Mario Tennis (2000)
OK fine, I can admit it - I always had tennis down as a game for wetties. It was all a bit too European for my taste, and I'm aware that sounds absolutely ridiculous coming from someone with a strong interest in Formula 1. But what I mean is, I never thought testosterone was at an all-time high whenever Wimbledon rolled into town… that town being the English town of Wimbledon.
Well, I don't think you could blame me for my preconceptions. Tennis is all a bit hoity-toity and posh, isn’t it? You see, it's the type of party that would never have me, so I have to console myself by scorning them, and telling myself that I would never be like them, as if they were the ones losing out.
You ever tried a bit of tennis though? Bloody hell, talk about a workout. You can forget about tennis elbow, that’s just the first of the ailments you’ll get. Tennis is all about stop-start sprinting, back and forth, possibly for hours on end.
This type of thing will tire you out and properly injure you in a hurry, and even if you did have the stamina to actually get to the ball, which has just been whizzed at you at 100 miles per hour, that’s only the first part of the job. You then need to have the strength to whack the ball back with a similar level of force, if you’re going to achieve your goal and put your opponent on their arse.
I played once against someone who does a bit of tennis coaching, someone who was 20 years my senior I should embarrassingly add, and, well… if you know anything about fashion, then you could probably picture the colour-clash with a pained grimace; my ruddy-red face constantly sinking into the freshly cut green baize, beaten once again.
It turns out that my rock-bottom cardiovascular fitness, twinned with my pipe-cleaning bingo wings, aren’t really physical attributes that cut it out on the court. “New balls, please!” I roared, and I needed them, because I had just been completely emasculated by the girls on the next court.
Damn though man, 100mph serves. Never mind those dopey windfarms and turbines they build out at sea for generating energy. What’s the point of those? Nobody lives in the sea, so nobody gets the benefit. You should just get some tennis players in, have them serve aces all day - and there you go, there’s your wind energy.
It’s this kind of scientific innovation and thinking that really ought to make me a bajillionaire by now, and better than that, it should soon bag me a seat at Wimbledon. Do you think I could sit alongside the King, if I solved the energy crisis? And do they allow hoodies and tracksuits in?
I had to give up tennis in the end. Well, I say ‘give up’, I had never really taken it up, since I didn't know the rules and I didn’t have anything like the body type required to play. I can’t be alone in this though - in what other sport do you score fifteen goals, then thirty goals, which gets cut back to forty goals, and then you start dropping a deuce?
It's no wonder you need Hawkeye and technology like that, because nobody knows what’s going on out there whenever Federer and Murray and Sampras and those other big boys take to the court. Actually, I think most of those are retired by now?
I don’t know much about the history of the sport either, though I do know you can make a hell of a lot of money out there, if your cute little body is up to it. Although, if you're very unlucky, you could quite literally be playing a game all day and all night, and your ankles, elbows, and - yes - your balls will be all battered and bruised.
It’s also worth noting that tennis is a sport where men and women can both compete to a very high level, and both sexes are watched by millions. I don’t think I would cut much ice down at the women's courts either, though. I imagine Venus and Serena Williams would be opening the jars if we lived together, let’s just say.
Once again, it’s one of those sports that’s much better to watch than it is to play (fatties like me say this about every sport). And from there, we can conclude that it’s better to play it as a video game than to merely watch it on TV. And if you can allow me to go a further step, it is always better to play Mario sports games over regular sports games.
Mario Tennis N64 is quite a notable game, after all. While it boasts quite good gameplay to this day, a variety of courts, colourful graphics, plenty of charm, and a surprisingly good soundtrack, its most notable claim is that it introduced Waluigi to the world.
That’s quite a legacy, and I couldn’t imagine a weird, uncouth bloke like Waluigi going down too well in the tennis paddocks, could you? All of the chaps would be writing very cross letters indeed to their local snides, instructing them to remove this lanky ruffian from the tennis clubs at once and revoke his membership forthwith.
I have to say, I am surprised at how playable Mario Tennis remains to this day. There's obviously been quite a few tennis games since then with moustaches the cover, and I don't mean old Björn Borg’s moustache either.
One thing that the latter Mario Tennis games will never have over the N64 original is the level of immersion that this game offers. What I mean by that is, if you manage to play a full game or set or match or whatever, using that beastly N64 control stick, well, that's about as close to the pain and rigours of tennis as you can get in your living room.
I particularly like the trick courts you can spend time on. It's a bit less monotonous than just smashing aces at Luigi and playing doubles against genuinely interesting characters like Boo and, strangely enough, Donkey Kong Jr. You’ll get some good replay value out of the challenges there.
But I would have to say, really, that the only tennis video games even worth playing nowadays are those that let you do a bit of motion control, namely the likes of Mario Tennis Aces on Switch, and the never-bettered Wii Sports Tennis. There's nothing like immersing yourself into the game so much that you dislocate your elbow playing it, or smash your TV up.
But you can't go far wrong with Mario Tennis 64, especially if you can get a bit of multiplayer going. I'll put it to you this way, there's a whole load of other tennis games on the Nintendo 64, but without exception, they are so bad that they'll have you throwing your air-racquet in frustration and squealing, "you cannot be serious!"
I'd tell you to show this one some love, but doesn't that mean "zero" in tennis? A bit like giving the 'OK' hand gesture to an insane French chef, who instead interprets it as "nul", meaning zero. Mario Tennis is anything but zero, in fact I'd say it's ‘Advantage Mario’ as far as tennis games go. You only need one Mario Tennis game in your life though, because they’re mostly all the same - bit of a racket if you ask me.
3 October 2025