New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis
Grab and smash.
Wii remotes worldwide are crying out of their little speakers for a full-featured tennis game, so natural is the fit of the sport for the controller - but a new version of this over-egged 2004 effort can't ever be more than a stop-gap. If the objective of Nintendo's New Play Control! reissues of GameCube games for the Wii is to give these games an extended lifespan, then Mario Power Tennis' return from the grave might end up being somewhat brief.
There are several reasons for that. The first is that you need a really, really good reason to look past the deceptively simple and addictive Wii Sports Tennis that comes bundled with every machine - a game that sacrifices character movement for the subtle and responsive racquet-head control that still stands as some of the best gesture-recognition the Wii has seen.
The second is that that reason is coming. Wii MotionPlus is out this summer - it's an add-on offering greatly increased responsiveness and fidelity from the Wii remote, and it impressed us at E3 last year. It has clearly impressed EA too, which is using MotionPlus as its excuse to finally enter the videogame tennis grand slam with EA Sports Tennis. You'd be a fool to bet against this becoming the default tennis game on Wii - and even if it fails, there will surely be one or two competitors waiting for it to slip up.