Over the last few years, my friends and I have played a lot of Mario Tennis on the N64 and have all gotten pretty competitive with it. We have rankings amongst ourselves, a general idea of which characters we believe are best on the different surfaces, and a pretty good technical understanding of what different shots do in different situations.

Occasionally we'll come across someone who thinks they're pretty good, but we just end up tearing them apart. No one we've ever met seems to be on our level. Is there anyone else who has played this game as ridiculously seriously as we have?

I used to love playing that game with my friends. Boo is the nuts with the way he(she) serves, but is real tough to maneuver around the court.

They are re-making the Mario Tennis for Gamecube and tweaking it so that it is compatable with the wii controllers. Dont know if you care at all about it, but just letting you know.

Oh, I love that game, we should play over the inter... oh.

mario tennis was the nuts, i haven't played in years but back in high school we played the **** out of the game

Boo was easily the best character in the game

Such a sweet game. Played it constantly in high school. Loved to play Bowser against some of my friends who were not very good and just get insane amounts of aces.

we can play online in a few months when it comes out for wii

This year one of my roommates brought his N64 from home. We've been playing Mario Tennis at least 10 hours a week together. I'm still trying to get good at the game. One of my roommates consistently beats everyone else. He uses Wario on all surfaces (great power and good speed for a power player), although we mainly play on composite or hard court only. He can beat any character on intense on composite and hard court and has a nasty serve against human opponents, forcing you to react very quickly to even have a chance to return it.

The first character I tried to use was Boo and he was gliding around all over the place; it was a horrible experience. Boo is definitely not a good character for a beginner to start off with.

Just curious, which characters do you think are the best on various surfaces?

Also, is there any way to do a DEEP lob over a net player? Try playing Waluigi on intense and let him come up to the net (don't try to win the points early). He has an insane net game. A deep lob over his head would be a great shot, but the lobs I do (A then B) barely go past the service line, at best.

The composite court strongly favors the power characters, Wario being one of them. But Bowser and DK are both better than Wario in every imaginable way. Any decent player should be able to beat anyone playing as Wario with DK or Bowser on composite with ease.

On hard, its a lot more balanced. Which character is "best" depends heavily on what characters you are playing against.

Baby Mario is the best net character in the game, but playing the net can be difficult and probably not a good idea for someone just starting out. The same is true for the trickies (boo, paratroopa); they can be incredibly effective, but they take a long time to master.

The easiest character to actually be competitively good with is DK by far.

The depth of a lob depends on how much you have charged it (with A+B) and the height of the ball in the air when you hit it. It takes a lot of practice to be able to put it where you actually want it.

Thanks for your insight. I'll keep practicing.

i always use mario. am i n00b?

and if you are doing a lob you have to be quick with it so you can charge it or it will get teed off on. i find that against net players you want to use lost of B+B shots because they are harder to smash and they will hit it into the net.

Mario is a pretty average character. I personally think Luigi is a lot better than him.

how is this game for wii? thinking of trading in punchout for it.

2 Things:

1) Lots of people think they are good but me and my friends actually are unstoppable. We beat every asian kid that tries to challenge us

2) Super Smash Bros. challengers for the 64 get at me, I live on the east coast and will be willing to drive within a 2 hour distance to destroy anyone that thinks they are good at smash bros. Also mario tennis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaillera

you're better off getting the gamecube version because the wii remake was pretty terrible.

im like this with super smash bros 64

Mario Tennis and Super Smash Bros =

My roommate and I played this game every day for like 2 hours per day in college. I'm insanely good and can beat every single person I've ever played handily (even roommate, who's easily the second best person I've played).

Boo is a noob choice. He's not terrible in serious competetion but he'll stuggle. The best way to use Boo is to fool people. When serving from the deuce court, try moving to the middle line and hitting a blue serve right at people (hold backwards to hit it more shallowly in the box). Because most people read the direction of the serve and not the color they will freeze in place and miss when the serve kicks out wide. Use variations on this theme to keep your opponent guessing. Your opponent will have to constantly think "blue this way, orange that way", then you hit a pink serve from out wide right down the T.

Boo needs to constantly run around balls to be effective. Example: Somebody chips a slice down the line to your backhand side. You need to run all the way past the ball so that you're playing it with your forehand. Now you have the whole opposite court open to hit a slice that will carry away from your opponent. He better be fast. After you do this a couple of times, he'll start to cheat when he sees you run around(almost has to). In that case, you step up and hit an orange one down the line for a clean winner.

Actually Paratroopa is probably better because he has a little more power and has the best lob in the game.

I'm a firm believer that the best player is Mario. He does everything. He has enough power to put shots away. He moves very well so long as you're not changing directions. He has good accuracy and can play very good defense. He doesn't make many errors. His serve is one of the best in the game as he can hit above average blue, orange and pink serves with good power. He should serve from the exact middle.

Donkey Kong is probably the second best player. He can hit sick-nasty pink serves out wide quite shallow in the box from the default position. His pink down the middle is nasty too. DK will hit lots of aces. From the baseline he's okay. His movement can be good if in a straight line. He needs to fit mostly flat grounndstrokes (A+B) to be effective but can blow people off the court. It's really tough to scramble against DK and his power and you'll be on the defensive often when he serves. Mario's better because he plays better defense.

The worst player is Waluigi. He has no power and basically has no way to win points. He doesn't do anything well. Being really tall is a big disadvantage as well balls are high enough for him to smash. And his smash sucks when you do it. This is Baby Mario's big advantage; normal height balls are smashable for him.

Luigi sucks too. He makes way too many errors. He can be kind of fun because he hits the best drop shot in the game. But it's hard to win with drop shots.

Where on the east coast exactly? I know people that would definitely travel to play Mario Tennis or Smash 64 if the money was substantial enough.

The debate among my circle was always between Waluigi and Toad as being the two worst.

Did they never get Project64 off the ground to play over the net?

i play this a lot. its pretty much a solved game, but still fun.

Good game no Mario Golf though

I got back into this game for a while and I was trying to discover new strategies.

My findings were that DK Jr. is the best character, and rushing to the net ASAP for volleys (using A+B for more powerful volleys) was a very strong strategy. I found that hitting with pure topspin (orange) or pure slice (blue) was almost always bad because of the lack of power compared to the colorless A+B groundstroke. Every friend I played against couldn't defeat this strategy (the games were super one-sided), but they also aren't as competitive about games lol.

I'd be interested to hear what you guys think of this.

I used to think like this too but then I did a YouTube search for "Isai Pikachu."

Bump. Please someone challenge us.

I'm living in Boston now, but I travel fairly regularly between here and South Jersey/Philly area.

I am legitimately unsure if it is possible for me or my friend to lose with DK on hard court anymore. I would love it if someone showed me it was. We would be willing to bet significant money and lay odds also.

Also, doubles is a somewhat unexplored territory for us. There are only three of us that are legitimately good at the game, and so whenever we would play doubles, it would be impossible to make fair teams. I would really like to play/bet on that as well.