Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash

Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash was the long-awaited console follow-up to Mario Power Tennis, released over a decade prior. The hiatus of Mario Tennis through the Wii era was a strange one, given the seemingly natural motion control scheme for the sport, but Nintendo was more interested in promoting the Wii Sports titles as alternatives to more hardcore sports offerings. As a result, we got nothing but a pretty solid Wii port of Power Tennis with responsive Wii controls, and nothing new. This new title was then supposed to bring that continuation of the Mario Tennis franchise and what it had become known for - arcade-y, fast paced tennis, fun characters with exaggerated playstyles, and the contentious "Power Shot" system that added a bit of tactical depth to the GameCube offering - and bring it into the modern era. What we actually got was a stripped-down, frustrating experience that complete undid the foundation of the franchise in gameplay, while adding additional systems that increased the game-to-game tedium and removing the beloved extra game modes in favor of a DOA online matchmaking system.

Fundamentally, Ultra Smash plays a worse game of tennis even with an expanded list of shots for the player. The crux of this failure is the Chance Shot system, a revamped take on the star that would occasionally appear on the court in previous entries to help players gauge where lobs would fall. In Ultra Smash, every single return that causes a stumble or lunge of any kind, or is misplaced by even a hair, will generate a Chance Shot icon. On that icon, the game will tell the player what button(s) to press to basically guarantee a point-winning return. The Chance Shot is not impossible to return, but the different shot types are exaggerated to such a ridiculous degree that it makes the game look like a tennis shounen or something. Against computer opponents or other humans, this system feels impossible to go up against, and the increased power of these shots over charged up versions of regular shots puts you at a massive disadvantage if you don't use every single icon that appears, because your opponent will. Even more frustrating is that you can visually see the icons generating on your opponent's end of the court, taking all strategy from the experience as you can literally read their minds in real time and play a basically perfect defense.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this new playstyle is that the Chance Shots empower every character with characteristics that would have been exclusive to certain types of characters in previous games. Namely, topspin chance shots have the same pushback effect as Power type supers; slice chance shots cause the opponent to spin out, like the Tricky type super; and lob/dropshot chance shots go to the very front and back corners of the court, respectively. It is an insulting, half-baked fix that caved into the criticisms of Power Shots being too powerful in the previous console entry by overpowering every character and thus completely ruining the asymmetrical gameplay style charm of the franchise up to this point. There is no point to the different player types at all, because on the chance shot icons, they are identical, and the icons are essential for victory.

All of this would have been a disaster on its own, but there is also one other frequent annoyance - the presence of Mega Mushrooms that are thrown onto the court seemingly at random by the ball boys. It goes without saying that the super-sized player is at a massive, overwhelming advantage against the smaller one, especially if they are a slower character type like Power or Tricky, but when both players are giant it feels like a never-ending stalemate because almost every single shot can be returned without moving. It completely takes away any remaining difficulty or thought in the game by adding a gimmick that completely dictates the outcome of the match for as long as it appears, every single time. Even spamming the chance shot icons will not give you basically any leg up on an Ultra-sized opponent because their reach is basically impossible to counter.

Ultra Smash received major criticism for being anemic in the modes and basically completely doing away with the party-style minigames that kept the game charming, but its greater sin is completely destroying any semblance of actual TENNIS that the game had to offer, and laying this broken foundation of gameplay for future entries, all of which have had the same disastrous problems. Adding an online matchmaking mode is so ridiculous as substitute because the actual game is zero fun to play competitively, and nobody in their right mind would pay $30, let alone the $60 that it launched for. Definitely one of the least understandable failures Nintendo has ever sputtered out - over a decade of time to consider the future of the series, and the best they had to offer undid everything ever worth playing it for. A real disgrace, only enjoyable by masochists and those who don't know any better.