulty and pick your players from a whole host of Nintendo icons like Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Toad, Koopa, Donkey Kong Jr. Each with their own advantages for you to figure out.
Lakitu even joins the scene as the Chair Umpire, as he keeps the score for all matches.

Cheery tunes accompany the sets like a charm, they fit Mario's (Mushroom) Kingdom perfectly and move along with your character. Sound effects are just the simple doing and smash sounds, wouldn't it be that they fade out and come up in volume depending from where your player & the ball is! Very nice touch to give the game a roomy feel, which is exactly what it does.

In short: Great tennis simulator with all the rules of normal tennis (no weird power-ups here). With all the difficulty levels there's a lot of replay value in this game, especially with the added difficulties at the hard mode like how the ball's direction can be interfered by the player character's body. Great game to awe a first time VB players and impress the real players. If you don't like tennis this will be just a "simple" novelty.

My opinion: Who needs that N64 rip-off Mario Tennis title when you can have the original. It's the first game to appear on the VB too. I like playing doubles at the princess' castle background best, it's quite a fun game.