Life is full of surprises! A game called Mario Tennis Power Tour without seeing Mario in the first seven hours? A tennis game with a story that keeps going on for about five minutes when you start it? And then finally getting to the first game and wiping the floor with your contestant?! To be honest, the urge of stopping here and putting the game away is big. Oh well, sometimes, we have to be tough.

In the Gamecube version of Mario Power Tennis making fun with your friends in the multiplayer mode is the most important part. But if we're honest: friends that owe a Gameboy Advance is not impossible, but they need their own copy of the game and a link cable. The developers kept that in mind and made the singleplayer mode Power Tour the biggest part in this Gameboy Advance version. You choose a boy or a girl and give the child a name. Then you wake up in the tennis academy and you can get going. Unless some masked person turns up of course! The best player of the academy is challenged and loses. You and your partner are very curious and so you're trying to investigate what's going on. You find out the masked person had incredible powershots and his name starts with an M (who could that be?). If you want to know who's behind the mask, you need to climb up to the top of the academy. This means becoming first in the junior class, then in the senior class and finally in the varsity class. If you succeed, you get the chance of entering the big tournament, the Island Open. The winner is "kidnapped" by the masked guy and taken to... Princess Peach! There you (finally!) have a confrontation with Mario and his friends. Something you definitely need? Patience! The dialogues are often very long and sometimes you have the feeling there is more talking than playing.

They say every start is hard, but that's not the case in this game. You can win the first couple of games with your eyes shut. After every game you receive experience points, which you can divide between yourself and your partner. So slowly you keep getting better and better and fortunately, the AI gets better too. I even have to admit it's really fun and addictive after a while!

But the most fun part are the numerous minigames (that give you extra experience points). Some are very obvious: hitting balls against the wall of making them land on the marked area. Special machines let you build your muscles so you can hit better powershots. These are exceptional strong hits with a little magic, that allow you to blow away your opponent or to save a ball on the other side of the court. Mariostyle! Anyway, back to the minigames. What do you think about the Treadmill, a minigame that makes you run and jump over barrels and banana peels? But there is lots more: destroy balloons with a ball with spikes, hit wooden boxes, collect coins by moving platforms up and down, jump to the finish following a certain pattern, balance on a rope with a large stick in your hands, solve a memory within the given time,... All of it very fun and addictive, especially because there are three difficulty levels for every minigame.

Of course, you can't call the powershots realistic, but still Mario Tennis Power Tour has a great balance between fiction and reality. There is a glossary where you can get a definition for every tennis term you look up. Moreover, different combinations of the A- and the B-button make you perform a topspin, slice, lob, drop shot, volley, smash,… A couple of training lessons given by the best coaches of the academy and you'll know them all in no time. The rules of tennis and the various techniques are very well explained, so anyone who plays tennis can use them in real life.

Besides the Power Tour - you can finish it in single and double play - there is a multiplayer mode, a minigame mode where you can replay the difficulty levels you cleared in singleplayer mode and an Exhibition mode, a kind of practice game. Too bad there is nothing in between: you play minigames, the story mode or a practice game, a quick tournament is not an option.