We're not going to even pretend to understand the goings on in the Mushroom Kingdom. For starters, there's the whole weird Princess Peach, Bowser and Mario love triangle - which is periodically spiced up with a kidnapping every so often. Yet, despite being loathed mortal enemies, good guy Mazza never forgets to invite his Koopa King antagonist to all his various parties, sporting events and other such spin-offs. Maybe it's a bit of a love-hate affair? That certainly seemed to be the situation when we went hands-on with Mario Tennis at a recent event in London - as not only had Mario once again invited his mortal enemy for a quick game on the greenery - but Mazza and Bazza were even playing on the same team. The mind boggles.
Sometimes we think Mario must have mushrooms for brains...
Coming to a Wii U near you this Christmas, Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash pits all your favourite Mushroom Kingdom characters against each other for a few quick rounds of tennis, Mario style. Playing it safe, Ultra Smash promises more of the simple, easy-to-pick-up-and-play tennis action of the series' forerunners, rather than a substantial change to the now tried and tested formula. Whether you're playing with a partner in doubles matches or duking it out one-on-one in a single game, essentially, it's Mario Tennis, but on the Wii U - a slightly prettier version of the same arcade fun we've come to know and love.
Playing the aforementioned "odd couple" of Mario and Bowser, we stepped onto the court with a confident swagger in our step. On the demo we played, we were using Wii U Pro Controllers, but have been assured there'll be a variety of control options in the full game. On the controller, each button lets you perform a different kind of shot, while quickly pressing one button, then another lets you do a slightly fancier trick shot if you're feeling particularly fancy, or spot your opponent's left themselves open. If you're more of a casual tennis player, however, you can always rely on the old failsafe X button, which in this game becomes a kind of "auto" hit. All you need to worry about is pressing this at the right time, and the game will handle the rest, automatically choosing the best shot for you to perform, albeit with slightly less force behind it than someone who knows what they're doing.
As you play, coloured circles appear on the floor, corresponding to one of the many different tennis strokes you can use - match the stroke, or in our case press the catch-all X button, while in the circle and you'll do a special, more powerful return strike to counter your opponents - depending on the colour of the circle you're standing in, you might whack a crazy zig zag shot, perform an annoyingly sneaky drop shot, or simply whack it so hard your opponent barely has time to blink - hopefully edging yourself closer to victory in the process.
The new feature this year is the 'Mega Mushroom' power up, which appears on the court at random (although, according to our demonstrator, it does favour the loser more), and super-sizes whichever character manages to pick it up first. While big, your character can cover a much larger area much faster, and all your shots become more powerful - in fact, we found that, at least in the case of Bowser, you can return pretty much every single shot by simply standing in the centre of the court and spamming the X button, because your mega-ised reach is so large. But while it's enough of a boost to turn a game around, the mega mushroom does have a few drawbacks of its own - you'll probably find you come a cropper when the power up wears off at the worst possible moment, leaving you to miss that perfect return you'd got yourself geared up for, as the ball goes sailing past, now just out of reach.
Super-sized Peach - now we're in for it.
More competent tennis players may be interested to note that, in the case of rather far-reaching shots, holding down the R button will let you 'lean' the shot a bit, curving it around slightly and stopping it going out of the court. To be honest, we didn't notice much difference between holding the button and not, although given that we spent most of our time alternating between running around like headless chickens and standing stock still, yelling at each other that we 'thought you were getting it', we admit we may not have been the best people to test it.
Still - our short time with Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, which amounted to a couple of doubles matches in total - was pretty fun, and we can imagine four player matches between friends going down well. Whether it's varied enough to usurp Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. as our multiplayer games of choice, though, remains to be seen. A fully-fledged story mode, which we can play through with a friend or two, or some rather swish mini-games would be nice, if totally unconfirmed additions - if only for a bit of variety from straight sets of matches.
Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash will be slicing it's way onto the Wii U this winter, although when precisely, we don't know. In fact, outside of the fact it's tennis, but with a new mega mushroom power, there's not a lot we do know - here's hoping some more info makes it's way out in the coming months!
