This game is easily the best tennis game for Gamecube owners, and is certainly just as worthy as more po-faced simulators like Top Spin. Whether it matches up to the industry standard of Sega's Virtua Tennis depends on how much Mario you can stomach, but beyond the charming/insipid (delete as preferred) presentation what you have is an excellent, fast and fun tennis game with some frantic net play bolstered by the rather loose grip on realistic physics. So what prevents this from being thumb-candy perfection? Three things. First of all, the single player mode is incredibly limp, featuring just a few competitions and not as many unlockables as you'd expect from a Nintendo title. How about a proper story mode, with Virtua-style character development? Second of all are the gimmick courts. The name reflects these courts - they are nothing more than gimmicks that if anything detract from the action and make playing a chore. You can turn them off in multiplayer but sadly you have to win the 'gimmick cups' to do this on most courts. Other game modes like the item battle with Mario-Kart style power ups and the ring tennis where you have to aim at targets as you rally feel tacked on and not worthwhile. But the real game-ruining proposition over time are the power shots! You can use one every few goes and they either form a ridiculous uber-shot or a 'reach any ball' defence shot. This is fine, especially as you can turn them off, but in single player they are always there, unremovable! The AI seems to have far more than you and can use them better, making matches feel unfair. And worse, each one has a flow-breaking animation complete with a zoomed camera shot of Yoshi popping into an egg to roll towards a shot or Donkey Kong leaping into a cannon - cool at first, but they take so long, it gets boring - doubles matches can degrade into an endless series of animations followed by two hits and another lot of pyrotechnics. The tennis is good give us more tennis!