Mario Tennis: Power Tour

PRESS START

An Introduction To Today’s Game

Welcome to one of my favorite sports titles ever.

Released in 2005 as the final Mario title for the Game Boy Advance, this Camelot-developed gem does something unexpected, especially if you’ve only played the bigger console versions of this series.

It treats tennis like an RPG, complete with experience points, stat building, and a full story campaign. You're not playing as Mario. You're training to eventually face him.

The journey from scrub to champion takes dozens of matches, countless mini-games, and more grinding than you'd expect from a game about hitting a ball over a net. It's weird, it's ambitious, and somehow it all works.

BEHIND THE PIXELS

Let’s Dive Into The Game

Mario Tennis: Power Tour is a sports RPG where you play as Clay or Ace, rookie tennis players enrolled at the Royal Tennis Academy. Your goal is simple: work your way up through the ranks, from Junior to Senior to Varsity, eventually competing in the Island Open tournament for a shot at facing Mario and his crew.

The game blends traditional tennis mechanics with role-playing progression systems, letting you earn experience points from matches and allocate them to improve your character's Speed, Power, Spin, and Control stats.

The tennis gameplay itself uses a two-button control scheme. Press A or B for different shot types, topspin or slice, and combine them for lobs, drop shots, and charged power attacks.

The controls are simple and it’s still pretty addicting all these years later. A good tennis game just hits home for me. And thankfully the sport has a few great games to dive into, with this one pretty high on the list.

Timing and positioning matter. The game introduces Power Shots once you reach Senior level, special moves that fill a meter during play.

Offensive Power Shots blast the ball with extra force or magical effects that can stun opponents or knock them back. Defensive Power Shots let you magically reach balls that would otherwise be impossible to return. It adds an arcade layer to otherwise solid tennis fundamentals.

The RPG elements are what set Power Tour apart. Between matches, you explore the academy grounds, talk to other students, and access training facilities. And I would say it’s the main selling point to get people to try this game. RPG and tennis, it just works.

You play mini-games to increase specific stats tied to Power Shots, things like obstacle courses on conveyor belts, tightrope walking, and card-matching challenges.

Each victory in singles or doubles earns experience, which you manually distribute across your stats. Neglected stats can decay, forcing you to maintain balanced growth. Your partner character, the one you didn't choose at the start, levels up alongside you in doubles matches.

The story mode takes hours to complete. You face increasingly difficult opponents across three class tiers before reaching the Island Open, where you compete against students from rival academies. Only after winning that tournament do Mario, Luigi, Peach, Donkey Kong, Bowser, and Waluigi appear for the final challenge.

It's structured like a traditional RPG campaign, just with tennis matches instead of turn-based battles. The game also includes an Exhibition mode for quick matches using any unlocked character, but the real meat is that lengthy Power Tour.

Visually, the game looks sharp for GBA standards. Character sprites are detailed with expressive animations, and courts are clean and colorful. This game is beautiful!

The audio features upbeat music that borrows some tracks from Mario Power Tennis on GameCube, though it works well enough on the handheld's limited sound chip. The presentation keeps things simple but polished throughout.

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GAME INFORMATION

WHERE TO PLAY

• The original copy or emulation will be your best bet in playing the original version.

• Original Copies of the Game (All prices in USD)

  • Loose: $30

  • Complete: $65

  • New/Sealed: $125

COVER ART

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GAME OVER

Why You Should Play This

Mario Tennis: Power Tour remains one of the most unusual Mario sports games ever made. It commits fully to the RPG concept without losing sight of being a solid tennis game.

The leveling system gives real weight to every match. Watching your stats grow and unlocking new Power Shots provides constant progression hooks. The mini-games break up the tennis action without feeling like filler.

And the sheer amount of content, with separate singles and doubles campaigns that effectively double the playtime, means you'll spend hours at this academy.

It holds up remarkably well today. The controls remain responsive, the RPG mechanics stay engaging, and the difficulty curve keeps matches challenging without feeling unfair.

Yes, the story is thin and the human characters are forgettable. And Mario and friends barely appear until the end. But that's part of the charm.

You're the underdog working toward greatness. When you finally step onto the court against Mario, you've earned it. For anyone who enjoyed the Game Boy Color version or wishes more sports games had actual campaigns, Power Tour delivers.

It's a smart, content-rich handheld experience that respected players' time while asking them to invest plenty of it. That's a rare combination worth serving up again.

SUPPORT

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RETRO HARDWARE

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